She smirked. “I am an abandoned spouse. I needed to gather some intel before I rejoined him. If challenged, I will simply explain that I was willing to do anything possible to reunite with my mate.”
“Including me, obviously,” Zeke said.
Holly walked up close to Roman and began stroking his arm. He furiously batted her away and took a step back.
“Don’t touch me,” he growled.
“I will take this up with the council. You will be my mate,” she told him, and her eyes gleamed with a crazy light. “Come on,” she crooned, leaning close to him. “You and me together? We were incredible. We’ll be incredible again.”
“I’ll die first, you crazy bitch,” Roman growled, and backed away from her.
“You leave me no choice! You have until tomorrow morning to agree to honor your commitment to me, or I will report you to the Council for Shifter Affairs!” she yelled after him. “You will fulfill your duties as my mate! That means everything, lover! You will fuck me, you will satisfy me, and you will father my cubs! You will treat me with respect! And I better not catch you cheating on me with that fat bitch ever again!”
There was a chorus of furious growls from the pack, and Roman whirled on her with such an expression of rage that she whimpered and cringed. She’d gone too far.
“Don’t even mention her. She’s worth a million of you, you lying, crazy bitch.” And Roman stormed off to his tent, shaking with fury.
If she reported their pack to the Council For Shifter Affairs, God knew what would happen. The warrant for Roman’s arrest was the least of his worries. He’d been fudging paperwork for his pack members. There were a few he didn’t report on at all, at their own request. As long as they spent enough time with the pack to stay sane, he didn’t care if the Council knew about them. Some of them were there under false names. They were probably fleeing something dire. They might be facing serious charges somewhere.
And deep in his mind he was wondering – was it possible that he could have Mate-Marked her? It was hard for him to believe. He did get blackout drunk from time to time, but to the best of his knowledge, it was not physically possible for a shifter to Mate-Mark when in that state.
To Mate-Mark, the shifter had to deliberately flex a set of glands that were meant for only one purpose. The glands released a substance that flowed through the teeth and caused permanent scarring on a shifter. It might be done in battle to mark up a foe, or in the heat of passion to mark a mate. The passion, either rage or sex, had to be there, and the conscious will.
He couldn’t have. Could he? Dear God, what if he had?
Chelsea. Chelsea was what he wanted. She was all he wanted. He wanted to Mate-Mark her. If he couldn’t, life wouldn’t be worth living, he realized. He’d never be the suicidal type, but life without her would just be going through the motions. She brought everything to blazing, Technicolor life; without her, everything would be dull shades of gray and white.
And yet he didn’t dare beg her to stay with him forever and accept his Mark unless he could straighten out this horrendous mess with Holly.
Chapter Eighteen
Mitch Rodgers sat at the kitchen table, looking Joyce up and down in a way that filled her with loathing and dread. She was standing by the stove, as far away from him as possible, rigid with anger and struggling to keep her expression neutral when all she wanted to do was grab a kitchen knife and bury it in his heart.
I have to stop him. I have to. But how?
She glanced at the boiling stew pot next to her. Could she dump it on his hand and scald him to death? She could, but then what would happen to her brothers?
“Lunch ready yet?” he demanded.
“Almost,” she said curtly, looking out the window.
“Don’t worry, this will all be over soon. I’ll have that land, and those shifters will be out of my hair.” He bared a big, snaggle-toothed grin. “And then finally you and I can get a chance to know each other better.”
the time he was speaking, her mind raced. She had to find a way to get out of this—a way that did not involve luring a shifter to his death, and lying down next to a man at least thirty years her senior who had kidnapped her family members.
She turned back to face him. “You know, you always got along great with the shifters in the past,” she pointed out. “Why are you turning against them now?”
“Of course I didn’t have a problem with them in the past. The shifters were some of my best customers.” He shrugged. “I don’t need them anymore. I just need their land. They should have given it up when I asked for it the first time. They’ve got thousands of acres—what’s a few hundred?”