Wicked Cravings (43 page)

Dante sensed his mate’s satisfaction—a satisfaction he shared until the russet wolf used her other paw to tear a strip into his mate’s shoulder. The pain and surprise of it made the black wolf bounce back, inadvertently giving the other a chance to right herself. “Little bitch,” he muttered.

Dante clenched his fists and ground his teeth against his wolf’s constant attempts to resurface.

His wolf wouldn’t involve himself in the fight, he understood the dynamics, but he wanted to be near his mate now that she was finally in wolf form. He wanted to bring her back from the dark place she was in right now. Both his wolf and Dante could feel her emotional state through the bond. It wasn’t good at all.

The black wolf was so far gone it was actually frightening. He remembered Jaime’s fear that if her wolf got control again, she wouldn’t let Jaime come back. He hoped to God that her fear was unfounded, but as he looked at the black wolf now, he realized that calming her was going to be the main battle tonight.

He inhaled sharply as a well-aimed body slam from the russet wolf sent his mate sprawling.

“Get up, baby.” To his relief, she was quickly on her feet again. Growling, she bounded at her opponent, crashing into her hard. He winced, flinched, snarled, cursed, and grimaced as he watched the two wolves continue to battle.

After a series of struggles, the black wolf again forced the other to her back. “That’s it, baby, end it.” His mate pinned the wolf down by pressing her paws down onto her shoulders. Then, in one sharp move, his mate slashed open the other wolf’s belly at exactly the same moment that she clamped her jaws around her throat. With an abrupt yank, the black wolf had ended the fight. Won.

Thank God for that.
His wolf’s relief was just as profound. But the hard part had only just begun, Dante knew. “Jaime? Jaime?”

The black wolf swerved, hackles raised and ears flattened outward, growling threateningly at him with her lips peeled back, showing teeth and gums. Not good.

“It’s okay,” said Dante in a gentling tone. He knew that the wolf wouldn’t understand the words, but his hope was that she would find his tone soothing. What she needed now was to calm down and pull back so that Jaime could resurface. So far it didn’t seem as though there was a chance of that happening as her eyes darted from person to person, curling her upper lip at them.

He knew what the wolf was feeling: rage, pain, fear, confusion, and a belief that danger was all around. Everything she saw and heard she was interpreting as a threat. Even him. Shit if that didn’t hurt. Remembering the time that Jaime approached the Doberman at the sanctuary, Dante crouched down to her wolf’s level of height so that he didn’t seem so intimidating. “It’s okay. It’s safe now.” She growled at him again, a chilling, menacing growl that said, “Mate or not, stay the fuck away.”

“Jaime, please fight this,” pleaded Gabe. The wolf snarled at him, despite recognizing him as family. Her frightened gaze darted between each of them, expecting one of them to attack her any second now.

Dante tapped the ground with his hand to get her attention. It worked. Again she growled at him. “Shh. It’s okay.” Another growl. “Come on, Jaime, fight her for me.” He could sense Jaime, sense her frustration and helplessness. But she wasn’t giving up as she once might have, believing she was succumbing to the inevitable. She was battling for freedom. Unfortunately, her wolf was too sure that they were still in danger for her to even entertain Jaime’s struggles as important.

“Dante,” said Ryan quietly. “I think she’s lost it.”

“No. She’s scared and she’s on the offensive, but she’s not feral.”

“But—”

“Dante’s right,” said Trey. “I know feral. That’s not feral.”

“Maybe we should all back up, give her some space, and make it clear we’re not here to hurt her,” suggested Taryn.

“Or maybe I should shift into my wolf form. I’m her Alpha. She’ll respond.”

“I don’t think she will, Trey.” Dante shook his head. “Right now, she doesn’t see her pack. She sees threats. She doesn’t even trust me near her or I’d shift and let my wolf try his luck with her—

God knows he’s eager to try. Jaime told me that whenever she shifted and another shifter was around, her wolf would attack them, believing that she was eliminating a threat before that supposed threat had the chance to harm her.”

