“You’re an ass. You know that, right?”

Dante looked up at the tiny, scowling blonde standing over him and sighed. “Taryn, honey—”

“Don’t you ‘Taryn, honey’ me, Barney Rubble.” She perched herself on the sectional sofa beside him and moaned as if she was glad to be off her feet. The large piece of furniture practically swallowed her. “Look, I realize that you’re inexperienced with relationships, so I’ll give you a heads-up. Refusing to offer support to a girlfriend who is constantly supportive of you—that’s bad.”

“Why is it so bad that I don’t want her hurt?” He honestly didn’t get it.

“You’re hurting her right now by not supporting her.”

“I’m trying to protect her from herself. She could have f**king died, Taryn. The guy shot to kill.”

“Yes, and she wanted to kill him. But she didn’t. You did. You got your revenge. I’ll bet you wouldn’t be sitting here so quiet if you hadn’t.”

Maybe not, but that wasn’t the point. “What if her wolf pushes to the surface like last time, huh?”

She gave him a disgusted look. “You don’t believe that will happen any more than I do. Your training has helped her so much. You’re good for her, and she’s good for you. Don’t mess that up for yourself.”

“I don’t see how wanting her alive and well is going to mess anything up.”

“Of course you don’t. But that’s because you’re stupid. You think that since you have a dick, you’re more dominant and should make all the decisions and everything will work out as you want it to. If you want a female who’ll let you deal with all her problems, go find yourself a nice submissive wolf. It’s not in a dominant wolf’s nature to hide behind other people. You know this. You’re expecting Jaime to be something she’s not.”

“I’m expecting her to care about her own safety.”

She released an exasperated sigh. “How do you think it feels for Jaime to have someone claiming the person she cares about? You know how hard that would be for you, and for your wolf.

Making it even harder is that this same someone threatened her once before and made her wolf strive to surface. Now she’s trying to have her killed. What else do you expect Jaime to do? By doing what she did, Glory effectively challenged her. No, the bitch didn’t expect her to survive it, but Jaime did, and now she’s in a position where she has to deal with it.”

“I can protect her.”

“Sure you can. But this isn’t about your level of macho-ness. It’s not about you, so stop trying to make it about you.”

Not about him? “She’s my female, she’s—”

“A person with her own mind who you’ll never be able to control no matter how hard you try,” finished Taryn in a surprisingly patient voice. “You care about her. I get it. You want her to be safe. I get it. She gets it. But you can’t fight Glory. Her brothers, sure. But you can’t fight a female, and you never would.”

Fair point, but that didn’t make any difference to how he felt. “I can’t be okay with her putting herself in any kind of danger.”

“No one’s asking you to be happy about it.” With a slight struggle, she managed to get to her feet. “But you need to support Jaime in this. So do it, or lose her. One or the other.” Why did she have to be right? All he wanted was for Jaime to be safe. It wasn’t like he was asking her for a kidney or for her to eat her own foot or something. Damn dominant females and their independent streak. As much as it infuriated him, he had to admit that it wouldn’t be fair to ask Jaime to ignore this and be something that she wasn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to be okay with it, but he could support her the way she’d supported him. His wolf settled a little at that.

Sighing, Dante finally left the living area and sought out the female who had a way of turning him inside f**king out. Eventually he found her in the game room with Shaya, Gabe, Hope, and the enforcers. To his surprise, each one of them scowled at him when he walked in, even the usually passive Hope.

Apparently uninterested in him, Jaime didn’t react at all to his presence. She limped around the pool table to take her shot, reminding him of just what had happened the night before, reminding him that she shouldn’t even be standing here right now, reminding him of just how scared he was of losing her. Dante wasn’t good at handling fear, and he wasn’t good at handling helplessness. Here he was in a situation where he had to deal with both.

When he gestured to the others with a tip of his head for them to leave him alone with Jaime, they completely ignored him. Great. His own female was being protected from him.

“Out.”

The command got their attention and, grumbling and scowling, each member of the pack slowly left the room. A few of them shot him warning looks that said, “Don’t upset her again.”

“Finished sulking, have you,” Jaime said flatly before sinking each of the balls that remained on the pool table. How was it that she could want to gut him and kiss him at the same time? Oh she was royally pissed, just like her wolf. But damn it, he was wearing that soft, vulnerable expression again. As much as she deeply suspected he did it on purpose, it got to her every time.

His voice was soft and beseeching. “You have to see why I don’t want you challenging anyone.”

“Well, you needn’t worry about it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I called Nick, I told him I wanted to issue a challenge on Glory, and he informed me that she’s missing.” Spineless bitch. Her wolf was in full agreement with that assessment.

“You called Nick? You did that without discussing it with me?”

“I did discuss it with you. You made your stance clear.”

As he sensed the depth of her anger, he shook his head disbelievingly. “You have no idea just how much it scared me when I realized you should be dead right now, do you? You just don’t get what that would have done to me. Nothing would have gotten me through it. Nothing, Jaime. I’d have been exactly like my mother was at the end: going through the motions, existing, but not living. Is it really that awful that I don’t want anything to happen to you?” If he thought that talented mouth was getting him out of this one, he was so wrong. “You, you, you—that’s all I hear. Let’s revisit the facts, big guy. I was the one this happened to. I was the one who should have died yesterday. And I’m the one who’s been getting called Limp-A-Lot all damn morning. But wait, no, you’re the victim here, aren’t you? So sad. Well, I hope that pity plane you’re on malfunctions and hits the ground like a goddamn dart!”