“I’m your what?”
Her head spun around so fast that she knocked him in the nose with her forehead.
Graham winced.
“My—ow!—mate. Hey! Hold still before you cause any permanent damage.” He pinned her arms to her sides and scowled down at her. “Like I was saying—”
“I don’t want you to say anything else, since you aren’t making the slightest bit of sense. What I want—”
It was his turn to interrupt, so he shook her gently. “What do you think I’m trying to do? But you need to stop arguing long enough for me to get a word in edgewise, okay?”
Her teeth clicked shut, and he glared at her for another minute before he seemed satisfied that she intended to behave.
“If you’d let me explain what Logan came in to tell me—”
“Let you explain?” Her disbelief mixed with embarrassment and exploded into something that looked a lot like anger. “Who stuck whose hand down whose pants, buster?”
Graham clamped his hand over her mouth and gave her a reprimanding look.
“As I was saying,” he continued, arching the cup of his hand to avoid her sharp teeth, “Logan needed to tell me about some trouble that’s been brewing in the pack. Normally, I wouldn’t worry you with it, but I can’t predict what might happen next, and I don’t want to take the chance of you being caught off guard.”
Since when was she supposed to be on guard? Missy wondered. And against what?
She crossed her arms over her chest and arched an eyebrow over his fingers.
“Logan has been keeping me up-to-date on some trouble a lesser member of the pack is causing. Unfortunately, the upstart gamma in question is my cousin Curtis.”
Missy subsided from fulminating into listening. Damn it, she seemed constitutionally unable to not give anyone the benefit of the doubt. It was an inherent weakness. Like porous bones. She inclined her head for him to go on.
“It turns out that Curtis thinks he’d make a better alpha than I do.”
She snorted, and Graham grinned.
“Thanks. That’s what I think, too. Anyway, alphas aren’t like elected presidents or anything. Our packs operate a lot like wolf packs. Alphas earn their position by being the strongest, and if another Lupine wants to be alpha, he has to prove worthiness by beating the current alpha in a fight. Even though my father was alpha before me and he had offered to retire so I could take his place, I still had to fight him to prove I was capable of leading the pack. But there’s no way my cousin could beat me, and he knows it.”
She rolled her eyes at Graham’s arrogance, but inside she admitted she couldn’t really picture anyone beating him in a fight, fair or foul.
“So like the spineless little coward he is,” Graham continued, “Curtis has been trying to come at the issue from the side of manipulation and treachery instead of issuing a good, honest challenge. Lately, he seems to be experimenting with turning the pack’s opinion against me, in hopes of having me ousted. If I were to be overthrown by a popular uprising of the pack, there would be a power vacuum while every young male with more balls than brains challenged anything that breathed for my position.”
Missy frowned. That sounded chaotic. Not to mention violent.
And potentially messy.
Graham read her expression and nodded. “It wouldn’t be good for anyone involved. Obviously, not for me, but not for the pack, either. That kind of infighting drains time, energy, and resources away from what we should really be focusing on, like building unity with the other non-humans in the city in preparation for the Unveiling.”
She tilted her head in inquiry.
“ ‘The Unveiling’ is a term most Others use to describe a public announcement of who we are to the human world. It’s a pretty contentious idea, but there are a lot of Others out there who think it’s only a matter of time before it has to happen, and I’m one of them. We can’t go on hiding forever, and there’s no reason we should want to. We can’t outrun science forever, and if the human world has to find out about us, I’d rather it be on our terms, so that we’re the ones in control of the spin.”
Missy thought about that and nodded. She could understand what he meant and saw the merit in his thinking. But she was getting really tired of not being able to talk. She muttered something under his palm, but he ignored her.
“Logan came over here earlier to tell me that Curtis had gathered up the three most well-respected elders in our pack to point out to me all the things I’m doing wrong as alpha. I think he wanted me to be afraid that he had already marshaled their support, and therefore the support of the whole pack, behind the idea of him taking over as alpha. It didn’t work that way, but I’m guessing that’s what he intended. And he was none too pleased when he saw that it had failed. But because of his plotting, I had to give everyone some news a bit prematurely.”
He glanced down at her ruefully. “And this is where you come in.” He sighed. “There’s an old Lupine tradition that says only Lupines with mates can be alphas of their pack. My cousin thinks he can use the fact I hadn’t chosen a mate against me. It’s the one area where people aren’t going to think it’s okay not to be old-fashioned. There’s nothing in our culture that’s as important as finding a mate and having cubs. If Curtis spins that hard enough, he just might be able to win enough support for himself to make my life so miserable, I’ll almost want to step down.”
Missy snorted.
“I said ‘almost,’ ” he clarified. “Anyway, he brought up that issue today, in front of the elders. Frankly, he made it impossible for me to keep the news to myself.”
His eyes, deep and green and glowing, locked onto her and made Missy’s stomach clench. They made some lower things clench, too.
“I hadn’t meant to make any kind of announcement so soon,” Graham said, leaning toward her until his forehead rested against hers and she could feel his breath tickling her face where it wasn’t covered by his hand. “I knew you’d need some more time to get used to the idea, and I didn’t want you to feel pressured. Then it slipped out and I realized that it shouldn’t make that much difference whether I waited a few more days or not. Timing can’t change the truth, right?”
