Taryn chuckled. “Ravens can imitate a whole variety sounds, even a human voice.” As if to back her up, he made a series of gurgling and croaking noises followed by another bark. “See, LJ’s cool.”

Caleb made a choking noise. “LJ?”

“Yeah, as in Long John…Long John Silver, the sailor cook with the one leg?”

“Oh. Right.”

“Ravens only have one mate too, you know,” she said as she watched him return to the tree.

Caleb sighed. “I don’t care what you say, Taryn, there’s no way I’ll believe Joey wasn’t your true mate.”

Of course he wouldn’t, the opinionated SOB. “Just because I’m mated now doesn’t mean Joey means anything less to me than he did before. That bond we had doesn’t mean any less because he once filled a place inside me. It’s not that Trey’s replaced him, because Trey has his own place.” Not one word of that had been a lie. Now that she’d mated with Trey, he did have his own place. He just wasn’t filling it.

Shaya ran her hand through her hair, sighing. “I want you to have this, Taryn, I really do want you to have this. I’m just worried that somewhere along the way you’ll think, ‘Hey, I was wrong, he’s not my true mate at all’. Then you’ll have lost two mates. Where would that leave you? I don’t want to ever again see you in that state. And, well…For God’s sake, Taryn, how can you not be petrified of him?”

“He’s a walking time bomb, Taryn, he’s -”

Taryn held up her hand. “Look, Caleb, if you’re here to try to turn me against my own mate then you might as well save your breath to blow up your doll.”

Grinning, he shook his head and took the hand that Taryn had held up. “I want to say I’m happy for you but…well I’d be lying. I don’t want you mated to a psycho. Just swear to me that you’re happy here. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.”

In some ways, Taryn was happy. These people – with the exception of Greta, Kirk, Brock, Selma and Hope – didn’t treat her like she was inferior just because she was latent. She didn’t feel like an outsider or someone who needed to be constantly on the defensive. The atmosphere here was the total opposite of the one she had grown up in and she found it refreshing.

She had become close friends with Lydia as she spent a lot of her time helping her with her graphic design business. She was a great person to be around as she entertained Taryn non-stop with her little eccentricities and her habit of saying whatever the hell she thought. Taryn wouldn’t have thought that someone like that could be so suited to the very sensitive Cam, and yet Lydia was.

When she wasn’t with Lydia she was often with Grace who was helping her improve her cooking skills, or sometimes Rhett who was teaching her how to hack. Tao was of course often there, but as her friend just as much as her bodyguard. He was very easy to be around, he wasn’t complicated, he didn’t brood, and he didn’t blow hot and cold. Trey could learn a few things from him.

She also found that she got along pretty well with Marcus, which kind of surprised her because ordinarily she tired of flirtatious people. And Marcus was extremely flirtatious. When he turned the full force of his huge impish grin on you there was no holding back a blush. Maybe it was because he gave some fantastic shoulder massages that the flirtatiousness didn’t bother her…? Very possible.

She hadn’t realized that he and Trick scratched each other’s itch from time to time until she stumbled upon them having some fun at the lake. Damn that had been hot and it had taken all her self-control to leave rather than stay and watch. Apparently they had known she was there as Trick later teased her about it and still continued to do so on occasion. Trick was a tease in general. He seemed to get his kicks from making people blush or feel uncomfortable, but as he targeted Selma and Kirk a lot, Taryn was totally fine with it.

Although Ryan didn’t talk much and mostly communicated through grunts, Taryn rather liked him. Unlike everyone else, she spoke to him as though she actually expected him to respond until eventually he began to talk to her a little. She wasn’t surprised to find that Ryan was quite intelligent, even more so than Rhett. He was very big brotherly with her, as opposed to Dominic who often asked her what color her underwear was and tried to look down her shirt a lot. He was the worst perv ever and constantly hit her with dirty chat up lines which he didn’t need to use – just one look at him had females drooling. He seemed to just enjoy being a perv, and yet it was impossible not to like him. Dante was another person who was impossible to dislike, but behind his laidback ‘I don’t take life seriously attitude’ was an astute, diplomatic, extremely observant person.

Trey’s withdrawal from her, however, tainted her otherwise happy state. She knew it was a good thing that they didn’t spend much time together. She knew it was best that she didn’t find herself happy here when she had every intention of leaving. Still, it stung because she got the feeling that Trey’s withdrawal had nothing to do with that and everything to do with the simple fact that he didn’t desire her.

Seriously, who would want to be lying in the same bed each night with someone who purposely left enough room between them to fit an elephant? Worse, she couldn’t argue with the fact that she did still belong to him in a sense. Who would want to belong to someone who didn’t want them?

She was considering moving into one of the guest rooms, but she suspected that if she increased the distance between them it would only make her wolf worse. Her wolf was restless and miserable enough after going a week with only minimum contact with her mate. What Taryn was thankful for was that she and her wolf were in perfect accord on one thing – there would be no begging her mate for more no matter how bad things were.

Taryn consoled herself with the reminder that this would all be over in just over ten weeks and then, with any luck, she might be able to switch to the pack her uncle belonged to. She had been delighted when she discovered that her uncle’s pack was signed up to the USA Pack Webs. She had sent him a nice friendly message, asking how he was doing and stuff – of course not mentioning that she and Trey weren’t true mates. Only when Darryl’s challenge was over would she let the information loose. Her hope was that she might first be able to sort an alliance between Trey and her uncle’s Alpha. Not only would this benefit Trey, but it might increase her chances of the Alpha agreeing to let her join his pack at a later date.

