Sheena shook her head. Her? An alpha? Sheep didn’t have alphas. Sure, she’d… sort of taken over Angus Parker’s mind, but…
Am I an alpha? she asked her hellsheep.
I AM, it said at once, then got back to napping. You’re no use, she grumbled at it, and said to Fleance:
“But you have an alpha. Back in Pine Valley.”
“No.” The lines at the edges of his mouth deepened. “Being near Parker again did something to my pack sense. I don’t think I have an alpha anymore. Or a pack. And that’s… bad.”
Sheena looked harder at him and gasped. His eyes were burning hellhound-bright, but deep in their centers was a hint of the same dark rot that Parker’s eyes had held.
Was that why Parker’s hellhound looked so sick? He didn’t have a pack. Caine had taken every hellhound Parker had ever turned and cast him loose alone. Maybe hellhounds were pack animals for a reason. Maybe they needed that connection. It would explain why Fleance and the others hadn’t been able to break free. Their hellhounds knew they needed a pack to survive, and since none of them knew about the alpha trick—whatever the alpha trick Sheena’s hellsheep had pulled actually was—they’d stayed. Some instinct must have told them that any pack, even Parker’s, was better than none.
She sent her question down the mate bond and felt his response almost at once. He was weary, and hopeful… and she was right.
“Okay,” she said, scrambling for ideas. “We’ll go find Parker again, this time I’ll let you chomp down on him and you can go alpha and—”
“No.” Fleance’s jaw worked. “I’m not going to hurt people anymore and that includes not using my asshole uncle as a punching bag. Besides, that wouldn’t fix things.”
“You wouldn’t be alone anymore. You’d be an alpha with a, a very small, very dickhead-heavy pack, but it would stop… whatever this is.”
“But it would leave you packless.” Parker winced and jerked his head to the side. “And whatever this is, I won’t let it happen to you.”
“Then you need to go back to the States, right? Back to your alpha, Caine. We can sort that. I already have a ticket—not that we need to go on the same flight, well, flights, but…”
“No.” He took her hands in his and kissed them gently. “I don’t want to go back to the Guinnesses. Caine is fine, he’s nothing like Parker, but I still didn’t have any choice about joining his pack. There is another option, though. I…”
His voice stopped in his throat. He was staring at their joined hands, not meeting her eyes. She uncurled one finger and tipped his head up so he was looking at her.
“What can I do?” she asked.
Fleance’s eyes were dark—with longing, with exhaustion, with that cold, wretched loneliness of the hound without a pack. “Claim me.” He swallowed. “Like you did Parker.”
“No.” She put a finger on Fleance’s lips before he could reply. Her heart was racing. “That’s not a no no. I would do anything to help you. I will claim you, but not like with him.”
Relief washed over her, full of the light of the mate bond, and Fleance pressed his forehead against her hands. “Thank you,” he whispered.
A shiver went down her spine. Half freaked out, half… excited?
Fleance was already hers. They were bound together by the mate bond, as equals. If she wanted to claim Fleance—and oh, hell, did she—did that make her a bad person? Like Parker?
She peered at the solar system whirling inside her head. Her in the middle and the single soul circling like a planet around the sun—Angus Parker.
No, she decided. She wouldn’t be like Parker. She wasn’t like Parker. Fleance wanted her to claim him and her wanting the same thing wasn’t about controlling him. He was trusting her to be even more intimately connected to him than the mate bond allowed.
In a way it would make her as vulnerable to him as he was to her.
Maybe that’s why Parker ruled with his boot on his pack’s necks, Sheena thought, and immediately pushed the thought away. She didn’t give a shit about Parker right now. The most important person in her life was right in front of her.
She rested one hand on Fleance’s chest and kissed him.
“I’m going to clean my teeth first,” she told him.
* * *
Two minutes later:
“This is torture,” Fleance groaned from where he was sitting on the edge of the tub.
*I’m not going to claim you with dirty teeth!* Sheena told him. Again. *I bit Parker with these teeth! Well, with my hellsheep’s version of these teeth. Either way, that’s fucking feral.*
“Fine.” Fleance stood up. “Then I’m going to take a shower.”
This is torture, she thought, watching him in the mirror.
Fleance stripped off his jacket and dropped it on the floor. He was bare-chested underneath. Sheena had borrowed his shirt for the drive back into town, and promptly disintegrated it when she shifted to sneak through the corridors. Fleance’s skin was scuffed with dirt, as though he’d brought along the mud he’d picked up in his hellhound form the same way he shifted with his clothes intact.
His pants joined his jacket on the floor. Then his boxers. Sheena let out a toothpaste-flavored groan as he stepped into the tub. His body was pure muscular power, honed and polished until his every movement was like a dance. A sexy shower dance. He stood under the water, turning so that it ran over every inch of his body. Over his face, his toned chest, the hard lines of his abs. It trickled down his hips, caught in the deep grooves of his V and then…
Sheena groaned out loud and threw her toothbrush down. Fleance crossed his arms and leaned against the shower wall.
“You’ve already had a shower,” he protested as she slid her dressing gown over her shoulders.
“Hush,” she commanded as she stepped into the shower with him. Hot
