Chapter 6: A Way Out

Natalie sent a deadly glare in Dominic's direction when he kept staring at her neck as if he wanted to rip it open.

“Why would you cover it with makeup?” he asked.

Natalie froze. “What?”

“Your mark. A female wears her male’s mark with pride, but you’re covering yours. Did he force his mark on you?”

Thrown by the sudden direction of the conversation, Natalie was speechless.

“Natalie,” he drawled menacingly, then demanded, “Answer my question.”

His bullying tone made her straighten in her seat. “Look, psycho boy—”

“I might be a psycho, woman, but I am no boy,” Dominic growled.

A shiver ran down Natalie’s spine, but she ignored it and continued.

“I don’t know what your problem is, though I’d imagine it’s difficult to spell even for your psychiatrist, and I don’t care. Whatever is going on between you and Mark doesn’t give you the right to know anything about what’s going on between Mark and I.”

“Maybe not, but I still want an answer,” he said in a gentler voice. “Did he claim you against your will?”

Although she had no real reason to hide it, pride and distrust drove her to deny it. “Do I seem like the kind of person who would allow something like that?”

“I don’t doubt that you’re trying to find a way out of mating with him if it’s not what you want. But I don’t think you’ve found one. Now answer me. Did he claim you against your will?”

“What does it matter to you?”

It looked like Dominic took that as a yes. “Does your father know?”

She spoke quickly, hoping satisfying his curiosity would make him back off. “My dad is a proud man whose only child is a Kage. He sees an alliance with a wolf as powerful as Mark as the best thing that’s ever come out of my existence.”

“Your mother?”

“Died when I was nine.”

“You don’t have other relatives who’ll help?”

Natalie was about ready to scream at this guy. Not only was he poking at a very raw wound, but her body was reacting to him in a way that deeply unsettled her. Her fingers itched to touch him, to comb through his short dark hair, to find out if it was as silky as it looked. The primitive hunger crushing her had her insides churning, and there was throbbing happening in some very interesting places.

There had to be something wrong with her if she was attracted to a psycho. But strangely, she didn’t feel in danger with him.

Stockholm Syndrome.

“This is not your problem, and it has nothing to do with whatever is going on between you and Mark.”

He twisted his mouth and cocked his head. “What if I said I could help you?”

Her heart almost stopped. “Why would you do that? How could you even do that?”

“You could join my pack.”

Okay, well… that was unexpected.

“What could you possibly gain from that?” she asked, immediately suspicious.

“A fixer.”

Yeah, sure. “There’s more. I could bet my left arm on it.”

Dominic smiled. “Yes, there’s more. I have a proposition for you. I believe we can help each other.”

He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a small sachet.

“Inside that is a pill like the one you were drugged with earlier, but a little stronger. If after our conversation you decide to decline my offer, I’ll ask you to take it. When you wake up, your memory will be fuzzy again, and you’ll have lost the past ten hours.”

“You want to drug me again? It wasn’t bad enough that you drugged me the first time?”

“Let me ask you something. If any of my enforcers had approached you and asked you to meet me here at my pack house, would you have gone along peacefully?”

“Of course not.”

“Point taken.”

Begrudgingly, Natalie asked, “What’s this proposition of yours?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard all about how I supposedly beat the hell out of my uncle when I was fifteen. Well, it’s true. I did. And for very good reasons, none of which matter right now. I won the right to be Alpha, but my uncle and many other males banded together to banish me. I was just a juvenile. I couldn’t take them all on. So I left, along with some from the pack who disagreed with what happened.”

He continued, “We formed our pack, which we called the Fire Pack.”

“That was my idea,” Davina interjected. “You know, because we blaze from nothing.”

Clearing his throat, Dominic went on. “Anyway, we got ourselves territory and we’ve been content here. I was never interested in political nonsense or alliances, so we kept to ourselves. Unfortunately, that has come back to bite me.”

He settled back in his seat, crossing his legs beneath the table.

“A few weeks ago, my uncle passed away. Since he was the only other Alpha son available, my brother has taken over as Alpha. But apparently that isn’t enough for him. He has applied to the parliament for his pack and mine to be united again, with him as Alpha. I think it’s because he wants our territory, but it’s probably also to piss me off. The parliament arranged a date for us to meet in the presence of an Umpire to see if the issue can be resolved without violence.”

Werewolf parliaments existed only to appease anxious humans who didn’t like the werewolf way of solving disputes, namely violence. Natalie didn’t like it either, but it was part of their culture.

According to the agreement with humans, packs had to appeal to the parliament before starting conflicts. If the matter couldn’t be solved through Mediation, six months had to pass before either pack could act on the challenge. This was meant to let resentments cool and encourage peaceful agreements.

By Dominic’s expression, it was obvious Natalie was listening but still had no idea where he was going with this.

“Of course I’m going to oppose his request,” Dominic continued. “Which means he’ll have to back down or officially challenge me. I know him well enough to know he won’t back down. An agreement won’t be reached in six months, not in this case. There will be an all-out battle between the packs, and I have no problem with that. But my uncle had plenty of alliances, and all of those will now be my brother’s.”

He paused.

“He’s going to ask them for aid. We’ll be outnumbered.”

Natalie gave him a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry things are pretty terrible, but I don’t see what I can do, unless you want a sarcastic comment. And I don’t see what any of this has to do with Mark.”

“This has to do with me needing a mate, and you needing a way out of Mark’s reach.”

Natalie’s entire body stiffened. Surely he wasn’t suggesting what she thought he was.