“Don’t kid yourself into thinking that if your true mate comes along you’ll be able to ignore her. No matter how content you are with another female, the draw will be there. No matter how many times you tell yourself to keep a distance from her, you won’t be able to. If I were either of you, I’d get out of this relationship while you can. Before one of you gets hurt.” He was gone before either Dante or Jaime could respond. Jaime wasn’t exactly sure if, or how, she would have responded. Nick had been right again. If Dante’s mate appeared tomorrow, she would lose him. Even if he didn’t leave her, Jaime would still be hurt, knowing that he was with her and thinking about someone else. He’d said he didn’t want to find his mate, but Jaime knew that if he did find her, things wouldn’t be so black and white to him anymore. It was one thing to know your mate was out there and another altogether to actually see her, wasn’t it?

For Jaime, to find her mate truly would be the worst thing ever. Although she was determined to fight her wolf’s desire to take over, she knew there was still a chance that she could. To join with her mate would therefore be to risk his life, and she couldn’t do that. In Dante, she had found someone she cared for who wouldn’t demand more than she could give. Someone who would care enough to be upset if anything happened to her, but who wouldn’t die along with her. In him, she had found what she needed. And losing that would break something inside her, even if it was kind of melodramatic.

“Hey,” said Dante gently as he skimmed his thumb over her jawline. He didn’t like how quiet she was, knew that what Nick said had gotten to her. “You okay?” Nodding, she let him lead her outside to the Chevy. When she didn’t object to him driving, he knew her mind had to be racing like crazy. His usually animated Jaime was mute as he drove. Halfway to pack territory, he pulled to the side of the road. “Talk to me.”

“I’m fine,” she said without looking at him.

“You’re not fine.” He cupped her chin and turned her head so that he could see her eyes. So much confusion and anxiety there. It caused a weird tugging sensation in his chest. “Talk.” After a tense pause, she finally asked, “Dante, are you sure this is what you want? You, me, this relationship?”

“You know me well enough to know that I don’t make important decisions without giving them clear thought.”

“I know but…Look, you said you wanted a relationship, but, I mean, what constitutes a relationship to you?”

“I’ve told you, I don’t have much experience with them. For me, this is permanent. Exclusive.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. You’d have been this possessive no matter who I was.

Relationships—permanent or not, exclusive or not—can be casual, or they can be semiserious, or they can be something much deeper.” She wanted to know just how much he was willing to emotionally invest in this.

He shrugged. “As deep as it can get between two people who are so against the idea of being bonded. I don’t know how deep that can go, Jaime.”

Neither did she, but she did know that their resistance to being bonded made the relationship about as secure and settled as a feather in the wind. Which meant that Nick was right; Dante could easily leave her if his mate came along. Just the idea of that made her chest ache. She hadn’t thought it had the potential to hurt her that much. “Maybe we should take Nick’s advice and end this now.”

“What? Why?” He twisted in his seat to fully face her.

“I get why you don’t want to find your mate. But let’s say that you did. You’d be curious to know if your position was something she could have accepted. You’d want to talk to her, get a feel for the type of person that she is. It’s only natural. If it turns out that you being Beta is something she can accept, you’ll go to her. I wouldn’t expect anything different.”

“That’s not going to happen. The likelihood of me recognizing her on sight is a million to one anyway. What happened with Nick and Shaya is rare.”

“But if it did, you’d leave me for her. I wouldn’t blame you, but I’d still want to rip your heart right out of your chest with my bare hands. And her heart, for that matter.” His expression turned fierce. “I’d do the exact same thing to any guy who tried to take you from me, even your mate. I told you that.”

“The difference is that nothing could change my mind about mating with him. I’d never do it.

But with you…it could turn out that you’re wrong and she is okay with the Beta thing, and then you’ll be gone and I’ll be alone and it’ll goddamn hurt!” Her voice broke slightly at the end, and she turned her head away to blink the tears from her eyes.

“Look at me, Jaime. Look at me.” Finally, she did. “I want this. I’m keeping you. If you think you have a choice, that’s not my problem.”

“Keeping me? I’m not a stray kitten, I’m a person.”

“If you were a stray kitten, I’d give you a kick up the ass and walk away.” She did a double take. “You’d kick a kitten?”

“I’d kick Hunk if I didn’t think the gremlin would eat my foot.”

“All right, we’re getting off the subject.” Inhaling deeply, she let out a long breath. Her voice was small when she spoke. “I just don’t think I could bear it if I got comfortable in this relationship and then you left me later.” There, she’d set aside her pride and admitted her fear.

He cupped her nape and joined his forehead to hers. “Ah, baby, that’s never going to happen.

I’m not leaving you, and there’s no way you’re leaving me again, so don’t even think it.” He crushed her mouth with his, shooting his tongue into her mouth and coaxing her own to play. Relief filled him when she responded as enthusiastically as she always did. “Like I said, I don’t know how deep this can go. Neither of us wants to be bonded, we test each other’s self-control, I don’t have a good work/play balance, I’m going to drive you absolutely insane trying to control you, and you’re going to drive me insane when you rebel…Maybe it’s f**king doomed, I don’t know. But don’t you want to know?”

No, she didn’t want to know, she had to know. And didn’t that just piss her off. She gave him a curt nod.

“Good. Because nothing and no one will keep me out of your life, Jaime. Not even you.”

CHAPTER TEN

Over the next few weeks, as Dante intensified the training, Jaime came to understand just why Tao expected her to quit. In truth, she had come close to quitting many times. Who wouldn’t? Dante was mean when he was in Trainer mode.

Each session they would begin with the warm-up that always left her feeling as though she’d been strapped to a medieval torture device. Once they had finished their laps of the perimeter, Dante would instruct her to practice more on stealth. When she began to progress, he’d increased the timings until soon he was asking her to remain still for an entire hour. Hard shit.

