know I only want you.” The words were for Jaime. He sensed that she believed him, but this didn’t matter to her wolf. To her wolf it was a simple equation: he’d hurt Jaime, which meant he was a threat that she needed to be protected from.
His instincts—not to mention sheer common sense—told him that the best thing to do would be to back away from her. To give her some space and a chance to calm a little. But this was his mate, damn it, and he didn’t want her feeling like this. Although Trey’s wolf had a tendency to turn feral during battles, Taryn was always able to bring him back from that state. It stung that Dante couldn’t do the same here.
Desperate, frustrated, and exasperated, Dante moved toward her again. “I’m not going to hurt you, I—” He stopped as a cold, unnerving growl emitted from the black wolf as she bowed down, sticking her rear in the air, preparing to pounce on him. “No, st—” Ignoring him, she sprang.
Dante braced himself, ready to bear the impact and do his best to restrain her before she did much damage. Midleap, her body jerked and a loud whine thick with pain filled the air. He caught her as she fell on him. Rather than attempting to claw at him, she tried only to rise and escape. He locked his arms tight around the wolf, but she didn’t put up much of a fight. A second later, he realized why
—there was a fucking dart sticking out of her flank. Already the tranquilizer was working and she was close to limp in his arms.
Swerving his head to the direction that the dart had to have come from, Dante found a sight he wouldn’t have expected. There in the trees was Shaya, sobbing, with a tranquilizer gun in her hand.
“Shaya, what the fuck?”
“It’s not like I wanted to do it,” she cried as she cautiously approached. “She made me promise.”
“Huh?”
“Jaime came to me one night after she’d decided that she was going to challenge Glory. She was worried that when it happened she might have to shift. She said that there was a chance her wolf wouldn’t let her come back, and that if it looked as though she might attack someone I had to shoot her with one of these.”
Dante felt himself blanch. “Christ, Shaya, she could have been lying to you! It could have been fatal!”
She rolled her tear-filled eyes. “I’d already thought of that. I made her shoot me with one of them to prove they weren’t. When I looked out of the window and saw what was happening, I grabbed the gun and came down. And I brought this.” She opened a bag that he hadn’t even realized she was holding and handed him something he never would have guessed was in there.
“No way. No fucking way.”
“It wasn’t my idea. She made me promise to give it to you. She wanted to be sure that her wolf couldn’t bite you.”
“I am not putting a muzzle on my mate.” He continued stroking a hand down the short, coarse fur of her graceful neck.
“She said you’d say that. She also said to tell you that you can take it off again once you’ve put her in the cage.”
Dante shook his head, setting his jaw. “I’m not putting a muzzle on—Wait, what cage?”
“Well, she calls it a crate, but it’s a cage. Apparently, it’s from the sanctuary. The workers use them to transport any animals they rescue to the sanctuary”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“But don’t you see that this is a good thing?”
He looked at her disbelievingly. “How could this possibly be a good thing?”
“It means she doesn’t intend to give up, she intends to fight her wolf. But she won’t have much luck with that until her wolf has calmed down a little. Jaime wanted you to have somewhere that you could put her while her wolf calmed.”
On one level, Dante could acknowledge that Shaya was right. Still, how was he supposed to put her through this? It seemed cruel. Her wolf wasn’t acting out of a wish to cause pain, she was frightened. She was traumatized enough, and he didn’t want to add to that.
Gabe stepped forward and lightly stroked her between her ears. She didn’t move at all.
“Dante, I don’t like this any more than you do. But it’s move her and confine her so that she has a chance to calm down, or risk her