That didn’t even require an answer. He knew that she had a point, knew that nothing in this world would have stopped him from challenging someone who tried to claim her, but fairness didn’t matter to him right now. All the fear and anxiety he’d felt last night was still lingering in his veins.
The last thing he could condone would be for her to be in any form of danger ever again. And she honestly expected him to? What perturbed him more was that his wolf wasn’t objecting to her intention. He saw it as just that his female would challenge the person responsible for her injury.
“I’m not asking for your permission,” she said softly, “but I am asking for your support.”
“I can’t.” With that, he released her hand, slammed his mug on the bedside table, and stood sharply. As he stormed out of the room, he heard her hitch in a breath behind him, knew his reaction had hurt her. A part of him wanted to do a U-turn and lock his arms around her, fuse his lips with hers, and tell her he was sorry. But he couldn’t, because he wasn’t sorry. He didn’t want her challenging Glory, and nothing could change his mind on that.
Until Jaime came along, he’d never been a brooder. Never saw the attraction in going off to be alone somewhere to simply stew on his feelings. But he found himself doing that for the next few hours. As if the rest of the pack knew exactly what he was doing in the living area, they completely avoided it the whole time. Well, all but one.
“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!”
He caught her just as she was about to leave the room and curled both arms around her, keeping her back to his chest. “You’re right.”
“I know that.”
He sighed and kissed her hair. “Believe it or not, I came in here to tell you that I’d support you if that’s what you need. But then I saw you pale and limping…I’m used to being the protector. I want to protect you, and I don’t want you to have to protect yourself even though I know you can.” She gave him a sideways glance as, surprised, she said, “So you’re not disputing that I can?”
“No. Definitely not. I know how capable you are.” He turned her around and cupped her neck with his hands, using his thumbs to lift her face to his. “I know I made this about me. I’m just not used to having someone else who I have to think about. I’ve been on my own for so long that I sometimes don’t even realize how self-centered I’m being.”
“I can totally help you with that with some well-aimed bitch slaps if you want. You’d soon learn.”
He couldn’t help grinning. “I did tell you I’d need the room to mess up a little. Overprotective and controlling is a real bad combination, huh?”
She nodded, feeling her mood calm at his self-recriminating tone. He was a perfectionist who was forced to face that there was something he was far from perfect at, and it was getting to him. She wanted to smack the shit out of his ex for making him cower from relationships for so long. Not that she liked the idea of him with other females, but she liked the idea of him all confused and self-doubting even less. “But so is bitchy and stubborn. When you think about it, we shouldn’t match at all, should we?”
“Yes, we should.” He kissed her lightly and let his hands slide down her body until they were locked at the small of her back. “As much as I like control, it’s not healthy for me to have it all the time. Your rebellious streak takes care of that. If you weren’t so bitchy, you’d probably let me steamroll you and wrap you in cotton wool.”
“I guess.”
“My overprotectiveness makes up for your appalling lack of a flight response, and my controlling ways give you a way to exercise your bitchy streak. I mean, you have to admit that yours runs so deep it’s more like a muscle. I give you a way to flex and stretch it when you need to.” She fought a smile, but it was hopeless. “Jerk.”
Moving his hands down to cup her ass, he said, “Wanna go to bed and play doctors?” Chuckling, she punched his arm. “No, I don’t.”
“Sorry, that was immature. How about playing gynecologists?” Again, she chuckled. “I would, but lunch is calling my name loud and clear.”
“Baby, I’ll call your name as loud and clear as you want.”
She kissed him lightly. “Save it for later, big guy.”
“Dick-tease.”
Less than twenty-four hours later, Dante was arguing with her again, and losing at it again. He had wanted to give Jaime another morning free of training to give her extra time to recover, but the stubborn female refused to rest. Eventually he had to concede that she was right on two scores. One, her leg was, in fact, totally healed. Two, he would never have given anyone else extra time. Jaime didn’t want special treatment. His wolf loved her strength.
As usual, they started with their warm-up and did several laps of pack territory. It was no longer necessary to do any exercises on stealth—that had become clear on the morning before last when he had introduced pressure drills. During the drills, he had asked her to close her eyes and rely only on her other senses as she avoided Dominic, Marcus, and Trick, who were skulking around the woods. Not only had she been able to remain undetected, but she was more difficult to sneak up on than a sleeping cat. The guys had soon learned as they attempted to track her through the woods that unless Jaime wanted you to see her, you wouldn’t.
In fact, now, Jaime was physically the perfect enforcer. Not only had she perfected every combat move and mastered stealth, but she was as fit as Dante and as resilient as they came. “You’ve done amazingly well with your training over the past few months, Jaime,” he told her as they finished their laps of pack territory and stopped for a drink at the patio table. Whereas at one time she would have collapsed into one of the chairs, now she stood upright, ready and alert. “But I’m pretty sure you know that.” Her self-satisfied grin proved him right.
“Can I just ask why the guys are hiding in the woods?”
He grinned. No matter how good they were, she always sensed when anyone was around.
“That’ll become clear in a minute. As I said, you’ve done well. And everything I’ve taught you will help you when you challenge Glory. But there’s more to it than combat moves. So now it’s time to address the number one challenge you’ll face when confronted with a threat—which you soon will be. Yourself.”
Jaime’s forehead crinkled. “Myself?”
“You can be your own worst enemy in a dangerous situation if your head isn’t in the right place. Let’s not forget that the challenge will only end when one of you has been subdued or killed.
More often than not, it’s the latter. You might think killing someone will be easy. It’s you or them, so therefore it won’t be a problem, right? You’d be wrong to think that.” In truth, Jaime knew it would be a problem for her. There was no denying that she could be vengeful, but in the past that had always taken the form of practical jokes or maybe knocking someone out cold. But killing someone? This would be a new one. As much as it didn’t sit comfortably with her, and as much as she hoped that Glory would yield during the fight, Jaime strongly doubted that anyone who wanted her dead that badly would surrender.