Trey was quiet for a few moments, but when the black wolf growled again he sighed. “I’m going to try it.”

“Trey, I’m asking you not to—”

“Just trust me on this, Dante. I think it will work.”

Before Dante could again object, Trey was shifting into his wolf form. As Dante had expected, his mate immediately froze and released a loud, lengthy “stay the fuck back” growl. He felt as her level of fear spiked. Simultaneously, though, her anger also increased, and Dante knew right then that he’d been right. This would only make her mood worse.

The huge gray wolf advanced a step toward the black wolf, ignoring her cautioning growl.

Dante and the others flinched as dominant vibes poured from the gray wolf, aiming to direct and control the black wolf. Instead, her growl deepened in an unnatural way, and she took a challenging step forward. Quickly Dante situated himself between the two wolves. “No.” He picked up on his mate’s surprise. She interpreted his behavior as protective. Good. He wanted her to regard him as an ally, if nothing else. “Taryn, I need you to bring Trey back before the situation worsens.”

“Already on it,” she assured him.

Again Dante crouched down and patted the ground. “Come on.” The black wolf stiffened and growled at him once more. It occurred to him then that maybe his best option was to go to her, to move away from those she thought of as potential threats. “All of you stay exactly where you are. I’m going to move toward her.”

“Dante, that might not be wise,” said Ryan.

“Maybe not. But she’s my mate.” Nothing more needed to be said. Still crouching, he very slowly inched toward her at a sideways angle, just like he had seen Jaime do with the Doberman. As he’d expected, she growled, but it wasn’t as fierce and threatening as before. It was more “mind how you behave” than “I’ll kill you if you come any closer.” She wasn’t exactly welcoming him, but she was at least considering him as more of a potential ally than a potential threat.

With long pauses in between each step, Dante slowly moved toward the black wolf. She never moved her eyes from him, but he knew her senses were also attuned to those around her. Occasionally she growled, but they were still sounds that told him he was on thin ice and needed to tread carefully.

Optimism filled him and his wolf each time he got that little bit closer to her. Not that Dante was relaxed or sure of his safety. He doubted that she would kill him, but she’d certainly hurt him badly if she believed she needed to in order to protect herself and Jaime.

When he was only a few feet away from her, she stuck her head out at him and her nostrils flared. Then suddenly she was baring her teeth and growling loudly at him. Instantly he stilled, wondering at the abrupt change. It took a moment for it to occur to him. Not only was he covered in blood—not exactly a calming smell—but he had Laurie’s scent on him from when she’d thrown herself at him just moments before.
Shit.
From the wolf’s perspective, her mate had come to her with his skin smelling of another female.

“It’s okay,” he drawled soothingly. It didn’t work. Anger surged through her wolf. Anger, betrayal, and a sense of isolation now that she was again without allies. Jaime’s mood wasn’t much better. “You know I only want you.” The words were for Jaime. He sensed that she believed him, but this didn’t matter to her wolf. To her wolf it was a simple equation: he’d hurt Jaime, which meant he was a threat that she needed to be protected from.

His instincts—not to mention sheer common sense—told him that the best thing to do would be to back away from her. To give her some space and a chance to calm a little. But this was his mate, damn it, and he didn’t want her feeling like this. Although Trey’s wolf had a tendency to turn feral during battles, Taryn was always able to bring him back from that state. It stung that Dante couldn’t do the same here.

Desperate, frustrated, and exasperated, Dante moved toward her again. “I’m not going to hurt you, I—” He stopped as a cold, unnerving growl emitted from the black wolf as she bowed down, sticking her rear in the air, preparing to pounce on him. “No, st—” Ignoring him, she sprang.