Missy had no idea what Graham was talking about, but something in his tone or in her own mysterious female intuition was making her feel very uneasy anyway.
“And the truth is that the news was a big blow to Curtis. It shot his current plan all to hell, which probably pissed him off, and I don’t want you getting caught in the crossfire, so I needed to warn you. You need to be prepared for anything, because the pack is probably already talking, and you deserve to hear the news directly from me.”
If he didn’t stop being cryptic, Missy was going to take a chunk out of his hand if she had to dislocate her jaw to do it.
“What news?!” she shouted, although with his hand over her mouth it came out more as an indistinct grumble.
“Curtis will have to come up with a new reason why I shouldn’t be alpha of the Silverback Clan, because his old one no longer applies. I have a mate now. I have you.”
It took a moment for the rumble of his voice to vibrate through her eardrums and hit her brain so that his meaning could penetrate. That’s when she bit him.
Hard.
“Shit!” Graham jerked his hand from her mouth and shook it, staring in disbelief at the delicate teeth marks she’d left in the fleshy part of his palm. “What the hell was that for, you little savage?”
Missy pushed herself off his lap, planted her hands on her hips, and glared at him. With him still on the sofa and her standing on the ground, she was almost taller than him. Now she wouldn’t have to crane her neck while she chewed him out.
“Don’t call me a savage, you barbarian!” she countered. “I’m not the one who figuratively just whacked someone over the head with a mastodon bone and dragged her by her hair all the way back to his cave. What do you mean you ‘have’ me? Did I miss the part where I get to have a say in whose ‘mate’ I
am?”
Graham rubbed the marks in his hand with the opposite thumb and frowned. “I’m Lupine, not libertarian. It’s not like being the mate of a werewolf comes up for a vote.”
“And that is just the point. I am not the mate of a werewolf. I don’t remember being anything of the sort.”
His eyes glinted. “If you want me to ruin another set of clothes, I could refresh your memory.”
“Don’t be an ass,” she dismissed. “That was sex. Your definition of ‘mate’ seems to include a lot more than that, buster. You aren’t talking about the verb anymore. You’re getting all noun-y here.”
Missy watched while his mouth tightened and he crossed his arms over his broad chest. “And what if I am?”
“Then we need to talk about it,” she said. “You can’t just announce that I’m your mate. That’s like just announcing that we’re married. It doesn’t work like that. You have to ask first.”
Graham had the nerve to look genuinely puzzled. “Ask? Why would I ask? What does asking have to do with it? That’s not how a mate-bond works. No Lupine has ever been asked if he or she wanted to be someone’s mate; it just happens.”
How dare he be baffled while she was in a huff?
“Yes, well, in case it has escaped your notice, I am not Lupine.” She glared at him, drawing herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much, but which made her feel better. “Where I come from, when people decide they want to spend their life with someone, they check to make sure the other person feels the same way first. You can’t just treat me like one of your furry little groupies. I don’t take orders from men who don’t ask my opinion about important things.”
“I have groupies?” he asked, then shook his head impatiently. “It doesn’t matter what your opinion is. But what I’m trying to tell you,” he continued, holding up both hands to forestall her heated interruption, “is that it doesn’t matter what my opinion is, either. We’re mates. It’s a fact. Neither one of us gets to ask or negotiate or back out.”
Missy stifled the urge to shriek. With moderate success.
“Look, there’s a very big detail here that you just don’t seem to be getting. What you’re telling me is the way things happen in your world, but I don’t live in that world. You may have to abide by these traditions of yours, but I don’t. The only thing keeping me here is my willingness—up until now—to stay, but I can leave any time I want and pretend that your way of doing things doesn’t even exist.”
His eyes turned a smoky, eerie shade of golden green and he bared a set of fangs Missy felt fairly certain he hadn’t sported a few seconds ago.
“Do you really think that?” he growled, and the sound held all the menace of Cujo on a bad-hair day. “Do you really think that I would stand back and let you leave when I know you are my mate? You can’t be that naïve, Melissa.”
“What I doubt is your sanity if you think that a few hours of sex makes us mates, because I don’t. So. Get. Off. Of. Me!”
She used all her strength to break free and all he did was jerk his head back, his expression morphing from threatening to vaguely surprised.
“Is that what this is all about?”
The genuine shock in his voice pierced her determination, and she paused. “Is what what this is all about?”
He drew back until he knelt astride her with his hands still cuffing her wrists and a half-surprised, half-bemused look on his face. “You think this is all just about sex.”
The accusation in his voice did not sit well with Missy.
“What else is it about? We haven’t spent four out of every five minutes in each other’s company naked because we’re study buddies in an anatomy course. I mean, we’re practically strangers. I don’t even know if you have a family!”
His bemusement slid into a grin, the kind that could almost make her forget why she was mad at him.
“My parents are retired and living in Bermuda. No brothers or sisters. A slew of aunts, uncles, and cousins.” He pulled her up until he could wrap her arms around his neck and tug her into his embrace. His green eyes caught hers and held them. “And one very sexy mate.”
