“Now I have to tell the other overprotective male in my life. Won’t this be fun.” After binding the jackal and dumping her in the tool shed, she and Eli locked the door securely behind them and sought out their brother.
They found Nick sitting with Shaya on the porch swing at the rear of their lodge; he was having a beer while Shaya was drinking a bottle of water. Maybe it was Shaya’s presence, or maybe it was simply that Roni didn’t have a scratch on her, but he seemed to take the whole thing pretty well. He didn’t interrupt her even once. Didn’t say a word. To add to that, his cool expression didn’t alter.
Once she was finished, he leaned forward. “Let me get this straight.” Damn, that dark rumble meant bad things, which was most likely why Shaya winced. Clearly he wasn’t so cool and collected after all. “And tell me if I’ve left anything out. You were almost drugged, abducted, and got into a fight with two jackals—”
“I wouldn’t call it a fight. More like a scuffle.”
“—in full view of any humans who might happen upon you—”
“Only one actually saw something.”
“—and then you decided that, hey, you’d bring home the crazy bitch who tried to stab you with a syringe.”
“We have questions, she has answers; it makes sense.”
Shaya shrugged at her mate. “She’s right, it does.”
“Why didn’t you call me, Roni? I would have come to you!”
“I didn’t need you to,” Roni stated. “I took care of it.”
“What about afterward? You don’t think I’d want to know someone just tried to take you?”
“I’m telling you now.”
Nick gaped at her. “How can you be so fucking calm? It’s obvious why they wanted you, Roni! You were supposed to star in one of their special vids!”
“Well . . . yeah. But it backfired on them, and now we have one of their people. So it’s all worked out quite well for us, don’t you think?”
“Worked out quite well,” he echoed quietly before turning to Eli. “Is she fucking kidding me?”
“She was actually whistling a merry tune when she pulled up outside,” Eli ever so helpfully chipped in, chuckling.
“Sorry about the donuts, Shaya,” said Roni. “I’ll get you some more tomorrow.”
“Donuts?” bellowed Nick. “Who cares about fucking donuts? You were almost taken!”
“I know.”
“Stop being so damn calm!”
“You want me to shout and scream, or something?”
“I want you to be normal! And I want you to contact me from now on whenever there’s a problem! Not come to me afterward with an, ‘Oh, by the way’ story!”
“You know, all this tension can’t be good for the baby—apparently they can hear things from the womb. You should try to calm down.” Roni’s words seemed to actually make him worse.
He pointed his finger hard at her. “You just can’t—”
“There’d better be a damn good reason why you’re roaring at her, Axton.”
That smooth, male voice never failed to send a shiver of excitement through Roni. Turning, she watched as Marcus rounded the lodge and prowled toward her. “Wow, you were fast.”
As Marcus finally saw for himself that she was unharmed, the knot of anxiety in his chest began to unravel. He went straight to her, uncaring of their audience, and brought his mouth down hard on hers as his hands slid into her hair. Her taste and scent flooded his senses, soothing the frays in his control and calming his wolf. “I swear, I’m going to find that pack and destroy every fucking one of them. You should have called me immediately.”
“No, she should have called me straight away. I’m her Alpha, and her brother.”
Marcus glanced at Nick curiously. “You say that like you’re more important than me. I’m confused.”
Roni bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing. “I didn’t need to call either of you. I was fine.”
“I didn’t say you needed to call me, sweetheart. I said you should have.” Marcus smoothed his hands up and down her arms. “If something had happened to me, even if I was unharmed, wouldn’t you have wanted to know?”
“Point taken,” she mumbled. “Next time, I’ll call you.”
Nick gaped at her again. “Why is it that you promise to call him but not me?”
“You didn’t ask me to promise to call you. You just kind of yelled at me. And then there was the snarling.”
Marcus shook his head at him. “If you don’t know how to talk to a dominant female by now, you’re never going to learn.”
Smiling at Nick, Shaya idly swished her water bottle from side to side. “It’s at times like this I understand why fate gave you a submissive female as a mate. A dominant female would have surely slit your throat by now. I have more patience.”
He snorted. “You’re patient?” At her growl, he quickly said, in a tone of total agreement, “You’re patient.”
“Okay, so, where’s the jackal?” At the sound of Taryn’s voice, they all turned to see the Phoenix Alpha pair approaching with Dante and Jaime.
“In the tool shed,” replied Eli. “Where’s Ryan?”
“Jaime’s come in his place,” explained Dante. “She insisted on coming here to, and I quote, ‘smack the shit out of the bitch who tried to drug Roni.’ As you can tell, my mate’s painfully shy and has trouble expressing herself.” Jaime just snorted at him.
Taryn smiled sweetly at Roni, but her rage was so profound it was almost tangible. “Well then, lead us to the tool shed.”
Inside the wooden building that was roughly the side of a small barn, the peroxide-blonde jackal was struggling against her binds. She froze when all nine of them entered. Oddly, though, she didn’t seem scared. Roni would be happy to change that.
“You’re awake. Good.” She slowly strolled toward the little bitch with Taryn, Jaime, and Shaya at her heels.
When the males attempted to follow, Taryn raised a hand. “Hold it, boys. This one’s ours.”
Dante gaped at her. “This is what I do, Taryn.”