Technically, she'd been lucky, and yet she was angry because she was bound to a Katagari male. Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire! This morning her worst fear was being enslaved to a Katagaria pack.
Now she was captured even more fully than before. If she left Dante, she would never be able to have children. He was the only one who could give her that.
"Damn these hormones," she snarled as more tears gathered in her eyes. It was hard to think straight.
Someone grabbed her from behind.
"Gotcha," a deep, masculine voice said in her ear.
It wasn't Dante.
The panther inside her roared to life, rejecting any male not her mate. She whirled about and struck without thought, making contact with the stranger's groin.
Doubling over, he hissed in pain. But before she could escape, another male took her arm.
She froze as she realized he was an exact, equally handsome copy of the man she had just racked.
"Leo." The lethal growl cut across the tense air and shivered down her spine. Dante's voice threatened violence and death. "Let go my mate, boy."
The panther holding her let go instantly and cursed. "You've got to be kidding me."
Dante shook his head as he joined them. "I wish I were." He scowled at the other male, who was still cupping himself. "You okay, Mikey?"
"Yeah," he said, grimacing as he forced himself to straighten. His face was still an awful shade of red and he was panting. "Just my luck that you would find a mate who is as pissy as you are."
"I take offense to that," Pandora said.
Mike gave her a menacing scowl. "And I take offense to my sudden need for testicle retrieval. You know, I would have liked to have fathered some children one day."
Leo laughed at his twin brother's discomfort. "I'm just glad you got to her first."
Mike curled his lip. "Shut up."
Dante rolled his eyes before introducing his brothers. "Pandora, meet my brothers, Leonardo and Michelangelo."
"Like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" she couldn't resist asking.
"Like the Renaissance painters," Leo snapped. He exchanged a snarl with his twin brother. "I seriously hate those damned turtles."
As if on cue, four people dressed as said turtles walked by and frowned at them.
"I swear the gods are mocking us," Mike said as he saw the green-foam-covered humans.
"I know the feeling," Pandora said, sighing. There were no better words to describe her present predicament.
She had no idea what kind of… creature the Fates had joined her to.
Then again, Dante wasn't the one acting so bizarrely. She was the one with hormonal overload poisoning. She honestly couldn't blame Dante if he started choking her.
She just wished she could be herself for a few hours so that she could sort through all this better.
"Well, I see all of you found her."
Pandora looked past Leo to see the first one of the brothers she'd met. Ironically, he was the only one whose name she didn't know.
"Shut up, Romeo," Leo said irritably. "Don't think we don't know it was you who spread her scent around this hotel to drive us crazy. You almost got me killed when I grabbed Simi by mistake and she pulled out a bottle of barbecue sauce to sprinkle on me. If Ash hadn't come up when he did, that damn demon would have gladly eaten me."
Romeo laughed for only an instant before he sobered. He sniffed the air.
"Oh shit," he breathed as he looked from her to Dante. "You're mated?"
"Yeah," Dante said. "Thanks, Romeo. Had you not had her scent all over you, I wouldn't have been able to pinpoint her so easily. I really appreciate the road map."
Pandora stiffened at Dante's sarcasm. "Thank you for making me feel really bad. You know, you could try and be a little more positive about this."
"True," Romeo said. "She is Arcadian and not nearly as likely to roam."
It was Pandora's turn to be "thrilled." "Just think, now all of you have a babysitter for your litters and someone a lot weaker to knock around whenever you get angry at your enemies."
All four of the panthers scowled at her.
"What are you talking about?" Dante asked.
"It's all you want me for, right?"
He looked at her aghast. "You're my mate, Pandora, not my servant. Anyone in my pack, including my brothers, who disrespects you disrespects me. And believe me, that's one thing no one will ever do."
The sincerity of that tore through her.
He really meant it.
Gratitude and happiness welled inside her, and for the first time since her father had handed her over to their enemies, she had some real, true hope. "Really?"
"You may be Arcadian," Romeo said, "but you're a member of our pack now and we'll treat you as such."
"But what of the children you told me about?" Pandora asked Romeo. "Won't you make me watch them?"
"They're my offspring," Romeo said. "I've been raising cubs and siblings for more than three hundred years, even Dante. Why would that change now?"
But she had assumed…
"Who watches them while you're gone?" she asked.
It was Mike who answered. "Our brother Gabriel and our cousin Angel."
"Yeah," Dante said. "They do fine with cubs. It's Frick and Frack here who screw them up and get all of them into trouble."