His lips descended toward her and almost made it before she jerked herself back to reality.
“Not so fast,” she protested, turning away and pressing against his chest to hold him at bay. “You are not going to turn this into more sex, and you’re not going to use sex to make me your mate by default.”
He gave her a comical pout. “But we only have about thirty-six hours before it’s Monday morning and our agreement to spend the weekend together is over. I figured we shouldn’t waste it.”
“And how is thirty-six more hours of sex going to prove to me that this mate thing is about more than sex?”
The new pout wasn’t quite so comical. “I told you it isn’t. You’re not just a warm body. You’re my mate. You and I were Fated for each other, but it’s not like destiny provided us with corresponding ID cards, so how am I supposed to convince you? Do you want me to take a lie detector test?”
Missy looked—and felt—decidedly unsympathetic. “You might try explaining to me how you came to the conclusion that I was the girl for you based on having known me for”—she glanced at her watch—“twelve and a half hours.”
With a disgruntled sigh, Graham pulled away and flopped back on the sofa, where he glared up at her from a lazy slouch. “I just know. It’s a Lupine thing.”
“And I wouldn’t understand?” Her voice sounded dry even to her own ears, but it didn’t seem to affect Graham. He continued to scowl at her while his fingers drummed impatiently against the leather cushions.
“I didn’t say that, but I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”
Missy folded her arms over her chest, crossed her legs at the knees, and raised her eyebrows. “You won’t know until you try me.”
CHAPTER TEN
Taking a deep breath, Graham wrapped a mental noose around his impatience and hauled on it hard. If Missy wanted an explanation, the least he could do was give her an explanation. Not only did she deserve that level of common courtesy as his mate, but if he was going to live with her for the next fifty or sixty years with all of his limbs intact, he’d do well to keep her in a good mood.
He opened his mouth to speak, but a signal from his brain stopped him before he uttered so much as a sound. His olfactory lobe was telling him something very important. Something that required more data.
Another sniff filled his head with the scent of Melissa, that warm, sweet, rich, utterly delectable odor that stirred every one of his appetites and sent them into overdrive. In fact, it seemed to have an even stronger effect on him than it had when he’d first woken to find her snuggled against his side.
The scent of her that had driven him wild this morning now verged on driving him insane. He’d been right about her fertility, too, because unless he’d gone nose-deaf in the past few hours, the subtle changes he detected in her scent now told him unequivocally that Missy was pregnant.
Pregnant.
Missy was going to have his cub.
Graham’s beast gave a mental roar of triumph, and he had to fight not to echo it aloud. The swell of emotions generated by that knowledge threatened to choke him, no matter how hard he struggled to beat them back. The sense of pride and excitement, joy, and possessiveness that stirred to life inside him all but knocked him on his ass. But that was nothing compared to the surge of love.
Love.
God damn it! He had fallen in love with her!
Graham froze. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Wanting her was one thing. Lusting after her generously round ass and the soft swell of her belly was totally okay with him. All well and good. Even being charmed by her chimeric flashes of timidity and boldness didn’t bother him. He didn’t mind laughing at her jokes or valuing her opinion, but damn it, why did his stupid heart have to bring love into it? Why couldn’t it be happy with lust, friendship, and respect?
She cleared
her throat and pursed her lips, and Graham fought the urge to squirm like an eight-year-old before a parental firing squad.
“I’m waiting for you to explain it to me, Graham,” she said. “And don’t give me that bull about me not understanding. I want an answer.”
He rubbed his hand absently against his chest, right over his heart, and knew he wasn’t quite ready to tell her his big secret. Or her slowly expanding secret. If she still struggled to come to terms with the way they both burst into flames when they mated, no matter who was watching, then she damned sure wasn’t ready to hear that he loved her and that he’d as good as deliberately made her pregnant when he’d known good and well he could have prevented it. Some things were better left unsaid. At least until he could be sure there was no turning back for either of them.
“You smell,” he blurted out, then watched as her eyes widened before narrowing into thin little slits of pique.
“I smell?” she growled, doing a fairly good imitation of him in a mood. “You’re telling me you want me to be your mate because I stink? Somehow, I’m missing your logic.”
“Not stink. Smell,” he clarified. “Smell wonderful.”
Her lips were still thin and straight, so he pushed on and tried to explain something he’d never before tried to define.
“Lupines have acute senses of smell, thousands of times better than humans’. Even better than most dogs’. Everything around us has its own scent, and a lot of our social customs are built on the information we get that way. It’s just ingrained. We’re born smelling, even if it takes a few hours before we open our eyes.”
Her mouth softened, just a fraction, but he saw it.
“It’s only logical that we use that sense of smell when we mate. It tells us who we’re attracted to and who we’re not,” he said. “The most beautiful female in the world won’t appeal to a Lupine if she doesn’t smell right.”
“What smells right?” she asked. He could hear the reluctant curiosity in her voice, but it was still progress.
“You do.”
“Clearly, I’m not the first woman who did. Did you tell any of them they were your mates?”
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