“Did you know that dominant/submissive pairs have difficulties with fully bonding?”
Nick released a heavy breath. “Yes. But we won’t have that difficulty.”
To her surprise, he looked and sounded absolutely positive. “What makes you so sure?”
He dropped his forehead to hers and swept the pad of his thumb over his claiming mark, liking her answering shudder. “If we can get past our other issues, we can get past this too.”
She supposed he had a good point, but she wasn’t sure if that made him right. “And we’ll get past this other business too. We will get you healed.”
“You’re not healed?” asked Roni, having overheard.
Turning to face his sister and seeing the panic in her expression, Nick inwardly groaned. Respecting her too much to blow her off, he told her about the headaches and the memory lapse. “Like Shaya said, this is something we’ll get past.”
Roni put a hand to her forehead, her eyes sad and anxious. “God, this is horrible.”
With cautious steps, Kathy suddenly approached, obviously worried about Roni’s panicky state. “What’s wrong, honey?” She ran a hand over Roni’s hair. “You look pale. Is everything all right?”
“You have to tell her,” Roni told Nick. “She deserves to know.”
“Know what?” asked Amber.
Great, thought Nick. Taking a preparatory breath, he once again explained the situation.
“You’re not healed?” echoed Amber, stunned and panicked. “That can’t be possible. I healed you. I healed you; I did.”
“It hasn’t worked,” Shaya told her gently. It was hard not to be gentle when Amber looked genuinely distraught. “His cognitive functions are degenerating again.”
Amber shook her head in denial. “No, I healed him.”
“You tried, but it hasn’t worked.”
Tears now swirling in her eyes, Amber turned back to him. “Nick, I’m so sorry. I know I warned you the improvements could be temporary, but I was pretty sure you were totally healed. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he assured her, not being good with crying females. “It is what it is.”
“Let me try again. It’ll work this time, I’ll make sure it does.”
He held a hand up. “Amber, if it didn’t work the first time—”
“Just let me try.”
“Taryn’s going to try,” announced Shaya, which made hope enter both Roni’s and Kathy’s expression.
“She’s not more powerful than me,” maintained Amber.
“You better hope she is, or Nick’s in shit street.”
Shaking her head in denial again, Amber quickly scampered. A concerned Kathy went after her.
“If Taryn can’t heal you,” began Roni, “we’ll find someone else. You can’t give up, Nick.”
“I won’t,” he vowed. Satisfied yet still understandably anxious, Roni nodded and walked away.
Shaya jabbed him in the chest with her finger. “They better not be empty words. You’ve made that promise to both me and Roni, and we intend to make you keep it.” Her wolf was in full agreement.
Nick cupped her face. “I have never given you empty words. Ever.”
“Just sayin’.” As he cuddled her close, his cell began to ring. After a brief conversation, he returned the phone to his pocket with a sigh. “Everything okay?”
“That was Jesse. There are humans watching us closely from a house farther down the street; he recognizes them as extremists. They’ll either follow us or report back to Logan that we’ve left.”
“Do you really think the plan to divide the group and get to Logan will work?”
“Yes, I do. Let’s find out for sure.”
After a very long journey to Phoenix Pack territory in a vehicle full of talking people, Nick had wanted nothing more than to take Shaya somewhere inside the caves where they could be alone. But that hadn’t been possible. First the pack had wanted to make a huge fuss of Shaya while at the same time scowling at him for originally failing to claim her. Defensive on his behalf, Shaya had told them all about how his wolf had surfaced early and what was happening to his cognitive functions as a result. At that point, the scowling stopped, and now Jaime was following him everywhere, claiming she was able to empathize with him as she knew how hard it was to have a scarred wolf. That was nice and all, but Nick wasn’t the type to need empathy. He liked privacy, peace, quiet—and he soon learned that none of these things could be found in this territory.
The meal that had awaited them went a long way to improving his mood. Their packmate, Grace, was a good cook. As they ate, Trey and Taryn had explained the entire situation surrounding the human extremists. Rhett, who was the ultimate geek and also Grace’s mate, planned to try to uncover what he could about the game preserve with his hacking skills, but Nick wasn’t optimistic that Rhett would uncover much—if Donovan couldn’t, no one could. As Nick had expected, two of the extremists had followed them to Phoenix Pack territory and would undoubtedly tell Logan their location So far, everything was going to plan.
That would have pleased him if it wasn’t for the fact that now that the wolves all knew a little about his time in juvie, Nick was receiving nods of respect and pats on his back—particularly from the enforcers and also a mated pair, Cam and Lydia, whose old friend hadn’t made it out of juvie alive. Also, Jaime’s brother, Gabe, and his mate, Hope, were apparently as empathetic as Jaime. Great. Further annoying him, Jaime’s ugly, chunky cat kept charging at Bruce. Even more annoying, the damn dog wasn’t standing his ground.
Probably more irritating than all of that, however, was that Marcus kept trying to flirt with Roni. Where Dominic was sleazy-flirty, Marcus was smooth-flirty. The only thing stopping Nick from growling at the asshole was that Roni was simply looking at the guy blankly, totally bamboozling him. Given how uncomfortable she was around all these strangers, Nick wouldn’t be surprised if she returned to her wolf form sometime soon. He had hoped that she would go home to the Ryland Pack with his mom and Amber. Unfortunately, she had refused. Even more unfortunate, so had his mom and Amber. And now—to top it all off—his beautiful mate beside him was totally pissed off because Amber was sitting on his other side. Not even the fact that Kent was throwing fries at Amber was cheering Shaya up.
Wanting to soothe her and reassure her that she was the only one who mattered, Nick lifted Shaya and sat her in his lap. After a moment, she melted against him, and he locked both arms around her. “Please tell me your bedroom is on a completely different floor than everyone else.”
Hearing the frustration in his voice, Shaya couldn’t help but smile. Her mate was in hell with all this attention and offers of friendship. “Sorry to disappoint, but it’s only a few doors away from Jaime, your new best friend.” His growl made her chuckle. “They’re just all feeling bad for their behavior toward you when it’s clear you had your reasons for not claiming me in the beginning. They’ll stop smiling at you within the hour.”
He bit her ear for teasing him. “I can’t believe we’ve only been here an hour and already all the females have our mating ceremony totally covered and have scheduled it for tonight.” It was tradition that the other females of the pack organized the ceremony, but he’d never heard of one being so swiftly planned. “Maybe they just want it over with quickly because they don’t trust me not to abandon you again.”
“You didn’t truly abandon me. And the reason they want us to have it quickly is so that the humans don’t interrupt it with an attack. Dante and Jaime’s ceremony was spoiled by Glory and her relatives infiltrating the territory and attacking everyone. You do want to have a ceremony, right?”