Wolf or Love

Gio kept her just as close when they slid into the backseat of the car, sensing that she was feeling a little off-kilter due to the bag that she was staring at as if it was a ticking bomb. He gave her the comfort she needed and would probably never have asked for, running the tips of his fingers along her bare upper arm and rubbing his jaw along her temple.

“Well, does it feel good to finally have the alliance you’ve been wanting so badly?” she asked, forcing her gaze away from the bag. She wouldn’t have thought being given a gift from her mom would have made her feel anything but incredibly happy, but this particular gift had had a purpose.

Her mom had been starting a fund for her so that when Danica and Zan were ready to begin their life together they would have some money to help them along. And that was why Danica was as unreasonable as it might be feeling guilty for taking it. Her mom hadn’t scrimped and saved this large amount of money to help Danica along with a fake mating while she declared to all who’d listen that Zan hadn’t been her true mate. The woman had been a hopeless romantic and wouldn’t have seen Danica’s mating with Gio as resourceful. She would have viewed a mating based around a deal that brought mutual benefit to both parties as a mockery of what mating was all about. She would have been right.

“Yes,” Gio answered carefully, hearing a difference in her tone that told him she’d withdrawn a little. His wolf growled, not liking it any more than Gio did. He nuzzled her hair and cuddled her closer. She didn’t resist him, but she didn’t melt into him either. He nipped the tip of her ear. She jolted and scowled at him. “Don’t freeze me out,” he insisted in a low, calm voice.

She sighed. “It feels like I’ve accepted it under false pretences. Hell, I have.”

“Not exactly. Your mom may have intended to give it to you and your true mate, but I don’t think she’d begrudge you having it just because you’d mated with someone else.”

“Of course she wouldn’t have…if the mating had been real.”

“This is real, Danica,” he growled.

“Yeah I know. I mean if we’d mated with the intention of actually staying together, if we had feelings for each other. Now that’s something she

would have understood because she was all about love and romance and all that stuff. Not this, though. She wouldn’t have understood this. She would have mated with Cody before renouncing her true mate.”

“The fact that you didn’t doesn’t make you a coward, Danica,” he firmly stated, knowing that was where her thoughts had taken her. “Like you said, she was one of those romantic people. You’re more of a practical thinker, like me. Practical thinkers aren’t so much into self sacrifices, they prefer solutions. And you’re not someone who’s prepared to wait around with the

belief that life will hand you a solution, you go looking for one.” She smiled a little, but still looked troubled. “You don’t have to spend it. You don’t even have to open the bag. Put it away with your shoebox. She’d be happy enough about that, right?” Her smile widened then and he felt a pang in his chest.

Nodding, she finally relaxed into him, pleasing both him and his wolf. As with all those other chest pangs he’d been feeling recently around her, he

automatically ignored it.

“Ah come on, Danica, don’t get all glum on us,” pleaded Ray. “I tell you what, why don’t you come here and let me give you a great big hug, you can sit on my lap, and we’ll talk about the first thing that pops up.”

Ignoring Gio’s growl, the gorgeous blonde pervert added, “I’ll even let you rub my lucky scrotum. Ow!” He still had the nerve to chuckle when Gio

smacked him over the head. When they returned to pack territory they found everyone waiting inCcontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

the living area for news of how the meeting went. “Well?” prodded Andrew.

“We got the alliance.” Gio winced at the loud celebratory noises.

“I checked the pack web earlier,” said Jeremy. “You’ve got more Alphas requesting basic alliances. It really was a great idea to set up a pack web.”

“Yep, which means if it wasn’t for Danica, we probably wouldn’t have any of those alliances,” said Donny. He grinned as she flopped into the

recliner and wiggled her shoulders, hinting for him to give her the usual massage. As always, he obliged her.

Lindy snorted. “I still say you don’t need them. Or the hussy.”

Danica looked at her with mock pity. “Isn’t it time for your nap yet, Old Mother Hubbard?”

“Listen to her. She’s never shown me any respect from day one. All common and no manners.”

“I just thought it was important that you felt comfortable around me.”

“Gio, you’re going to be the laughing stock of all the other packs having a latent as an Alpha female. Can’t you see that? I’ll bet she can, but

she’s got it good here so she’ll drag this out as long as she can. Won’t you?”

