knew that their cool composure could change at any given moment. It was intense enough to make anyone feel like prey, even a female as dominant as Mila.
Settling his focus on her, Dominic prowled toward her, each step slow and predatory. Any anger had been swiftly buried and, God, she seriously envied his ability to be so emotionally unreactive in shitty situations.
“You’re back,” said Mila with a smile. “Good, I’m starving.” Knowing she needed to get him away from the human before he could provoke Dominic into doing something notable for his next bullshit article, she grabbed Dominic’s arm, intending to lead him to the break room. Evander would get rid of—
“I guess you are a shifter groupie after all,” Pierson sneered at her.
Just like that, Dominic’s posture went from deceptively casual to blatantly menacing. Mila closed her eyes. Shit.
With an overwhelming drive to protect and defend buzzing through his veins, Dominic placed his body between Mila and Pierson. His wolf’s chest rattled with a guttural growl as he stood snarling at the human, the animal’s legs quivering with the need to lunge. Dominic could have ignored practically anything the human tossed out, but not an insult to his woman. Never that. “You need to be gone,” he said, his tone cool and calm.
The bastard really didn’t get how much of a fuckup he’d made. It was one thing for the human to play games with Dominic; it was a whole other thing to involve Mila. Coming to her place of work and breathing her air was going too far for Dominic and his wolf.
If Pierson was a shifter, he’d have understood that. He’d have understood just how hard he was pushing by paying a visit to Dominic’s woman and letting this shit touch her. Shifters had killed for less.
“It’s you who doesn’t belong here,” sniped Pierson, his voice shaky with an apprehension he was striving to hide. “This isn’t shifter territory. You’ve got enough of your own species chasing after you—you don’t need to be polluting the lives of humans.”
Dominic took an aggressive step toward him but kept his voice low as he said, “Hear me, Pierson. You. Need. To. Go.”
“I second that,” said Evander, moving closer.
Mila fisted the back of Dominic’s shirt. “Don’t let him provoke you. He wants you to lay your hands on him. He wants you to throw him out.”
“I know that, baby.”
Maybe it was simply Dominic’s use of the endearment, maybe it was the way his voice had softened—Dominic wasn’t sure. But Pierson’s spine snapped straight, his hands balled into fists, and his face turned red and mottled.
“Damn you, you have a mate lying in a fucking hospital bed!” Pierson burst out. “Can you really be so heartless as to—”
“Your daughter knows she’s not my true mate,” Dominic clipped. “She spun you a tale, and you bought it. You bought it because you wanted to.”
Pierson’s nostrils flared like a bull’s. “I have—”
“You wanted there to be something or someone that could stop her mental state from deteriorating,” said Dominic. “But by buying into her fantasies, you made them more real for her. You see that now. You feel you’re partially to blame for her attempt at suicide, but you can’t face that, so you’re displacing the blame.” Mila had pointed that out, and she’d been right.
“All you had to do was mate with her!” Pierson snapped. “That’s it!”
Dominic flexed his hands, fighting the urge to grab the bastard by the throat. His wolf wanted to mangle and maim the human. “You’re still not hearing me.”
Mila smoothed her hand up Dominic’s back. “He’s hearing you. He just doesn’t want to hear you. Like his daughter, he finds life more comfortable if he only believes what he wants to believe.”
In one slow stride, Dominic covered the space between him and the human. “You’re done here, Pierson. You’re going to leave now. You’re going to leave, and you’re going to stay away. You won’t come near Mila again.”
“Or what?” challenged Pierson, his eyes flickering with anxiety.
“Or you’ll make yourself a lot of enemies.” Dominic’s pack, a pride of pallas cats, a bunch of wolverines—people whom the human didn’t have a hope in hell of taking on. People who would make Pierson pay one way or another, and not necessarily with violence. His life would be worth shit. And since cats were notorious for holding grudges, the pride would make him pay for a while.
Pierson jutted out his chin. “I’m sure the public will enjoy hearing how I