She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “My dad’s not stupid, unfortunately. He knows I don’t want to be mated to Roscoe. If I walk up to him and say ‘Hey dad, guess what, it turns out my true mate’s not dead and I found him’ he’s going to accuse me of trying to play him.”

“And that’s why we’ll need to be publically seen to ‘discover’ each other. Maybe at one of the shifter clubs. No one other than my wolves will know we’ve met before that claiming.”

Okay that was a good idea. But would it work?

Taryn stifled the urge to groan as indecision wracked her mind and body. Her wolf wasn’t undecided. Oh no. With her elemental nature, her wolf wasn’t interested in details or problems, she was only interested in whether Trey was a potential mate. She liked his confidence, his determination, his heavy air of dominance, and she absolutely loved his scent. Her wolf was totally fine with letting Trey mark her. In fact, she was craving it. Not good.

“Have you thought about what it’ll mean to claim me even temporarily?” she asked. “Your wolf will know I’m not your true mate, and he may even understand that you don’t consider this a permanent mating, but those will be itty bitty details to him. If you bite and mark me your wolf is going to see me as all his in every way. That means he’ll be -”

“Crazily possessive, crazily jealous and crazily protective” finished Trey. “That will help us with faking a mating bond. Though I’m sure that his understanding that you’re not my true mate will be enough to keep him under control.” His wolf was currently quiet inside his head, completely focused on Taryn as he waited for her response. His wolf approved of Trey’s choice. He had identified her wolf as dominant and assertive, and he very much liked Taryn the woman too. Liked her innate sensuality, liked her loyal streak and he especially liked her spunk. Just as Trey did. And her scent…God, her scent.

He could sense that she was close, so close, to accepting his proposition. He didn’t blame her for being wary or hesitant, but she had to know he was the lesser of two evils. “Taryn, I’m offering you a way out. If I were you, I’d take it. Unless you want to end up bound to Roscoe for the rest of your life.”

“That would never happen, no matter what.”

“Maybe not. It seems to me, though, that there aren’t any other avenues open to you right now.”

“I was planning to go to my uncle’s pack.”

Oh he hadn’t doubted that she had some plan up her sleeve. “You trust his Alpha to take you in, to protect you against Roscoe when he comes for you? And he will come for you.”

She swallowed hard. “I don’t know if I can trust his Alpha because I’ve never met him, but I don’t know if I can trust you to protect me either. I know Roscoe won’t just bow down and accept it; he has too much pride for that. He’ll most likely turn up and challenge you. Are you saying you would honestly accept that challenge, that you would fight to keep me in your pack?” She didn’t hide the scepticism from her voice.

“Yes, I would,” he stated firmly. “I need this mating as much as you. You can still contact your uncle after joining me and then see about switching packs afterwards. Three months at the most is the length of time I’ll need you to stay. Mediators don’t usually ask packs to take longer than that to civilly sort out the matter. You could then say you’ve realized you were wrong about me being your true mate, whatever.”

A few months in a mating with psycho boy versus a lifetime with Roscoe…It should be easy for Taryn to take Trey up on his offer in theory, but not when she considered that she would be handing herself over to someone who literally was the big bad wolf. Her instincts told her he wouldn’t harm her, and although they had never let her down before that wasn’t to say that they weren’t letting her down now.

He raised his brows questioningly. “Well, Taryn, do we have a deal?” He shook the pill packet. “Or would you like another long nap?”

“There’s one thing I really don’t get. Why me? From what I’ve heard, you’ve never had any problems reeling in females. Surely it would have been a lot easier for you to approach an unmated female and ask her to play mates. I’m sure plenty of those females have alphas that have the same kind of alliances my dad has.”

“As much as it’s going to be a pain in the ass having to convince everyone that your mate was never your mate, it would be even more complicated to convince an unmated female to pretend I’m her mate. To let another male mark her, even if it was temporary, would be like betraying her true mate, even if she hadn’t found him yet. Sure I know females who are power hungry enough that they would find the prospect of becoming Alpha female of my pack more important than waiting for their true mate. But then I’d be stuck with them. When I heard of your situation, I figured we could help each other.”

Taryn made a noise that was something between a sigh and a groan. There were so many issues, so many unanswered questions. However, she supposed that when it came down to it, the question of most importance was: Was she truly prepared to do what it took to remove herself from Roscoe’s reach? Returning her gaze to Trey, she sighed again and then nodded.

He gave her a crooked smile. “Right decision.”

“So when do we do this?”

“This weekend. I have my meeting with my uncle and the Mediator on Saturday afternoon so the matter can’t wait. I take it you usually go to a shifter club on weekends?”

She nodded. “I go to The Pulse every Friday night as it’s the nearest club to my pack house. I have to stay local in case I’m needed to do some healing.”

“It’s best not to do anything out of the norm for you. Friday night I want you to go to the club as usual. If you can, stay near the bar. At some point I’ll find you and we’ll ‘stumble upon’ each other. I think you’ll find that everything will move very fast from there. Then afterwards you’ll come home with me. In the meantime, go about your business the way you usually do. I’ll give you my number in case there’s some reason you need to get in touch. Try not to use it unless you have to.” He didn’t like that this gave her four days to change her mind, but this was the plan with the most potential.

Again she nodded.

“You can’t tell anyone about this, Taryn. Not even your best friend. Especially when there’s a risk that someone will consider you safer with Roscoe.”

Unfortunately he was right. Her two best friends, Shaya and Caleb, were pretty protective of her and they seemed to find Roscoe completely charming. They didn’t see the coldness behind his smile. They would do everything they could to discourage her from mating with psycho boy here, and if that didn’t work they would most definitely go tattle. Even if she had been utterly convinced that they would be supportive, she wouldn’t have told them. It wouldn’t be fair to place them in the position of keeping secrets from their Alpha.

