“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.”

“It would trouble you to hurt a female, Popeye, and you know it,” said Jaime. “It would trouble all of you. But it won’t bother me or my girls here. Besides, you get to have your fun all the time. Don’t be so selfish.”

Marcus shrugged at the other males and went to lean against the wall a little behind Roni, needing to be close to her. Jaime was right: it would trouble them to interrogate a female, might even make them go easy on her. She didn’t deserve “easy.” As long as he had Roni in his sights, he could deal with staying in the background. The guys must have reached the same conclusion, because they joined him.

Pleased, Taryn smiled. “Good. Watch and learn, boys.”

Roni cocked her head at the jackal. There was still no fear in her eyes or her scent, but there was wariness. “You can sense my wolf, can’t you? You can sense how much she wants to rip out your throat.”

“Am I supposed to shiver in fear?” The blonde snorted, tossing her long, silky mane over her shoulder.

Taryn smiled. “Yes, you should. You know who I am, don’t you?”

“I know it’s pointless that you wear a bra. I mean, if you didn’t have ears, you wouldn’t wear earrings, would you?”

“Your pack tried to take my son. Why?”

“I won’t tell you shit.”

“No?” Jaime sighed. “That’s too bad, ’cause we have a lot of questions.”

“What’s ‘too bad’ is that you have curves like a racetrack.”

Roni frowned at her fellow interrogators. “She seems to think her opinion matters to us. Weird, huh?”

“You’re calling me weird? That’s rich. I mean, look at you. You don’t wear even a scrap of makeup. You dress like a boy. And haven’t you heard of a hair straightener?”

Shaya looked at the jackal curiously. “You’re right, Roni. She thinks we care.”

The jackal sneered at Shaya. “Oh, we have a ginger in the house.”

“How many times must people be told it’s red?”

“And why are you so pale? Tanning lotion is your friend.”

“I think she’s entertained us long enough,” declared Taryn. “Let’s get started. We want to know more about snm.com. Did your pack create it?”

The jackal looked surprised, which meant that Quinn clearly hadn’t admitted to her pack that he’d mentioned the website to Marcus and Roni. “You don’t like it?” she asked with a smirk.

“It’s sick, and you know it.”