Danica simply smiled. “I’d tell you to stop having a hissy fit and act your age, but then you’d die so…Actually maybe I should just -”

“Oh yes make your smart remarks now, but it won’t be long until it’s time for you to go and then Gio will mate with a real Alpha female. One who’s not common and sarcastic, or disrespectful and slutty.”

“Come on, you have to admit I keep life interesting.” Danica thought she had hidden pretty well just how Lindy’s last statement had stung. It was only the truth, though. Danica would leave, Gio probably would mate again, and the female he mated with for real would most likely be better suited to be an Alpha female. And what would Danica be doing? Trying her hardest to find a

pack who would take in a common, disrespectful, sarcastic, latent female.

Hoping against hope that her uncle might have replied to her message, she excused herself and went up to Jeremy’s room to check her messages on the pack web. Apparently her hoping paid off. Smiling, she skipped down the stairs and re-entered the living room. “Hey, guess what, my uncle’s been in touch through the pack web.”

Gio frowned. “Uncle?”

“The one whose pack I was planning to seek refuge at if all else failed.”

“Oh. Right.”

“He’s invited us to a mating ceremony that’s taking place for someone in his pack a few weeks from now.” That was a hell of a lot more than Danica

had hoped for. She’d thought it might take a few web conversations before her uncle would be interested in them meeting up. An invite to a mating ceremony had definitely been unexpected.

“Wait, start again, how does he know about us? Had he just noticed you on the pack web?”

“Oh no I got in touch with him.”

Gio did a double take. “What was that?”

“It seemed like a good idea to get to know him before I ask his Alpha to take me in when our deal’s over. Maybe if my uncle and I somehow bond I’ll have more of a chance.” The way Gio’s eyes had seemed to ice-over and his face had darkened to a purplish shade had her frowning. “Why are you looking at me like I strolled into your house on your birthday and shit on all the gifts?”

“Oh I don’t know maybe because no one’s supposed to know that we’re not true mates.”

Danica’s mouth dropped open. “You think I told him? You think I went back on our deal and told him all about it?” A deathly silence filled the room

because everyone knew that questioning Danica’s integrity was a very bad thing.

“Awkward,” muttered Ray.

“Seriously, you think I would actually do that?”

No, actually, Gio didn’t think she’d do something like that, but he tended to say stupid shit when he was pissed off, and hearing that she had been in touch with her uncle when he knew she was hoping to join the guy’s pack had made his blood boil. It shouldn’t have made his blood boil because it shouldn’t bother him that she would soon be leaving his pack, yet it did. “It just seemed unlikely that you’d try to fool him if you’re planning to later ask him for a place in his pack. You think he’ll actually take you in when he realizes you lied to him right to his face about us?”

“No” she spat in a goofy voice. “That’s why I’m planning to say to him what I’ll say to everyone else – that I was wrong about us and that

Zan had actually been my true mate after all. Sure it’s going to make me seem a little nutty that I could mix up something like that, but it’s a better fate than a life with Cody ever would have been. I figured that this might be good for you too, that maybe you could get an alliance with my uncle’s

Alpha out of this. He must be at least willing to consider it or he wouldn’t have given my uncle permission to invite us to this mating ceremony. I’ve told him to expect us.”

Everything in Gio rebelled against the idea of Danica going to that ceremony, of her building a bond with her uncle so she could leave. He knew

she needed to leave his pack eventually. Logic even told him that the sooner she left the better because their separation would become harder the longer that they were in the mating. But logic wasn’t ruling just then. It was being overshadowed by a tangle of intense emotions that Gio didn’t understand, but all of which drove him to do one thing; try to stop her from going to meet the other pack.

“Look, Danica, I’m going to have a lot of stuff going on in the next couple of weeks. I can’t shove it all aside just to go to some mating ceremony

of people I don’t even know.”

She stared at him for a minute. “Fine. I’ll take Duda or Donny with me.”

“You don’t think it would look both weird and. disrespectful that I. didn’t go with you?”

“Of course it would. I’m still going.”

“Danica, listen -”

She took a step toward him. “No you listen, Wright. We made a deal and I will live up to my part of it. At the end of this, you’ll walk away with tons of alliances. Me? I’ll have nothing because I walked away from everything for this deal we made.