| A Way Out

Natalie sent a deadly glare Dominic's way when he kept staring at her neck like he wanted to rip it open.

"Why would you cover it with make-up?" he asked and Natalie turned cold.

"What?" 

"Your mark. A female wears her male's mark with pride, you're covering yours. Did he force his mark on you?" 

Thrown by the sudden turnabout in the conversation, Natalie was pretty much speechless. 

"Natalie," he drawled menacingly before demanding, "Answer my question." 

His bullying tone had her straightening in her seat. "Look, psycho boy-"

"I might be a psycho, woman, but I am no boy," Dominic growled a shiver ran down Natalie's spine but she ignored it and continued.

"I don't know what your problem is – though I'd imagine it's difficult to spell even for your psychiatrist – and I don't care. Whatever is going on between you and Mark doesn't give you the right to know anything about what's going on between me and Mark." 

"Maybe not, but I still want an answer," he said in a gentler voice. "Did he claim you against your will?" 

Although there wasn't a reason to hide it, pride and distrust still had her denying it. "Do I seem to like the kind of person who would allow something like that?" 

"I do not doubt that you're trying to find a way out of mating with him if it's not what you want, but I don't think you've found one. Now, did he claim you against your will?" 

"What does it matter to you?" 

It looked like Dominic took that as a yes. "Does your father know?" 

She spoke quickly, hoping that if she just satisfied his curiosity he'd back off. "My dad's a proud man whose only child is a Kage. He sees an alliance with a wolf as powerful as Mark to be the best thing that's ever come out of my existence." 

"Your mother?" 

"Died when I was nine." 

"You don't have other relatives who'll help?" 

Natalie was about ready to scream at this guy. Not only was he poking at a very raw wound, but her body was reacting to him in a way that unsettled her. Her fingers itched to touch him and to comb through his short dark hair to find out if it was as silky as it looked. The primitive hunger crushing her had her insides churning and there was some throbbing going on in some very interesting places. There had to be something wrong with her if she was attracted to a psycho. But, strangely, she didn't feel in danger with him. Stockholm Syndrome. "This is not your problem and it has nothing to do with whatever's going on between you and Mark." 

He twisted his mouth and cocked his head. "What if I said I could help you?" 

Her heart almost stopped. "Why would you do that? How could you even do that?" 

"You could join my pack."

Okay well, that was unexpected. "What could you possibly gain from that?" she asked, immediately suspicious. 

"A fixer." 

Yeah, sure. "There's more. I can bet my left arm on it." 

Dominic smiled. "Yes, there's more. I have a proposition for you. I believe that we can help each other out." 

He rooted in his jeans pocket and pulled out a small sachet. "Inside that is a pill like the one you were drugged with earlier, but a little stronger. If after our conversation you decide to decline my offer, I'll ask you to take it. When you wake up, your memory will again be fuzzy and you will have lost the past ten hours." 

"You want to drug me again? It wasn't bad enough that you drugged me the first time?"

"Let me ask you this. If any of my enforcers had approached you and asked you to meet me here at my pack house, would you have gone along peacefully?" 

"Of course not."

"Point taken."

Begrudgingly, Natalie asked. "What's this proposition of yours?" 

"I'm sure you've heard all about how I supposedly beat the hell out of my uncle when I was fifteen. Well, it's true. I did. And for very good reasons, none of which are important right now. I won the right to be Alpha, but my uncle and many other males banded together to banish me. I was just a juvenile; I couldn't take them all on. So I left, along with some from the pack who disagreed with what had happened. We formed our pack, which we called the Fire Pack -" 

"That was my idea," interjected Davina. "You know… because we blaze from nothing." 

Clearing his throat, Dominic continued, "Anyway, we then got ourselves some territory and we've been content enough here. I was never interested in getting involved with any political bullshit or making alliances, so we always kept pretty much to ourselves. Unfortunately, that's come back to bite me right on the ass." 

He settled back in his seat, crossing his legs beneath the table. "A few weeks ago, my uncle passed away. Since he was the only other Alpha son available, my brother has now taken over as Alpha, but apparently, that's not enough for him. He has applied to the parliament for his pack and mine to be united as one again with him as Alpha. I think it's because he wants our territory, but it's probably to piss me off too for whatever reason is going through his thick skull. The parliament arranged a date for us both to meet in the presence of an Umpire to see if the issue can be resolved without violence." 

Werewolf parliaments were only formed to appease anxious humans who didn't like the werewolf way of solving disputes – namely violence. Natalie didn't much like it either, but it had always been part of werewolf culture. The agreement made with the humans was that the werewolf parliament would insist that packs would have to appeal to the parliament before starting any disputes with other packs. If the matter couldn't be solved through Mediation, the procedure was that exactly Six months had to pass before either pack could act on the challenge made – the council's way of giving resentments a chance to calm, hoping a peaceful agreement could then be reached within that period. 

By the expression on Dominic's face, Natalie knew it was clear that although she was listening intently she didn't have a clue where he was going with this. "Of course, I'm going to oppose his request," Dominic continued, "which means he'll then have to back down or officially challenge me. I know him well enough to know he will not back down. An agreement won't be reached within the six months that the parliament will impose, not in this case. There'll be an out-and-out battle between the packs – one that I have no problem with. But I know my uncle had plenty of alliances and all of those will now be my uncle's. Naturally, he's going to ask for aid from those alliances and we'll easily be outnumbered." 

Natalie gave him a helpless shrug. "I'm sorry to hear things are pretty shitty, but I don't see what I can do – unless you're interested in a sarcastic comment – and I don't see what any of this has to do with Mark." 

"This has to do with me needing a mate, and you needing a way of being out of Mark's reach." 

Natalie's entire body stiffened. Surely he wasn't suggesting what she thought he was.