“Come on, you have to admit I keep life interesting.” Taryn thought she had hidden pretty well just how Greta’s last statement had stung. It was only the truth, though. Taryn would leave, Trey probably would mate again, and the female he mated with for real would most likely be better suited to be an Alpha female. And what would Taryn be doing? Trying her hardest to find a pack who would take in a common, disrespectful, sarcastic, latent female.

Hoping against hope that her uncle might have replied to her message, she excused herself and went up to Rhett’s room to check her messages on the pack web. Apparently her hoping paid off. Smiling, she skipped down the stairs and re-entered the living room. “Hey, guess what, my uncle’s been in touch through the pack web.”

Trey frowned. “Uncle?”

“The one whose pack I was planning to seek refuge at if all else failed.”

“Oh. Right.”

“He’s invited us to a mating ceremony that’s taking place for someone in his pack a few weeks from now.” That was a hell of a lot more than Taryn had hoped for. She’d thought it might take a few web conversations before her uncle would be interested in them meeting up. An invite to a mating ceremony had definitely been unexpected.

“Wait, start again, how does he know about us? Had he just noticed you on the pack web?”

“Oh no I got in touch with him.”

Trey did a double take. “What was that?”

“It seemed like a good idea to get to know him before I ask his Alpha to take me in when our deal’s over. Maybe if my uncle and I somehow bond I’ll have more of a chance.” The way Trey’s eyes had seemed to ice-over and his face had darkened to a purplish shade had her frowning. “Why are you looking at me like I strolled into your house on your birthday and shit on all the gifts?”

“Oh I don’t know maybe because no one’s supposed to know that we’re not true mates.”

Taryn’s mouth dropped open. “You think I told him? You think I went back on our deal and told him all about it?” A deathly silence filled the room because everyone knew that questioning Taryn’s integrity was a very bad thing.

“Awkward,” muttered Dominic.

“Seriously, you think I would actually do that?”

No, actually, Trey didn’t think she’d do something like that, but he tended to say stupid shit when he was pissed off, and hearing that she had been in touch with her uncle when he knew she was hoping to join the guy’s pack had made his blood boil.

It shouldn’t have made his blood boil because it shouldn’t bother him that she would soon be leaving his pack, yet it did. “It just seemed unlikely that you’d try to fool him if you’re planning to later ask him for a place in his pack. You think he’ll actually take you in when he realizes you lied to him right to his face about us?”

“No Doofus,” she spat in a goofy voice. “That’s why I’m planning to say to him what I’ll say to everyone else – that I was wrong about us and that Joey had actually been my true mate after all. Sure it’s going to make me seem a little nutty that I could mix up something like that, but it’s a better fate than a life with Roscoe ever would have been. I figured that this might be good for you too, that maybe you could get an alliance with my uncle’s Alpha out of this. He must be at least willing to consider it or he wouldn’t have given my uncle permission to invite us to this mating ceremony. I’ve told him to expect us.”

Everything in Trey rebelled against the idea of Taryn going to that ceremony, of her building a bond with her uncle so she could leave. He knew she needed to leave his pack eventually. Logic even told him that the sooner she left the better because their separation would become harder the longer that they were in the mating. But logic wasn’t ruling just then. It was being overshadowed by a tangle of intense emotions that Trey didn’t understand, but all of which drove him to do one thing; try to stop her from going to meet the other pack.

“Look, Taryn, I’m going to have a lot of stuff going on in the next couple of weeks. I can’t shove it all aside just to go to some mating ceremony of people I don’t even know.”

She stared at him for a minute. “Fine. I’ll take Dante or Marcus with me.”

“You don’t think it would look both weird and disrespectful that I didn’t go with you?”

“Of course it would. I’m still going.”

“Taryn, listen -”

She took a step toward him. “No you listen, Flinstone. We made a deal and I will live up to my part of it. At the end of this, you’ll walk away with tons of alliances. Me? I’ll have nothing because I walked away from everything for this deal we made. I need to have somewhere to go because I’m not going to live the lone wolf lifestyle. My best bet is to get a place in my uncle’s pack – even if it’s only temporary, at least it’ll be something. If you don’t want to come with me to this ceremony and maybe try and get yourself an alliance out of this then fine. But I will be going in the hope of increasing my odds of getting a place in that pack because the alternative is taking a chance being out there on my own and that’s not acceptable to me.”

He could tell her the truth of why he didn’t want her to go to the ceremony, he could, but now wasn’t the time or the place. Alright that was in fact an excuse but it was an excuse he was sticking to. Rather than piss her off any further, he went to her and tugged her to him. “I didn’t think of it that way. If you want us to go, we’ll go.”

“Really?” she drawled, suspicion dripping from the word.

“Really.”

A nod. “Okay.” She squealed as he suddenly scooped her up and began strolling out of the room. “What the hell are you doing?”

“No more talking. Really need to f**k.”

And he really did need it. He needed to be buried deep inside her body, needed to be swimming in her scent, and he needed the taste of her in his mouth. Only then would he be able to calm himself and his wolf.

The thought of being separated from his mate had sent his wolf pacing and growling, fighting for supremacy. It had nettled Trey’s mating instincts, playing on his protectiveness and possessiveness until all he wanted was to pin her down and bite her, remind her that she belonged to him.

As for Trey the man…equal measures of infuriation and angst had shot through his blood, making anxiety curdle in his stomach. He told himself that if he hadn’t mated with her, there would be no such anxiety whatsoever, that the separation wouldn’t particularly bother him. In truth, he wasn’t so sure that the man in him was still detached from the mating, or even if he ever had been.