“I don’t. He hurt you.” Dante knew he should feel some remorse, knew it probably made him a bad person that he didn’t. But that kill had about as much significance to him as a tiny splinter, because of what the bastard had planned for Jaime.
“You’re not a bad person,” she told him, knowing where his thoughts had taken him. “I’m not saying you’re perfect. You’re cocky and a know-it-all and you’re addicted to working. But you’ve got a nice big dick and great bedroom skills, so I’m willing to overlook all that.” He laughed and lifted his head. Only Jaime could have put a smile on his face when he was in this mood. “Then I’ll be sure to put my big dick and my skills to good use tomorrow. Now you need to sleep though.”
She wanted to sleep beside him, but there was barely room for her on the single bed, let alone both of them. Besides, Hunk would probably slice open his cheek if Dante tried. She gripped his hand. “Stay with me.”
He kissed her softly, amazed that such simple contact could soothe him. “You couldn’t get rid of me even if you wanted to.”
They both knew that he was talking about more than tonight.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“The wound is fully healed,” declared Grace after she had carefully examined Jaime’s leg the next morning. “I think it will still be a little tender to walk on for a few hours. By tonight, it’ll be fine again.”
Jaime looked at the panicky wolf who sat gingerly on the bed, as if his body weight could break her. “Happy now?”
Dante kissed her cheek and filled his lungs with her scent, reassuring himself and his wolf that she was fine. “I just wanted to be sure. You were almost killed last night. Give me a little space to be more overprotective than usual.”
“Give me a little space to breathe. I’ve agreed not to go to work, but there’s no way I’ll agree to sitting in this damn bed all day.”
The door opened, and Lydia strode inside with a tray of food. Gabe was close behind her, carrying two mugs of coffee. While Dante had been off interrogating the lone wolf last night, her brother had barged into the examination room and fussed over her for at least thirty minutes straight. It had taken Hope, Lydia, and Rhett to convince him to go to bed.
“Morning, sunshine,” drawled Gabe, who knew she was the world’s worst patient.
Scowling, she took the mug of coffee. “If you’ve come to fuss again, you can leave right now.
I’ve had enough of that from Popeye here.”
Dante nipped her earlobe punishingly. “You’d be the same if it was me.” She snorted. “No I wouldn’t, because you wouldn’t even be in this bed. You’d have been out of it the second the bandage was on.”
He couldn’t argue with that, so, stifling a smile, he said nothing and took a swig of his coffee before digging into the pancakes that Lydia had placed on the tray for him.
“Your silence speaks for you.”
Gabe chuckled and kissed her forehead. “Give him a break.”
She gasped. “Whose side are you on?”
“His, in this case. He just wants to take care of you. Let him.”
“Traitor.”
Suddenly there was a light knock on the door, followed immediately by Shaya peeking through.
“Is it okay to come in?”
“Yes, please do,” Jaime quickly replied before Dante could say something dumb about her needing peace and quiet. Shaya smiled and walked inside, and then a crowd of people followed behind her and piled into the room.
Dante went to object, but Grace shook her head, saying, “They just want to see that she’s okay.”
Begrudgingly, he didn’t comment as each of the pack—other than Greta—gave Jaime a brief hug, though he did release a low, territorial growl whenever one of the males touched her. Marcus earned a whack over the head when he kissed her smack on the mouth purely to rile him. Jaime raised a brow at Dante, but he just shot her a wide, unrepentant grin.
“How does the leg feel?” It was clear by the way Taryn was fidgeting that the healer in her was finding it hard to know that someone in her presence was injured.
“A little tender, but that’s it,” replied Jaime, flexing it. “Give me a couple of days and I’ll be ready to challenge Glory.”
Dante nearly choked on his food. “You will not.”
Her wolf growled, displeased by his objection and tone. Dante had told her all that he had learned from the lone wolf last night. There was really only one thing Jaime could do now. “Dante, that crazy-ass woman tried to have me killed. Call me strange, but I’m not prepared to let that go.”
