“Damn you, you have a mate lying in a fucking hospital bed!” Pierson burst out. “Can you really be so heartless as to—”

“Your daughter knows she’s not my true mate,” Dominic clipped. “She spun you a tale, and you bought it. You bought it because you wanted to.”

Pierson’s nostrils flared like a bull’s. “I have—”

“You wanted there to be something or someone that could stop her mental state from deteriorating,” said Dominic. “But by buying into her fantasies, you made them more real for her. You see that now. You feel you’re partially to blame for her attempt at suicide, but you can’t face that, so you’re displacing the blame.” Mila had pointed that out, and she’d been right.

“All you had to do was mate with her!” Pierson snapped. “That’s it!”

Dominic flexed his hands, fighting the urge to grab the bastard by the throat. His wolf wanted to mangle and maim the human. “You’re still not hearing me.”

Mila smoothed her hand up Dominic’s back. “He’s hearing you. He just doesn’t want to hear you. Like his daughter, he finds life more comfortable if he only believes what he wants to believe.”

In one slow stride, Dominic covered the space between him and the human. “You’re done here, Pierson. You’re going to leave now. You’re going to leave, and you’re going to stay away. You won’t come near Mila again.”

“Or what?” challenged Pierson, his eyes flickering with anxiety.

“Or you’ll make yourself a lot of enemies.” Dominic’s pack, a pride of pallas cats, a bunch of wolverines—people whom the human didn’t have a hope in hell of taking on. People who would make Pierson pay one way or another, and not necessarily with violence. His life would be worth shit. And since cats were notorious for holding grudges, the pride would make him pay for a while.

Pierson jutted out his chin. “I’m sure the public will enjoy hearing how I came here in peace only to be threatened and forcibly thrown out.”

“We have CCTV footage,” said Evander, looking mildly bored. He whipped his phone out of his pocket. “I also took the liberty of recording the entire conversation. I’d think twice before you make things worse than you already have, if I were you.”

Clamping his lips shut, Pierson cast a glare at all three of them. And Dominic saw the warning there—he wasn’t done. The human stormed out of the barbershop before anyone could say another word.

“I texted Tate to give him a heads-up about Pierson,” said Evander. “He’ll follow the asshole to his car and make sure he leaves without any delay.”

“You really recorded the conversation?” Mila asked.

Evander nodded. “When he introduced himself as Emmet Pierson, I figured there was a good chance he’d later twist whatever happened here, so I took precautions.” With that, Evander turned back to the shelves.

Stroking his hand over Mila’s hair, Dominic dropped a kiss on her mouth. His wolf pushed up against her, needing her scent to calm him. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “I knew he’d turn up eventually and try to talk to me, ‘one human to another.’”

“How’s your cat?”

“She’ll be calmer when you are.”

Dominic brushed his nose against hers. “I wanted to kill the fucker. He had no right to come here. No right to drag you into this. I should have—”

“Don’t even start with the ‘I should have stayed away from you’ shit. It’s not your fault. Pierson chose to up his level of asshole-ness. Besides, you would have pined without me. A grown man pining is not attractive.”

Lips quirking, Dominic echoed, “Pining? I don’t pine.”

“Hmm.”

He curled his hand around her chin. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Yep,” she said. “Just supremely hungry. Feed me.”

He held up the deli bag. “What do I get in return?”

She snatched it out of his hand. “Duh. My stimulating company.”

Sitting across from Jesse in the Velvet Lounge that evening, Dominic waited impatiently for Mila to come onstage. The VIP area was much less crowded than the main floor, featuring only a handful of booths and tables. Aside from the two solo drinkers at the small bar, the VIP patrons were talking, laughing, snapping photos, and bobbing their heads to the music. It wasn’t so loud that people had to shout into each other’s ears to be heard, but it was enough for Dominic to feel the beat of the bass beneath his shoes.

Jesse sighed as one of his pack mates led a skimpily dressed female away from the stage after she tried climbing onto it. “Someone always gives it a shot, without fail.”

It made Dominic feel better to know that anyone who attempted to hop up there while Mila was performing would be swiftly dealt with.

Jesse’s gaze dropped to the neckline of Dominic’s shirt. “You know, if you hadn’t tugged your collar aside and given me a look at Mila’s brand earlier, I’d find it hard to believe you were wearing one. It’s even weirder knowing you marked Mila too. I saw her mark—it’s pretty distinctive, not to mention highly visible. Which makes me think that your branding her wasn’t just possessiveness; it was a declaration of intent.”

“She’s mine, she needs to know it. Other people need to know it.”

“I’m glad you followed my advice and persevered when she turned you down.”

Dominic frowned. “You told me to give up.”

“I was using reverse psychology, so technically, I was encouraging you.”

Mouth curving, Dominic snorted. “Whatever.” Picking up his bottle, he took a long swig, letting the cold beer slide down his throat.

“Do you think you might imprint on each other?”

“Honestly, I’m not a person who thinks too much about what the future holds. I try to enjoy the now.” Like he’d told Mila, they’d let this play out and see where it took them.

“Just be aware that imprinting can begin without any prompting from you or Mila. It might take you by surprise.”

Dominic tilted his head. “Did it take you and Harley by surprise?”

“Not at all. From the time I was a juvenile, I knew she’d be mine one day. I wasn’t ready back then—in fact, I was a fucking mess.” Idly spinning a cardboard coaster that was stained by a condensation ring, Jesse sighed. “Even though we had history and a good foundation to build on, imprinting didn’t start straightaway. I’d hoped that the claiming bite would be enough to trigger it, but it wasn’t.”

“You put a claiming mark on her before you’d imprinted?”

Jesse winced. “Yeah. It was shitty, I know, since claiming bites don’t fade. If we’d parted ways, she’d have had to look at it in the mirror every day for the rest of her life. But I had no intention of letting her go. I’d have done whatever it took to keep her.”

“How long did it take for imprinting to begin?”

“A few months, but it’s not the same for every couple. Imprinting can happen fast, slow . . . can even take years. The females of my pack believe that for the couple to fully imprint, they need to have the building blocks of a lasting relationship—trust, respect, loyalty, acceptance, love—but that the process can start before all those emotions come into play. The first sign is when you find you’re wearing each other’s scent. Then you start to feel small echoes of each other’s emotions. But it’s so much stronger when the bond fully forms.”