Dante braced himself, ready to bear the impact and do his best to restrain her before she did much damage. Midleap, her body jerked and a loud whine thick with pain filled the air. He caught her as she fell on him. Rather than attempting to claw at him, she tried only to rise and escape. He locked his arms tight around the wolf, but she didn’t put up much of a fight. A second later, he realized why

—there was a fucking dart sticking out of her flank. Already the tranquilizer was working and she was close to limp in his arms.

Swerving his head to the direction that the dart had to have come from, Dante found a sight he wouldn’t have expected. There in the trees was Shaya, sobbing, with a tranquilizer gun in her hand.

“Shaya, what the fuck?”

“It’s not like I wanted to do it,” she cried as she cautiously approached. “She made me promise.”

“Huh?”

“Jaime came to me one night after she’d decided that she was going to challenge Glory. She was worried that when it happened she might have to shift. She said that there was a chance her wolf wouldn’t let her come back, and that if it looked as though she might attack someone I had to shoot her with one of these.”

Dante felt himself blanch. “Christ, Shaya, she could have been lying to you! It could have been fatal!”

She rolled her tear-filled eyes. “I’d already thought of that. I made her shoot me with one of them to prove they weren’t. When I looked out of the window and saw what was happening, I grabbed the gun and came down. And I brought this.” She opened a bag that he hadn’t even realized she was holding and handed him something he never would have guessed was in there.

“No way. No fucking way.”

“It wasn’t my idea. She made me promise to give it to you. She wanted to be sure that her wolf couldn’t bite you.”

“I am
not
putting a muzzle on my mate.” He continued stroking a hand down the short, coarse fur of her graceful neck.

“She said you’d say that. She also said to tell you that you can take it off again once you’ve put her in the cage.”

Dante shook his head, setting his jaw. “I’m not putting a muzzle on—Wait, what cage?”

“Well, she calls it a crate, but it’s a cage. Apparently, it’s from the sanctuary. The workers use them to transport any animals they rescue to the sanctuary”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“But don’t you see that this is a good thing?”

He looked at her disbelievingly. “How could this possibly be a good thing?”

“It means she doesn’t intend to give up, she intends to fight her wolf. But she won’t have much luck with that until her wolf has calmed down a little. Jaime wanted you to have somewhere that you could put her while her wolf calmed.”

On one level, Dante could acknowledge that Shaya was right. Still, how was he supposed to put her through this? It seemed cruel. Her wolf wasn’t acting out of a wish to cause pain, she was frightened. She was traumatized enough, and he didn’t want to add to that.

Gabe stepped forward and lightly stroked her between her ears. She didn’t move at all.

“Dante, I don’t like this any more than you do. But it’s move her and confine her so that she has a chance to calm down, or risk her hurting someone or running off. Unless her wolf calms, Jaime will fade until eventually she’s gone, and her wolf will turn rogue.”

“He’s right,” said Trey, his voice uncharacteristically sensitive. “The tranquilizer will wear off soon. If we’re going to move her, it has to be now. I know you don’t want to do this, Dante, but you have to. Do it for Jaime. Give her an opportunity to come back from this.”

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It had only taken an hour for the tranquilizer to wear off. Now—looking angrier than before—the black wolf paced in her crate, which was only twice as long and wide as her body. Several times she’d attacked it, looking for a weakness in the metal, and Dante had cringed every time her slender, graceful body smashed against it. Never had he felt more helpless or more like a bastard. For the past four years, her wolf had been caged, and now that she had finally surfaced again, she was back in a cage. And he’d been the one to put her in there.

She looked out at him with accusing, judgmental eyes. Guilt twisted his insides. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, although he knew she wouldn’t understand the words. Her response was a snarl that swore revenge. He heard as the door to the examination room opened behind him, but he only gave the visitor a sideways glance.

“Did she eat the meat?” asked Grace.

He shook his head. The wolf had snuffed at it.

“Does she recognize you?”

He was getting real sick of people speaking of his mate as though she was unbalanced. “Yes. I keep telling everyone—it’s not that she’s feral. She’s just scared and confused.”