Only one week into their training, he had introduced her to his assault course. If hell had a playground, that would be it. Not only did she have to navigate through a large number of obstacles, but sometimes it was at extreme heights or even underwater. Then there were the snake pits and the eell pool and the times she needed to play limbo under a wasp nest. Not fun.

A number of times her wolf had wanted Jaime to take a chunk out of him. She had to admit the temptation was there. Come on, what did he think she was, a Gurkha freaking guide?

It took two weeks before she was no longer nearing a state of unconsciousness at the end of each sparring session and had perfected each combat move he taught her, such as the palm-heel strike, overhand, elbow strikes, round kick, side kick, sweeping, chokeholds, and joint locks. It was then that he introduced more combat moves such as the eye gouge, hammer fists, knee strikes, ground fighting, counters to strikes, and chokes and holds. She was still trying to perfect those, which was why she was currently on her ass. “Evil,” she said, panting. “That’s a good word to describe you right now.” Dante merely smiled down at her. “That’s what all the enforcers said during training. But they learned, and so will you.” He wondered if Jaime had any idea of just how much progress she had made in her training. She had soaked up everything he taught her. He suspected that Tao’s words were a big part of why she refused to give up, but most of it was because the female was made of steel. He knew she wasn’t convinced that bettering her control would make any difference long-term, but she was sticking with the regimen in any case. He was so unbelievably proud of her.

Now not only was she fitter and more experienced at combat, but her control over her wolf was improving. In the beginning, her wolf had managed to surface just enough to growl during sparring, but not anymore. Even now as Jaime was on the ground with her opponent looming over her, she was able to quash her wolf’s extreme urge to take a swipe at him and warn him off. And he knew it was what her wolf wanted. He could sense her agitation, as could his wolf.

After a few of the pack watched her spar a week ago and saw how well she kept her wolf leashed, their anxiety lessened to the extent that Trey didn’t insist on her being constantly guarded. He still didn’t let her be around Taryn alone, but that was pretty much expected.

Dante reached down and offered her his hand. She didn’t take it, just like he knew she wouldn’t. Instead, she jumped to her feet, making a distinct effort to regulate her breathing.

“Am I right in thinking that when it’s time for me to play cat and mouse with the enforcers and it does come to combat, they aren’t going to hold back?”

“You are definitely right to think that. Not even Dominic will hold back. I think you’d be surprised if you ever saw him fight. His humor and relaxed countenance totally disappear. It has to.

When it comes to combat, it’s officially a life-or-death situation. As soon as their opponents realize that they’re facing an enforcer who’s come to defend the pack, they will know exactly what that means: they’re going to die. No enforcer would allow anything different. It would be nice if they handed themselves over at that point, but unfortunately, they don’t. They do everything and anything to fight the enforcers off and prefer to die fighting.”

They began to circle each other slowly as he continued to speak. “And they don’t fight cleanly, Jaime, but neither do my enforcers. They each know it isn’t just about them as individuals; enforcers are responsible for one another’s safety, and they know to use the raw, aggressive skills I’ve taught them, because the alternative is death—either theirs or that of a packmate—and that is not allowed.” His commanding, dominant, assertive tone almost made her shiver. He might be evil like this, but he was also sexy as all hell.

“I’ll expect you to enter that same ‘it’s me or them’ mind-set if you ever find yourself in a confrontation again. If any of Glory’s crazy-ass brothers get hold of you, don’t give them the chance to get in the first move. You must do everything and anything you can to subdue them: you hit first, you hit hard, and you aim to end the struggle as quickly as possible. That means targeting the vulnerable parts of the body, like the face, the neck, the groin. When you’re in combat with the enforcers in a few weeks, you have to think of them as opponents and treat them just the same.”

“That won’t be a problem,” said Jaime. “They’ve got some karma coming their way.” His wolf liked her merciless streak, baring his teeth in a feral grin. Just the same, Dante found himself grinning. His Jaime had a fondness for vengeance, and he had the distinct feeling that the enforcers, particularly Tao, would be sorry they doubted her ability to complete and pass the training.

“Good. Let’s go again.”

For twenty minutes, Jaime fought with everything she had, hit him with every move she knew…but soon enough she was flat on her back, gazing up at him. “You’re so not getting lucky later.”

“That’s what you always say,” he chuckled. Both he and his wolf tensed as they saw that Jaime was in some pain with the effort to keep her wolf suppressed. Squatting down, Dante collared her throat with his hand to get her wolf’s attention. Distrustful and unsettled though she was, her wolf had come to acknowledge Dante’s dominance over her. Sometimes his handling helped calm her wolf.

Other times, her wolf viewed his behavior as a challenge and she rose to that challenge—or, at least, she tried to, but Jaime always managed to keep a hold on her. The animal was too temperamental for him to predict her responses, but he was prepared to risk it whenever Jaime was in pain.

He let his eyes flash wolf, communicating directly with Jaime’s wolf. Little by little, the tension left Jaime’s body, and he knew her wolf was calming. “Better, baby?”

“If you like your wrist attached to your arm, you might want to release me.” He smiled at that. Even if he could get her wolf always to instantly submit with the dominant move, which was terribly unlikely, he would never get Jaime to do it. Placing his free hand beside her head, he leaned over and nipped her mouth. “You like it when I hold you like this.” Okay, yeah, she did, Jaime could admit to herself. But admit it to Popeye? Not a chance. She snorted derisively. “It’s cute that you really believe that.” He smiled against her mouth before claiming it with his own. She went lax, giving him what she knew he wanted and smiling at the sound of his groan. Then, in a move he’d only recently taught her, she flipped him onto his back and straddled him. “You dropped your guard. Tut, tut, tut.”