Taryn was snapped out of her thoughts as Caleb abruptly dropped her hand and his gaze was drawn to something over her shoulder. She turned to see Trey strolling toward her looking as sexy and intimidating as always. Time for Scene Two: Looking Lovey-Dovey. She hadn’t expected that it would be so hard emotionally to fake intimacy with a person, but it felt so weird and uncomfortable because it wasn’t real. On the plus side, some physical contact with him would calm her wolf a little.

Trey grabbed the chair beside Taryn, turned it to face her and then sat before lifting her from her own seat and placing her on his lap, straddling him. He couldn’t help marvelling over how well she fit there and at the same time being annoyed about it. His c*ck wasn’t annoyed, it was quickly rising to attention – especially as she was wearing those ‘bend me over and f**k me now’ knee boots. “Hey.” After skimming his nose along the crook of her neck to again take her scent deep into him, he gave her a lingering kiss. He’d missed her taste. “How’s my girl doing?”

“Fine.” She almost purred as he ran his hands up and down her back. Her wolf was lazing, content, within her. It didn’t matter to her wolf that the entire thing was an act. All that mattered was that she was having physical contact with her mate.

Unable to resist, Trey licked over his mark and smiled as she quivered. “I know you wanted some time with your friends, but I don’t like it when you’re out of my sight for too long.” It was a pain in the ass that that was the truth. Although he spent little time with her, he would still seek her out several times a day – usually every few hours – just to check on her.

“That’s okay, I missed you.” She brushed her lips against his and then gestured to her edgy looking friends. “And Shaya and Caleb don’t mind.”

He gave them a simple nod of acknowledgement which they returned with shaky smiles. His attention quickly returned to Taryn as he drank in the sight of her in a way that he usually only did when no one was watching.

“Have you noticed my surveillance team?”

Trey smiled. “I noticed. I approve.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she grumbled.

He shrugged unrepentantly as he spoke against those luscious lips. “I like knowing you’re safe.”

“And yet you haven’t thrown out your inherently evil grandmother.”

Chuckling, he shaped her waist with his hands. “I know she’s being a little difficult right now, but she’s one of those people who grow on you.”

“No, she’s one of those people who are like Slinkies.”

“Slinkies?”

“Yeah. Basically useless, but they make you smile when you push them down the stairs.”

He laughed before nibbling and sucking on her earlobe. “She’ll come round.”

A shiver wracked Taryn’s body as he grazed his teeth over his mark. “Trey, you can’t do that in public. It has an embarrassing effect.” His totally wicked laugh made her nervous. Of course the bastard nipped at her mark. Deciding some retaliation wouldn’t be such a bad thing, she very slightly grinded against his very hard c*ck – he might not particularly desire her, but his body would still react to his mate’s scent. He groaned against her neck.

Trey knew he could leave now. They had done enough touchy-feely stuff and she probably still had things to talk about with her friends. In fact, he should leave – her friends were anxious and uncomfortable when he was around as though they expected him to lunge at them or something. But he couldn’t bring himself to break the contact with Taryn. Instead, he lazed back into his seat and pulled her forward so that she was draped across his chest. “Don’t mind me, you carry on talking. I won’t even be listening, I’m too distracted by your scent.” Another truth.

As he looked over her shoulder he saw that Tao was looking at them with envy in his expression, envy that he wasn’t bothering to conceal. Holding Tao’s gaze, Trey knotted a hand in Taryn’s hair – a gesture of possessiveness, a reminder that she was his. Tao lowered his eyes and continuing staring at his book. Did he know it was upside down?

“How’s my dad?” Taryn asked Shaya, groaning as Trey began gently massaging her back.

“Feel good, baby?” he asked. She nodded against his chest.

“Alternating from being angry with you to wondering if just maybe this mating could be more beneficial than the one with Roscoe would have been,” Shaya replied to Taryn’s question, her expression studious as she observed Taryn and Trey together.

“Thought as much,” grumbled Taryn before then groaning again. “Trey, your hands are magical.”

“You already knew that.” He groaned again as her body shook against his chest as she laughed, sending all kinds of interesting vibrations through him and his very hard cock. He combed his fingers through her hair. “I love the way it has all those different shades of blonde in it and even a little bit of red.” Another truth.

“It annoys me. It can’t seem to decide what color it wants to be.”

“It has me curious.”

She lifted her head, resting her chin on his chest. “About?”

In a voice too low for anyone else to hear, he said, “Well as much as I like you bald down there, I wouldn’t mind knowing if the color of the carpet matches the curtains.”

She slapped his chest. “Trey!”

“Oh look,” snickered a familiar, annoying, witchy voice. Greta. “Not only is she lounging all over you like a slut, but she’s flashing her underwear to all and sundry.”

Glancing back, Taryn saw that the top of her red lacy thong had ridden above her jeans. “Do you like it? I quite like your blouse, Greta. Wouldn’t you like to slip into something more comfortable, though? Perhaps a coma?”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you sarcasm’s the lowest form of wit?” Greta turned to Shaya and Caleb. “Do us all a favor and take this hussy with you when you leave.”

Taryn sighed. “How about we play fetch with a twist, Greta – I’ll throw the ball for you, but just don’t come back. What do you think?”

Huffing, the old woman marched off. Taryn smiled at a chuckling Trey before laying her head back on his chest, facing Shaya and Caleb. She wondered what their odd expressions meant. She finally found out an hour later as she walked them to Shaya’s SUV.

“I told you that what really matters is that you’re happy,” said Caleb. “And it seems like you are.”

“Is that your way of saying that I have your blessing?”

“I’m still having trouble getting my head around him being your true mate but…well you act like true mates and he obviously adores you. That’s enough for me. I have to admit I’m kind of jealous that everyone around us seems to have mated.”

She patted his arm. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your own true mate is somewhere just waiting for you to find her, and I’m sure she’s the next model up from the inflatable one you already have.”

“Bitch,” he said affectionately.