Hiding her disappointment, she smiled and rose from the floor so that he could get from underneath her. “No worries. I’ll see you later.” He stood upright, shot her a smile, and then the playful, tender look on his face disappeared and the Beta mask slid right back on. Her Dante was gone. Without a second look at her, he grabbed his coat and jogged away.

Slipping her arms into her jacket, she fought off the chill she felt at the loss. Not just of his body heat, but of him— Dante the person as opposed to Dante the Beta. Intending to go for a quick shower before breakfast, she began making her way back to the caves. Halfway there, her cell phone rang. She smiled when she saw that it was Ivy. “Hey, bitch, what’s up?” A pause. “Um…Jaime, I…”

The croaky sound had Jaime halting in her tracks. “Ivy? Ivy, is everything okay?”

“One of the dogs, Jaime…”

Ivy didn’t have to say any more for Jaime to understand. No matter how prepared they were for the dogs being put down, it always hit them hard. “Who?” No answer. That said more than words could, but still Jaime persisted, hoping that she wrong. “Who was put down, Ivy?” A long pause. “Ben. I’m so sorry, honey.”

Emotion clogged her throat, but she held back the tears. “What happened?”

“He attacked one of the staff last night. He hurt him really badly, Jaime.”

“But Ben wasn’t a violent animal.”

“You know as well as I do that just because he never hurt you doesn’t mean he’d never hurt anyone else. If we don’t know their histories and what’s traumatized them, we don’t know what might trigger them to snap. I really am so sorry, Jaime.”

“I’m fine,” she lied, her voice unsteady.

“Take today off. You really don’t want to be here today.”

No, she didn’t, because although she understood that the staff member wasn’t to blame, she would undoubtedly find herself wanting to kill him. “See you tomorrow. Take care.” It was only a second after she ended the call that the tears came. Yeah, she should be used to this by now, but it was always a blow to her system when one of the dogs she cared for had to be put to sleep. At some point the same thing could happen to her—something could act as a trigger for her wolf and give her enough strength to surface. And then God knows what her wolf would do. Jaime just hoped that someone dealt with her before she could hurt anyone.

Suddenly feeling the need to be held—dominant female or not, she wasn’t made of stone—she instinctively called Dante. No answer. Five minutes later, she tried again. No answer. After another fifteen minutes she tried again, and again, and again. Soon three whole hours had passed and he hadn’t responded in any way to her attempts to call him. She knew there was no pack emergency, knew his meeting with Trey had ended two hours before. She even knew where he was—his damn office. But she wouldn’t chase after him.

When he didn’t appear for lunch, her sense of desolation increased. Again, she tried calling him, but nothing. When he didn’t turn up to the evening meal either, she was so down on herself that even her wolf was feeling depressed. Down because of Ben, down because she could soon be just as dead as he was, and down because the one person she needed wasn’t there. So she did what she always did when she wanted to forget about something for a little while. She made it her mission to get drunk.

The knock on his office door made Dante groan. It was now ten in the evening, and all he wanted to do was hunt down Jaime and take her to bed. He knew she’d been trying to call him, but he had been so damn busy. First he’d had to have a meeting with Trey to discuss a possible alliance with another pack; Trey had wanted him to do the necessary research into the pack before a decision was made.

Then Dante had had to see some of his own pack individually to go over issues they had raised. Then there had been phone calls he’d had to take or make, and a lot of paperwork to mill through. As much as he’d wanted to talk to Jaime, the last thing he’d needed was to hear her husky voice and have her distracting him.

“Come in.” He was surprised to see Trick enter with a smile on his face.

“D, um, you might want to see this.”

“Later, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do.”

Trick rolled his eyes in a way that said, What’s new? “No, you really do want to see this now. Come on.”

A mixture of exasperated, curious, and confused, Dante rose from his seat. “What?”

“It’s nothing to be worried about, she’s fine, but—”

“Jaime?”

“Just come take a look.”

“Dude, you are so my BFF,” said Jaime as she folded her arms behind her head and gazed up at the night sky. “I mean, I don’t go counting stars with just anyone, you know.” Shaya, who was lying beside her on the grass, put a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell Taryn this, okay, but you’re so my BFF, too. Oh wow, look, that one’s twinkling. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.”

“You know what I don’t understand? Why they sing ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.’ Why do they wonder? They already know what it is—they answered their own question before they even asked it.”

“Oh yeah. My favorite nursery rhyme was always ‘Georgie Porgie pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, and when the boys came out to play…he kissed them too ’cause he’s funny that way.’”

Jaime burst out laughing and gave her drinking partner a high five, almost missing her hand.

“Only you could make me laugh on a day this sad.” She released a sigh. “Ben was such a gorgeous dog, you know. My heart used to ache for him when I saw him shaking and trembling.”

“You have to look at it this way…he’s at peace now. He’s up in doggy heaven.” Jaime frowned at Shaya. “Do you think there’s a separate heaven for dogs?” Shaya looked at her like she was stupid. “Duh. Have you not seen the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven?”

The girl had a point. “I’m still sad that he died. I’m going to die like that, too. Just like him, I’ll snap and attack someone close to me.” Currently, her wolf was quiet. For some reason, large amounts of alcohol made it difficult for shifters to change form, as it seemed to submerge their animals, which was why it was very rare that shifters drank large amounts. But Jaime would be fine in the event of a problem, because she wasn’t drunk, not even a little.