So Holly knew Marcus. She’d been with the pack before.
“Excuse me, I need to be going,” Chelsea said tightly.
Erika followed her to her car in silence.
Chelsea blinked back hot tears of humiliation as she drove. God, how stupid could she be to have fallen for Roman’s smooth talk?
“I can’t believe Leland didn’t tell me,” Erika said, her tone wounded. “I thought he liked me.”
“He more than likes you—he’s crazy about you,” Chelsea said. “You should keep seeing him. And he may not even have known. Marcus didn’t seem to know. Roman may have mated in secret and…run out on her.”
As she said it, nausea filled her and she almost gagged. Erika made a retching sound too. Shifters took mating extremely seriously; the idea of a shifter cheating on or abandoning their mate was literally, physically sickening to them.
* * * * *
Holly sat on a folding chair by the fire, sipping a cup of coffee, looking lovely and smug. Half the pack had come rushing back when Marcus had called up and barked out that there was an emergency. Marcus probably should have been more specific, but communication wasn’t his strong suit.
“You mated her and didn’t tell us? None of us can pick a mate but you did?” Leland demanded furiously of Roman.
Since when did any of them want to mate and settle down?
Paul and Leland, especially, had been acting extremely strange lately. He knew they’d been sneaking off in the middle of the night, when they thought everybody was asleep. Where did they go? Why were was Leland talking about picking a mate?
Paul strode up, standing next to Leland protectively.
“Roman, up until now, I would have laid down my life for you. But if you truly mate-marked a woman and then abandoned her, I can not follow you any more,” he said to Roman.
The fury that swelled up in Roman threatened to choke him, and he had to fight to keep his wolf inside his skin. But it wasn’t really his pack he was mad at.
Chelsea. This woman had hurt Chelsea. The thought made him burn with rage.
“At least someone takes Mate-Marking seriously,” Holly said in wounded tones as she strode over to Roman. She flipped her hair to the side and gestured dramatically at the Mate Mark on her neck.
“See that?” she called to everyone. “He Mate-Marked me. Yes, he was drunk off his ass when he did it. Doesn’t matter. Shifter law. I am now the Alpha’s Mate. I am his woman.”
“Holly,” Roman snarled. “What the fuck? You know I never did that. How dare you come here and lie to my pack?”
“Oh, please,” she said scornfully. “Do you think I Mate-Marked myself?”
“I did not Mate Mark you. Trust me, I’d never get that drunk,” he said nastily, and was rewarded by seeing her pout, but she still stood her ground.
“I don’t even recognize her,” Petrov yelled as he came striding up, looking annoyed.
“I do,” Zeke’s voice rang out grimly. He’d been the last to return from the job site, and he walked up to them, fists balled, his expression a mixture of rage and hurt. “She’s the woman I’ve been seeing the last few weeks. The woman I was going to propose to.”
“What the hell?” Roman was so angry that his claws shot from his fingernails and his voice ended on a lupine growl.
“Colorado, ten months ago,” she called. “After the Shifter Festival. Gathering of the packs. I didn’t get a chance to meet all of you, but I sure met Roman. He came to my house and we did it all night long, and he Mate-Marked me. I woke up with a scarred neck and an empty space in the bed beside me. I came out to your campgrounds to find my new darling mate, and surprise surprise, all of you were gone. You’d packed up and fled town.”
“We didn’t flee town,” Benjamin said indignantly. “We travel. That’s what we do. We were planning to leave that day, and we did.”
“You lied to me,” Zeke said in tones of bewilderment, striding up to her. “You told me you were a widow.”
She shrugged. “I did what had to be done. I’d finally tracked you down, and I needed to do some recon. Find out what I was dealing with. Find out if he’d Mate-Marked anybody else.”
“She told me she was shy about meeting all of you,” Zeke said bitterly. “But now that I think about it, she was always asking about the pack…and about you.” He looked at Roman with deep hurt.
“What does shifter law say about cheating on your mate?” Benjamin asked, folding his arms across his broad chest and glaring at Holly.
“She is not my mate!” Roman roared, and fur shot through his skin. He felt his fangs itching, burning in his gums, desperate to descend.