Wicked Cravings (The Phoenix Pack #2)(2)
Author: Suzanne Wright

“They’re all big f**kers, you know.” Trick’s lips twitched into a smile. “I heard they’re a crazy bunch, too. And I don’t mean ‘eccentric’ crazy, I mean ‘we, the jury, find…’ crazy. If I were you, well, I’d definitely be a little nervous.”

“Nervous of what?” asked Shaya as she entered the room and took a seat at the table. The redheaded female, who had been a close friend of Taryn’s since childhood, had recently joined.

Ordinarily, Trey didn’t like adding newcomers to their relatively small pack of sixteen. In fact, with the exception of Taryn, it consisted of only those who had left their old one, the Bjorn Pack, with Trey when he was banished. But he had accepted Shaya at Taryn’s request, and he had also allowed two members of the Bjorn Pack to switch with Selma and Kirk when they left Phoenix.

Trick smiled at Shaya. “We’re just congratulating Dante on finding his mate.” Almost as if he sensed that Dante was close to strangling Trick—not through a loss of control, just because it would be fun—Tao quickly explained, “A one-night stand of Dante’s apparently doesn’t like that she was simply a one-night stand and has decided to tell her brothers she’s his mate and sic them on him.”

Shaya winced. “Taryn’s not going to like it when she finds out. Good luck to Trey with keeping her out of it.”

Tao looked at Dante. “What are you going to do? If it was me, I’d want to go and confront her.”

“That’s probably what she’s hoping I’ll do. I’m not playing her games.” Dante drained the last of his coffee. “We’ll meet Nick Axton at Mo’s Diner to discuss it like he asked. As her Alpha, it’s his right to sort this mess before it goes any further. Refusing him that chance would mess up our alliance with his pack. No spoiled little princess is worth that.”

“At least he was good enough to call and let us know what Glory’s up to,” said Ryan.

“Do we mention this to our Alphas before the meeting?” Tao asked.

“No.” Naturally it wasn’t good to keep things from your Alphas, but part of Dante’s role as Beta was to protect them—even from themselves. As Shaya pointed out, Trey was going to have a hard time keeping Taryn, who was heavily pregnant, from getting involved. “It’ll be better to have the meeting before telling them. That way, Taryn can’t demand to go and Trey won’t have to sedate her.” Tao and the four enforcers nodded, satisfied with the plan.

“Has Jaime come down for breakfast yet?” Shaya was referring to one of the pack’s other two new additions. Dante and Jaime had been in the same pack until he was fourteen, when he left with Trey and several others, but he hadn’t seen her until recently.

As usual when Jaime was mentioned, Trick smirked devilishly at Dante, making the claw marks on his cheek darken. “Nope, not yet,” Trick answered, though his gaze hadn’t moved from Dante. “Who would’ve thought a slip of a girl could spook the normally unflappable you? It’s so much fun to watch.”

“She does not spook me.”

“Yes she does, she always has.”

Okay, that was true. When they were kids, Jaime had followed Dante around like a lost little kitten, trailed after him like he was the answer to all her problems. The guys had all thought it was hilarious that this short, plump little girl who was four years younger was crushing on him. She’d even played practical jokes on his girlfriends, and no amount of Trick’s teasing back then had made her stop. Apparently, she was immune to Trick’s nature. But Dante wasn’t, and because of Jaime he’d been subjected to daily doses of it.

Dante had expected that her crush would have died by now. Apparently not. She hadn’t flirted shamelessly with him or harassed him, but she had made her interest in him clear with bright smiles, subtle touches, and heated looks. Dante, however, had no intention of responding to her interest—

something that he had made perfectly clear to Trick last night.

It wasn’t that Dante wasn’t attracted to her. Although she didn’t have the kind of face that made a guy halt in his tracks, within minutes of her company that guy would be wondering why he hadn’t noticed how stunning she was. And her mouth…Dante often found himself wanting to bite it. Her honeysuckle-and-caramel scent that his wolf had always found…intriguing…now had the distinctive tang of a mature female, and it incited his wolf.

Before Jaime, his wolf had never been attracted to submissive females. For that matter, neither had Dante. He liked feisty females whose strength matched his own, and he absolutely loved seeing them submit to him. Not that Dante had any wish to see women bound, kneeling, and calling him Milord—although that one time in Barcelona had been kind of fun. No, he liked women who would challenge him, because it made their eventual surrender that much more gratifying, and it meant that his dominance over them was real. They weren’t submitting because it was in their nature, they were submitting because he was in total control.

It wasn’t that either he or his wolf had no respect for submissive wolves; they were as important to a pack as dominant wolves, in that without them, there would be no balance. A pack of purely dominant shifters would never work. Being a submissive wolf didn’t mean they were passive, weak, soft-spoken, or quiet. Jaime sure as hell wasn’t any of those things—in fact, she was quite the opposite. A submissive wolf could actually be mentally stronger than a dominant wolf. However, they would never be physically stronger than one. As such, submissives never issued challenges on anyone of a higher rank. Most avoided confrontations at all cost and had an extremely difficult time saying no to anyone. Jaime had never suffered such problems because of her strength of character.

Despite such strength, he didn’t believe that she—or any other submissive wolf, for that matter—

would be able to handle the full force of his personality.

But even if Jaime hadn’t been a submissive wolf, Dante wouldn’t have responded to those heated stares. He would never have even so much as a one-night stand with a female from his own pack. He didn’t want his true mate feeling uncomfortable when he finally found her and brought her home. Dante had seen how awkward it had been for Taryn to be around Selma, and he didn’t want to put his own mate through that. Taryn hadn’t been heartbroken when Selma decided to leave the pack.

Dante didn’t want a relationship anyway. Not just because his time was already in demand, but because past experience had shown him that a relationship between shifters was a dangerous thing. It could make things very difficult when one suddenly discovered a true mate. Dante had no intention of repeating that experience.