“She’ll pay for what she did. It doesn’t mean you have to challenge her.”
“A few months ago, I wouldn’t have. But your training taught me how to keep a handle on my wolf when I’m fighting. Why not put those skills to good use? Besides, she’ll just keep doing stuff until I do. Generally people who want someone dead will not stop until they’ve succeeded.”
“Yep,” he agreed, playing with her hair, “but she’ll have to get through me to reach you, and that’s not going to happen. You don’t get involved at all. The enforcers and I will deal with it.”
“I’m not the type of person to sit on my ass while everyone else shovels the shit.” A huff escaped the old woman standing near the door. “If your wolf wasn’t insane and you weren’t such a liability, you wouldn’t have to, would you.”
“Uh-oh,” said Jaime. “Greta’s mouth is open and words are spilling out. That can’t be good.”
“Because of that, the responsibility now falls to my poor boys.” Jaime groaned. “Please tell me you’ll cut the apron springs at some point. Seriously, it’s kind of disturbing.”
“It’s your wolf’s state that’s disturbing. I don’t know why Dante couldn’t have settled for someone who wasn’t mental, rude, slutty, and fat. There’ve been some lovely girls in his life. Why he had to pick you is beyond me.”
Jaime cupped her ear. “Sorry, what? It was hard to understand you while all that shit was streaming out of your mouth.”
Dante held a hand up to shush Greta and gripped Jaime’s chin, bringing her face to his. “I won’t let you put yourself in danger, Jaime. Deal with it.”
“Before we decide what to do next, we need to talk to Nick about what happened,” Trey interrupted.
Jaime resisted the urge to glance at Shaya to see if she was okay at the mention of Nick’s name. She made a mental note to check in with her later.
Tao leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “What’s the point? He’s been no help at all.”
Trick nodded his agreement. “So far, all he’s done is protect Glory.”
“That’s only to be expected,” said Trey with a shrug. “She’s one of his wolves. I’d want damning evidence before I handed over any of you to someone to be punished. Even then, I wouldn’t want to do it.”
Dante sighed. “Then we don’t contact him about it. I told him that time I met him in the diner that if she didn’t let this drop, I’d deal with her myself without his approval. He said he’d do the very same thing if the situation was reversed.”
“Still, I doubt he’d truly be okay with it. And the last thing I want right now is to be battling with another pack. Taryn doesn’t need that kind of stress—” Taryn growled. “Flintstone, please explain what I did to give you the impression that I was delicate?”
“Taryn, you’re due to give birth any day now.” His expression was fierce and his voice was firm, but he might as well have been whispering for all the good it did to intimidate his mate.
“That doesn’t mean anyone in the pack has to suffer because of that. I think Jaime’s right. I think Glory will keep this up until someone gives her a very good reason to stop. If she acted alone, it’s possible that her brothers no longer wish to get involved.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me, given what Dante, Jaime, and Ivy did to them when they turned up at the animal sanctuary,” said Marcus.
“No.” Jaime shook her head. ?
??I saw the looks on their faces. They were excited about hurting me. They were going to enjoy it. Especially because they’re unbelievably overprotective of their baby sister and know I hurt her badly. I can’t see them wanting to let someone else have the privilege of hurting me in return. They’d see it as being robbed.”
“She’s right.” Dante took her hand in his, wanting to feel her skin against his. “The brothers wouldn’t let this go. But they’ll know by now exactly what happens when they confront us. They’ll most likely want to bide their time, may even think we’d fall for the ‘Oh, they’ve let it go’ trick.
Maybe Glory didn’t want to wait and acted alone this time. Whatever the case, we can’t let this go.” Jaime nodded. “Which is why I fully intend to challenge her.” Dante tightened his grip on her hand. “Jaime—”
“Just what would you do to a guy who not only attempted to have you killed, but was claiming I was his mate?”
That didn’t even require an answer. He knew that she had a point, knew that nothing in this world would have stopped him from challenging someone who tried to claim her, but fairness didn’t matter to him right now. All the fear and anxiety he’d felt last night was still lingering in his veins.