Not liking her silence, he said, “I mean it, Taryn, you have to keep your mouth shut about this. You don’t tell a soul.”

She bristled at the ring of command in his voice. “We should probably clear this up right now, psycho boy. I don’t have a submissive bone in my body so don’t bark at me unless you’re happy to be ignored.”

The word ‘submissive’ had his mind conjuring images of her tied up, bent over and begging him to take her. He couldn’t hold back a devilish smile, and he was sure by the way her charcoal-grey eyes narrowed that she knew just what was going through his head. “We’ll see. So, can we shake on it?”

Taryn clasped his offered hand. “Note this: If you try to hand me over to Roscoe when he comes, I’ll claw your balls off.”

CHAPTER TWO

No sooner had Taryn closed the front door behind her than a voice was booming, “Where the hell have you been?”

It was always a surprise when her dad sought her out. Usually Lance Warner was indifferent to Taryn and could even go a whole day without talking to her. What was more surprising was that he seemed to believe she should be hanging around just in case he wanted to see her or to bestow some attention on her. She was pretty sure it confused him that she didn’t respond to his indifference by constantly striving to gain his attention and approval. But Taryn wasn’t going to beg for the scraps from anyone’s table.

“What is it?” She knew no one needed healing. She would have received a text message if that was the problem.

“It’s almost time for the evening meal.”

Since when did he care if she missed a meal?

“Roscoe’s going to be here soon. You have about two minutes to change.”

Ah. “Why would I change? And why wasn’t I told he was coming?”

Lance snickered. “Because you would have done a disappearing act just to be awkward. You know, I still don’t know why you’re so set against him. I never would have thought you’d have attracted an Alpha in a million years. Hell, a wolf shouldn’t want to be bound to a latent unless he had no choice. You should be grateful.”

“Grateful to be mated to someone I don’t like, let alone care for?”

“You’ll just have to grow to care about him, won’t you,” he snapped. “I want this alliance and you are not going to mess this up for me. Now get upstairs and change into something…I don’t know…”

“Slutty,” she offered. “You want me to look slutty.” It would have been a shock if he hadn’t been doing this every time an unmated male came here since she was fifteen. It still managed to hurt each time. “He already bit me and you’ve already exchanged contracts so it looks like we can skip the seduction stage.”

“While you’re denying him there’s still a chance he’ll back out.”

She searched his expression. “Doesn’t it matter to you at all that this will make me miserable? I know you must have heard the rumors about him and how he treats women. Does none of that matter to you?”

“It’ll be good for you to mate with someone who has a firm hand. You could use the discipline. Maybe he can be the one who manages to teach you the meaning of respect.”

Taryn couldn’t help that her mouth fell open. She had thought that her dad was just ignoring the rumors, blinding himself to them to escape the guilt. In actual fact, he felt none. He was perfectly content with the idea of handing her over to someone who would beat her, and he wouldn’t even be angry with Roscoe for doing it.

She took a step forward until she was invading his personal space, something that no wolf should do to their alpha, but in that moment he wasn’t her alpha or her father. He was just an a**hole. “You know, for the first time in my life I’m actually glad Mom’s not around. If she’d been here to hear this, it would have broken her heart.”

He actually laughed. “You forget, Taryn, she died before it became clear you’re latent. She wouldn’t have wanted anything more to do with you than I do.”

Taryn smiled. She knew he didn’t really believe that just as she knew that her mom wouldn’t have cared about the latency. “You know, jamming your fingers into your ears might just prevent all that hot air from gushing out of your mouth.”

“You disrespectful little bitch,” he gritted out as he raised his hand to slap her.

She didn’t cower. “Go on, do it.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t, Lance,” said a voice from the doorway. They both turned to see Roscoe removing his leather jacket, flanked by two of his enforcers. As usual he looked like he’d just walked out of a photo shoot. A blond god, some of the females called him. Taryn thought of him more as the Antichrist. “When you signed that contract, you signed her over to me.”

In other words, the only person who had the right to slap her was him.

“Until the mating ceremony, I’m still her Alpha, Roscoe. Remember that.”

“And as her mate, I’d feel obliged to protect her if you were to lay a hand on her.” He turned to Taryn and smiled. “Nice to see you again, beautiful.”

Taryn almost shuddered. He had that same look in his eyes that he’d had when he’d bitten her. As that was something which was a kind of rape to her wolf, she was going crazy now inside Taryn – growling, pacing, flexing her claws.

This was one of the things that most annoyed Taryn about being latent. When her wolf was frenzied, her anger and frustration had nowhere to go and it was like a pressure gradually expanding inside Taryn’s chest. People tended to think that because her wolf didn’t physically show herself she must therefore be subdued and weak in spirit. Taryn wasn’t sure how it was for other latent wolves, but it certainly was not the case for her.

Her wolf was a big presence within her. She didn’t understand that she couldn’t surface. She didn’t understand that it was pointless to tug at the reins, pointless to try to fight Taryn’s will. So, in general, her wolf was bold, difficult and pushed her instincts and desires on Taryn. Right now, her wolf’s desire was to take a swipe at the smarmy bastard in front of her. When he leaned down to kiss her she turned her head away, but his mouth still managed to catch her ear.

Lance released a tired sigh. “Let’s go. Everybody will be waiting for us.”

As they made their way to the dining room, Roscoe attempted to hold her hand. She shot him a look that swore violence and curled her upper lip. His response was a smile. She kind of got the feeling that he liked seeing her riled. Damn if she could figure out why. He should find her rebellious behavior insulting and exasperating. She’d rather hoped he would anyway.