“Enough.” Beyond exasperated, Nick sighed. He didn’t have the patience for this. “Derren, you deal with her.”

Derren shrugged. “Taryn’s right. This is virtually a pack.”

“I know you think you can’t make Shaya your Alpha female without endangering her,” began Taryn, “but it truly wouldn’t make any difference if she was a dominant female.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that, yes, it will put her in physical danger, but it’s no different for me. In fact, I’d say it’s worse for me. The fact that I’m powerful makes a lot of dominant females consider challenging me—defeating me would quickly and significantly bump up people’s opinion of them. Shaya would be in similar danger if she was dominant.”

Huh. He hadn’t thought of it that way before. Nick wasn’t sure how he himself felt about being an Alpha again, but he knew that his wolf would leap at the challenge. He was born to lead; it was what he did best, and it was what he enjoyed doing. But his wolf wanted Shaya more than he wanted any position, just as Nick did. “In any case, I don’t think she’d want to be an Alpha female.”

“You won’t know unless you talk to her about it. One thing I know for sure is that she’d make a better Alpha female than many I’ve known.”

Nick could agree with that. Still…“My aim right now is to win Shaya’s total trust. If we decide to form a pack, it can be something that comes much later.” With that, he stood up and headed for the kitchen, intending to make some coffee.

With Nick out of earshot, Taryn turned to Derren. “Am I right in thinking that part of his problem is that he doesn’t want to share Shaya?”

“Yup. Plus, Nick prefers being alone.” Derren sighed. “If he had his way, the two of them would be holed up somewhere together and no one would ever bother them. But that’s never going to happen. Nick’s strength draws people to him, always has and always will. If you had seen the way he organized all the groups in juvie…Even the older ones followed him. There was only one guy, Merrick, who wouldn’t—Nick had to challenge him, and though he never meant it to go that far, he killed him. Nick never elected himself as leader, never tried to be one, but everyone made him one. And I’m going to do the same now. If he won’t take on the position, I’ll make him do it in my own subtle way.”

“He’s not going to like it,” said Taryn, but she was smiling. “How can I help?”

As her mom did her woe-is-me routine complete with degrading comments, Shaya was wishing she hadn’t answered the phone. Feeling guilty for the fact that she had completely ignored her mother’s calls for the past two weeks, she’d answered it…and now she was close to smashing her own phone. While Gabrielle Critchley was still ranting, Shaya placed her cell phone on the bed and pulled on her blue denim cutoff shorts and strappy black top. Unfortunately, her shifter-heightened hearing meant that she could hear every word clearly. Once Shaya had slipped on her black stilettos, she retrieved her phone. Time to end this quickly and cleanly.

“Mom, I know but”—she faked a static noise—“I have to”—another noise—“Something must be wrong with my”—more static—“I can’t hear”—more static—“I’ll call you tomorrow and—” Then Shaya ended the call with a sigh of relief.

She was just heading for the stairs when the bathroom door swung open and a strange female wrapped in a white towel walked out. Both of them froze, gasping. Shaya was just about to demand to know who the hell this woman was when she realized that the dusky green eyes were very familiar—eyes that were just like Nick’s. “Roni?”

She gave Shaya a wobbly smile. “Yeah. Hi.” Tucking the long, wet, ash-blonde ropes behind her ear, she cleared her throat. “Um, I sort of need clothes. I can ask Amber—”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Recovering from her brief moment of shock, Shaya pointed behind her. “Just follow me to my bedroom.” Once inside, Shaya closed the door behind them and gestured to the bed. “Take a seat.”

Gingerly, Roni perched herself on the end of the bed and gave Shaya a slight smile.

“It’s nice to meet you properly.”

“Yeah,” chuckled Roni—it was a rusty sound, suggesting she hadn’t made it for a while. “If I’m honest, I hadn’t thought about shifting back to my human form until you talked with me a couple of weeks ago. The things you said stuck with me, played on my mind over and over.”

Shaya couldn’t figure out whether Roni found that a good thing or a bad thing. If she was anything like Nick, the girl was the type to hold her cards close to her chest. “You and Nick really do need to talk. He thinks you stay in your wolf form a lot because you’re haunted by the memories of what happened—it breaks his heart and makes him feel awful. But it’s not that, is it? You’re haunted by a senseless guilt that you’re responsible for the downward spiral his life then went on.”

“Perceptive,” said Roni, catching the hairbrush that Shaya threw to her. “I didn’t realize he felt guilty. That’s stupid.” Dragging it through the tangles, she continued, “How could he think I was anything other than grateful for what he did for me?”

“Nick’s not exactly great with understanding ‘feelings.’”

Roni nodded her agreement. “He never has been. I’d be bad with emotion too if my wolf had surfaced so early. His mind wasn’t anywhere near ready for it, was introduced to a stage of life that his development simply wasn’t equipped to deal with. Can you imagine that? As young as he was, he found it hard to cope, and his wolf was so angry and cold. Having to deal with that at any age would be hard. I know because my wolf became so angry after what happened that day in the woods, but she healed.”

But Roni hadn’t, Shaya knew. “Nick’s wolf didn’t heal?”

“With my wolf, the anger was tangled up with trauma. With Nick’s wolf, it’s not trauma. He was born in anger, and it shaped his personality. You can’t ‘heal’ someone’s personality. You can change it to some degree, but not heal it.”

Shaya retrieved a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans from her wardrobe and laid them gently on the bed. “They should fit you fine.”