The last thing he could condone would be for her to be in any form of danger ever again. And she honestly expected him to? What perturbed him more was that his wolf wasn’t objecting to her intention. He saw it as just that his female would challenge the person responsible for her injury.
“I’m not asking for your permission,” she said softly, “but I am asking for your support.”
“I can’t.” With that, he released her hand, slammed his mug on the bedside table, and stood sharply. As he stormed out of the room, he heard her hitch in a breath behind him, knew his reaction had hurt her. A part of him wanted to do a U-turn and lock his arms around her, fuse his lips with hers, and tell her he was sorry. But he couldn’t, because he wasn’t sorry. He didn’t want her challenging Glory, and nothing could change his mind on that.
Until Jaime came along, he’d never been a brooder. Never saw the attraction in going off to be alone somewhere to simply stew on his feelings. But he found himself doing that for the next few hours. As if the rest of the pack knew exactly what he was doing in the living area, they completely avoided it the whole time. Well, all but one.
“You’re an ass. You know that, right?”
Dante looked up at the tiny, scowling blonde standing over him and sighed. “Taryn, honey—”
“Don’t you ‘Taryn, honey’ me, Barney Rubble.” She perched herself on the sectional sofa beside him and moaned as if she was glad to be off her feet. The large piece of furniture practically swallowed her. “Look, I realize that you’re inexperienced with relationships, so I’ll give you a heads-up. Refusing to offer support to a girlfriend who is constantly supportive of you—that’s bad.”
“Why is it so bad that I don’t want her hurt?” He honestly didn’t get it.
“You’re hurting her right now by not supporting her.”
“I’m trying to protect her from herself. She could have fucking died, Taryn. The guy shot to kill.”
“Yes, and she wanted to kill him. But she didn’t. You did. You got your revenge. I’ll bet you wouldn’t be sitting here so quiet if you hadn’t.”
Maybe not, but that wasn’t the point. “What if her wolf pushes to the surface like last time, huh?”
She gave him a disgusted look. “You don’t believe that will happen any more than I do. Your training has helped her so much. You’re good for her, and she’s good for you. Don’t mess that up for yourself.”
“I don’t see how wanting her alive and well is going to mess anything up.”
“Of course you don’t. But that’s because you’re stupid. You think that since you have a dick, you’re more dominant and should make all the decisions and everything will work out as you want it to. If you want a female who’ll let you deal with all her problems, go find yourself a nice submissive wolf. It’s not in a dominant wolf’s nature to hide behind other people. You know this. You’re expecting Jaime to be something she’s not.”
“I’m expecting her to care about her own safety.”
She released an exasperated sigh. “How do you think it feels for Jaime to have someone claiming the person she cares about? You know how hard that would be for you, and for your wolf.
Making it even harder is that this same someone threatened her once before and made her wolf strive to surface. Now she’s trying to have her killed. What else do you expect Jaime to do? By doing what she did, Glory effectively challenged her. No, the bitch didn’t expect her to survive it, but Jaime did, and now she’s in a position where she has to deal with it.”
“I can protect her.”
“Sure you can. But this isn’t about your level of macho-ness. It’s not about you, so stop trying to make it about you.”
Not about him? “She’s my female, she’s—”
“A person with her own mind who you’ll never be able to control no matter how hard you try,” finished Taryn in a surprisingly patient voice. “You care about her. I get it. You want her to be safe. I get it. She gets it. But you can’t fight Glory. Her brothers, sure. But you can’t fight a female, and you never would.”
Fair point, but that didn’t make any difference to how he felt. “I can’t be okay with her putting herself in any kind of danger.”
“No one’s asking you to be happy about it.” With a slight struggle, she managed to get to her feet. “But you need to support Jaime in this. So do it, or lose her. One or the other.” Why did she have to be right? All he wanted was for Jaime to be safe. It wasn’t like he was asking her for a kidney or for her to eat her own foot or something. Damn dominant females and their independent streak. As much as it infuriated him, he had to admit that it wouldn’t be fair to ask Jaime to ignore this and be something that she wasn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to be okay with it, but he could support her the way she’d supported him. His wolf settled a little at that.
