Trey knew the kind of things Roscoe Weston was capable of. Claiming an unwilling female would be nothing to him. Maybe if that female was submissive it would be nothing much to her, but Trey had only known Taryn Warner for five minutes and already he could tell that she was far from submissive or complacent. It didn’t make any sense. There was another thing supporting his suspicion that there was something very wrong about this mating… “You don’t smell of him.”

Thank God, Taryn refraining from saying aloud. Although Roscoe had left his mark on her, he hadn’t been able to imprint on her. Two wolves who weren’t true mates could still come together as mates and have a tight bond through the process of imprinting. That process couldn’t be sparked unless there were strong emotions involved and it also required a lot of physical contact. When two wolves were imprinted, their scents mixed and they developed a sort of metaphysical link. Even if Taryn ended up mated to Roscoe they would never have that link, because there was no way they would ever imprint. Unless the emotion of hate was able to spark it of course. “Hmm” was her only response.

At that second she dropped a biscuit in her coffee and, taking advantage of her distraction, Trey reached across the table and tugged her t-shirt aside to bare her shoulder. What he saw there made him growl.

Taryn jerked back, gaping and scowling. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Why would you cover it with make-up?”

“What?”

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

Totally thrown by the suddenly turnabout in the conversation, Taryn was pretty much speechless.

“Taryn,” he drawled menacingly before demanding, “Answer my question.”

His bullying tone had her straightening in her seat. “Look, psycho boy, I don’t know what you’re problem is – though I’d imagine it’s difficult to spell even for your psychiatrist – but no matter what’s going on between you and Roscoe, it doesn’t give you the right to know anything about what’s going on between me and Roscoe.”

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

Although there wasn’t really a reason to hide it, pride and distrust still had her denying it. “Do I seem like the kind of person who would allow something like that?”

“I have no 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, did he claim you against your will?”

“What does it matter to you?”

Trey took that as a yes. “Does your father know?”

She spoke quickly, hoping that if she just satisfied his curiosity he’d back off. “My dad’s a proud man whose only child is a latent daughter. He sees an alliance with a wolf as powerful as Roscoe to be 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?”

Taryn 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 unsettled her. Her fingers itched to touch him and 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 some throbbing going on 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. Definitely Stockholm Syndrome. “This is not your problem and it has nothing to do with whatever’s going on between you and Roscoe.”

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 healer.”

Yeah, sure. “There’s more.”

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

He rooted in 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 again be fuzzy and you will 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 this. 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. “What’s this proposition of yours?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard all about how I supposedly beat the hell out of my own father when I was fourteen. Well it’s true. I did. And for very good reasons, none of which are important right now. I won the right to be Alpha, but my dad, 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 had happened. We formed our own pack, which we called the Phoenix Pack -”

“That was my idea,” interjected Dante. “You know…because we rose from nothing.”

Clearing his throat, Trey continued, “Anyway, we then got ourselves some territory and we’ve been content enough here. I was never interested in getting involved with any political bullshit or making alliances, so we always kept pretty much to ourselves. Unfortunately, that’s come back to bite me right on the ass.”

He settled back in his seat, crossing his legs beneath the table. “A few weeks ago, my dad passed away. Since he was Beta, my uncle has now taken over as Alpha, but apparently that’s not enough for him. He has applied to the council for his pack and mine to be united as one again with him as Alpha. Personally I think it’s because he wants our territory, but it’s probably to piss me off too. The council arranged a date for us both to meet in the presence of a Mediator to see if the issue can be resolved without violence.”

Shifter councils only formed to appease anxious humans who didn’t like the shifter way of solving disputes – namely violence. Taryn didn’t much like it either, but it had always been part of shifter culture. The agreement made with the humans was that the shifter council would insist that packs would have to appeal to the council before starting any disputes with other packs. If the matter couldn’t be solved through Mediation, the protocol was that exactly three months had to pass before either pack could act on the challenge made – the council’s way of giving tempers a chance to calm, hoping an amicable agreement could then be reached within that time period.