Marcus scraped a hand over his stubbly jaw. “Do you think Emmet will stop at the article, or do you think he’ll make another sly move?”

“I don’t know.” Trey twisted his mouth. “That may depend on how damaging the article is for us.”

“If we move fast, we should be able to minimize any damage,” Trick reasoned.

“The extremists will pounce on this, but I don’t think we have to worry too much about the public believing Pierson’s lies,” Tao stated. “Especially when they hear about Rosemary’s history.”

Scrunching the printed article into a ball, Trey tossed it in the wastebasket. “I don’t like that we’ll be airing her dirty laundry, but we need to show that her unstable behavior started long before she ever met Dominic.”

Taryn straightened her shoulders. “Then let’s get it done.”

Sitting at the office desk, Trey, Taryn, and Dominic used the camera on Trey’s computer to record a brief but succinct message addressing Pierson’s article. They weren’t insensitive, didn’t directly call Rosemary a liar or claim she was unstable. They just stated the facts, letting them speak for themselves. Before ending the live recording, Taryn passed on her hope that Rosemary recovered soon.

Trey then turned to Dominic. “I know you’re thinking that your behavior brought this shit to our door. But you’re wrong. Rosemary’s and Emmet’s behavior did that, not yours.”

Dominic pushed to his feet. “I need to let my wolf out. He needs to run.” Run off the rage and feel fresh air on his face.

Outside the caves, Dominic shifted into his wolf form. The beast spent hours padding through the woods, chasing small animals, lapping from streams, and traipsing through the shallow river. Tired and much less angry than before, his wolf retreated.

Dominic pulled his clothes back on, still as restless. He had no one else to blame for the situation that he and his pack were currently in. It lay squarely on him, no matter what Trey said.

Did Dominic feel any responsibility for Rosemary’s attempted suicide? No, although he did feel shitty for being so harsh with her. The main reason he was so pissed at himself was that he quite simply hadn’t seen how unstable she was. She hadn’t raised any red flags. Why? Because he hadn’t looked below the surface. When it came to women, he never did.

Just as Dante had pointed out, Dominic didn’t give people a chance to know him, and he skipped the getting-to-know-the-girl stage. If he hadn’t been so fucking closed off and determined not to risk forming ties, he would have seen how troubled Rosemary truly was. His pack wouldn’t be dealing with this shit-storm, and maybe she wouldn’t be lying on a hospital bed staring at walls.

Fucked. The whole thing was fucked.

Mila was in the middle of unloading the dishwasher when she heard a knock on the front door. Wiping her hands on a small dish towel, she tossed it on the counter and headed into the small hallway. A look through the peephole made her brows lift in surprise and caused her half-asleep cat to snap fully awake.

Opening the door, Mila gave Dominic what she knew was a guarded look. “How did you get in?” Nobody entered the building unless they had the code or were admitted by one of the residents.

Not waiting for an invitation, he stalked into the apartment. “I was about to press the intercom buzzer when Evander came strolling out. He let me in.” Dominic tilted his head. “You look surprised to see me.”

“I doubted I’d see you again unless we were just crossing paths.” She shut the door. “You got what you wanted from me.”

“I didn’t get anywhere near enough of it.” He caught her nape and pulled her close, raw need glittering in his blue eyes. But there was something else there—a barely leashed fury.

Something was wrong, she thought. Very, very wrong. Her cat’s hackles rose. “What happened?”

“Nothing. All is good, Mila.”

She planted a hand on his chest when he would have moved in for a kiss. “Tell me.”

His mouth tightened. “I came here to get away from it, not to talk about it.”

Mila narrowed her eyes. “You don’t get to turn up at my apartment hoping to work out your issues in my bed unless you tell me what’s going on.”

Releasing her, he cursed under his breath. “Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Tough,” she bit out, folding her arms across her chest. “I told you that Joel is my true mate. Most of my pride don’t even know that. But I gave you that truth. I trusted you with it. You can return that trust, or you can go. Choose.”

His face softened a little, and his eyes darkened with something that made her stomach do a little flip. “You’re hot when you’re all assertive like this.”

She would not be distracted. “Well?” she pushed.

Sighing, he strolled farther into the apartment and sank into her living room sofa. “The father of a human I had a one-night stand with offered me money to mate with her.”

Mila blinked, almost rocking back on her heels. “Wow. So what, she wants herself a shifter mate like we’re accessories?”

“Turns out she thinks she has an inner wolf.” Dominic told her about Rosemary’s beliefs and gave her a rundown of the offer that Emmet Pierson had made him. Dominic hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but now that the words were tumbling out of him, he felt a little better for it. “Naturally, I said no to his bribe. Rosemary turned up at my territory a few days later. I was clear that I wasn’t her true mate, wouldn’t be forming any bond with her, and that she had no inner animal.”

“All of which she needed to hear.”

“Yeah. And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t; she tried to commit suicide.” Dominic still couldn’t quite wrap his head around that. “Her father blames me, so he chatted a pile of shit to a journalist who posted an article about it online. Emmet exaggerated the whole thing to make it sound like I had bonded with her and then thrown her away because her animal hadn’t surfaced.”

“Bastard.” Mila settled on an armchair. “I can understand that he’s hurting, but he has no damn right to blame you. Sounds to me like she’s not in touch with reality. He fed her fantasies by giving them credibility—something he no doubt realizes now. He’s pointing the blame at someone else because he can’t stand the weight of it.”

Dominic nodded, flexing his fingers. “He threatened to cause problems for us the day we met at the restaurant, although he wasn’t specific about what those problems would be.”

“You feel guilty, don’t you?”

“I don’t hold myself responsible for what she did, but I can’t help feeling bad about how hard I was on her. Maybe I should have just allowed her to have her fantasies about being part shifter so that she could at least live with whatever comfort that brought her.”

“I doubt that it would have helped her in the long run.”

“If I’d bothered to look beneath the surface, I would have seen that she isn’t stable. But I didn’t bother. Never do.”

Mila waved a dismissive hand. “Plenty of guys sleep with women they don’t know. It doesn’t make you a shitty person.” She cocked her head. “Have you ever been in a relationship?”