Sighing, Dante finally left the living area and sought out the female who had a way of turning him inside fucking out. Eventually he found her in the game room with Shaya, Gabe, Hope, and the enforcers. To his surprise, each one of them scowled at him when he walked in, even the usually passive Hope.
Apparently uninterested in him, Jaime didn’t react at all to his presence. She limped around the pool table to take her shot, reminding him of just what had happened the night before, reminding him that she shouldn’t even be standing here right now, reminding him of just how scared he was of losing her. Dante wasn’t good at handling fear, and he wasn’t good at handling helplessness. Here he was in a situation where he had to deal with both.
When he gestured to the others with a tip of his head for them to leave him alone with Jaime, they completely ignored him. Great. His own female was being protected from him.
“Out.”
The command got their attention and, grumbling and scowling, each member of the pack slowly left the room. A few of them shot him warning looks that said, “Don’t upset her again.”
“Finished sulking, have you,” Jaime said flatly before sinking each of the balls that remained on the pool table. How was it that she could want to gut him and kiss him at the same time? Oh she was royally pissed, just like her wolf. But damn it, he was wearing that soft, vulnerable expression again. As much as she deeply suspected he did it on purpose, it got to her every time.
His voice was soft and beseeching. “You have to see why I don’t want you challenging anyone.”
“Well, you needn’t worry about it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I called Nick, I told him I wanted to issue a challenge on Glory, and he informed me that she’s missing.” Spineless bitch. Her wolf was in full agreement with that assessment.
“You called Nick? You did that without discussing it with me?”
“I did discuss it with
you. You made your stance clear.”
As he sensed the depth of her anger, he shook his head disbelievingly. “You have no idea just how much it scared me when I realized you should be dead right now, do you? You just don’t get what that would have done to me. Nothing would have gotten me through it. Nothing, Jaime. I’d have been exactly like my mother was at the end: going through the motions, existing, but not living. Is it really that awful that I don’t want anything to happen to you?” If he thought that talented mouth was getting him out of this one, he was so wrong. “You, you, you—that’s all I hear. Let’s revisit the facts, big guy. I was the one this happened to. I was the one who should have died yesterday. And I’m the one who’s been getting called Limp-A-Lot all damn morning. But wait, no, you’re the victim here, aren’t you? So sad. Well, I hope that pity plane you’re on malfunctions and hits the ground like a goddamn dart!”
He caught her just as she was about to leave the room and curled both arms around her, keeping her back to his chest. “You’re right.”
“I know that.”
He sighed and kissed her hair. “Believe it or not, I came in here to tell you that I’d support you if that’s what you need. But then I saw you pale and limping…I’m used to being the protector. I want to protect you, and I don’t want you to have to protect yourself even though I know you can.” She gave him a sideways glance as, surprised, she said, “So you’re not disputing that I can?”
“No. Definitely not. I know how capable you are.” He turned her around and cupped her neck with his hands, using his thumbs to lift her face to his. “I know I made this about me. I’m just not used to having someone else who I have to think about. I’ve been on my own for so long that I sometimes don’t even realize how self-centered I’m being.”
“I can totally help you with that with some well-aimed bitch slaps if you want. You’d soon learn.”
He couldn’t help grinning. “I did tell you I’d need the room to mess up a little. Overprotective and controlling is a real bad combination, huh?”
She nodded, feeling her mood calm at his self-recriminating tone. He was a perfectionist who was forced to face that there was something he was far from perfect at, and it was getting to him. She wanted to smack the shit out of his ex for making him cower from relationships for so long. Not that she liked the idea of him with other females, but she liked the idea of him all confused and self-doubting even less. “But so is bitchy and stubborn. When you think about it, we shouldn’t match at all, should we?”