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Tess, get your ass back here.
There’s no answer, but no more than a minute later, Tess breezes through the doorway, shooting me a look that tells me she’s less than impressed by me summoning her back again. It’s been this way all night. I thought things might settle as the sun went down and the pack started to retire to their rooms for the night, but she only seems to have doubled down on her efforts to check on everyone over and over again.
It’s fucking exhausting me, and I’m not even the one doing it.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Tess asks her friend softly, offering her a hand to help her up.
Morgan gestures to the sculpture still laying on the floor. “I knocked that over. I can pick it up, or if you don’t want me to touch it—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tess cuts her off, “it’s no big deal at all.” Tess picks up the weird abstract piece that was on the side table and then tosses it toward me without warning. “Why do we even have this sitting out? It’s kind of tacky anyway.”
“I’m more than happy to get rid of it,” I deadpan. I don’t actually give a damn about the artwork. Tess could burn every piece in this place as far as I’m concerned.
No, the only thing I give a damn right now is Tess. She’s running herself ragged, and I have a bad feeling it’s because she’s trying to outrun her own feelings about what happened today. I want her to let me care for her, but instead she’s wrapping herself up in caring for everyone else.
“I need to talk to you for a minute, Tess,” I tell her before she starts to fuss over her friend too much to pull away for a moment.
“Can it wait?” she asks distractedly, guiding Morgan into a chair.
“No,” I tell her. “It really can’t.” A few more minutes of this, and I’m going to be carrying her off to our room myself. She would be mad at me, but we can’t keep going on like this all night. I need to be able to put my hands on her. To see for myself that she’s okay.
“Okay. Hey, Mo? We’ll be right back, okay?” The friend nods.
Tess follows me out into the empty hall. Part of me expects to have regressed completely, for her to have crawled back into her shell and want nothing to do with me again. So I’m relieved when she steps close and slides her arms around my middle.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s getting late.”
I relax for the first time all night, tucking her firmly into my arms and squeezing tightly enough that she’s got no chance of pulling away. There’s nothing quite like closing my eyes and breathing her in. Until my hand brushes metal. It takes me a second, but when I realize what it is, I pull the dagger out of the waistband of her pants.
“Dominic…”
“Have you been carrying this around all night?” I ask, my voice angry.
“It makes me feel safe,” she whispers, pulling back and trying to reach to take it from me. I hold it easily out of her reach. I don’t trust the dagger because I don’t trust that Maren gave it to her. And I told Tess to put it in the safe hours ago.
She reaches up on her toes, trying to get close enough to grab the weapon. Instead, I use her new height to lean to her with a kiss. It’s chaste enough for public but behind it is a thread of tension just waiting to snap.
“I don’t like this business with Maren. Where would she have gotten one of your family heirlooms—if that story is even true?” I look over the dagger. It does look like an heirloom, and based on the structure of it, it’s the kind of dagger meant for using, not just for show. “Here.” I hand the dagger back to my mate against my better judgement. Even if I try to keep it from her, I’ve learned by now that she does whatever the hell she wants anyway. If I hid it, she’d somehow manage to find it and probably come back with three new ones.
No thank you, my wolf slides in coolly. His ego is still a little hurt over being sidelined by a woman during the fight.Even if it was kind of hot, he chimes in again, shameless.
Tess tucks the knife back into her waistband. “I know you’ve been waiting for me to go to bed, but I still need to figure out what to do about Morgan. She has no pack to go home to right now, but she’s in no shape to fend for herself either.” Tess stares at me pointedly, the decision I’m sure already made before she approached me.
“Okay.” I nod, already knowing where this is going. “And Luca can keep an eye on her while she’s here. He owes us.” He won’t appreciate being given a proper babysitting job, but the asshole has a lot of groveling to do before I trust him as my Beta again.
The good news is, he’s no longer the closest thing I have to a partner. That’s now Tess in every sense of the word. She really proved herself today. To the pack and to me.
“I was actually going to ask if maybe Luca could take her out to his cabin?” Tess winces like she’s prepared for a hard no. “She’s a little jumpy, and I’m worried the pack house is going to be too much for her come morning when some of the shock wears off. Out at the cabin, it’s nice and quiet. She might not love being stuck there with Luca at first, but I think she’ll realize pretty quickly that he would never hurt her. I think it would be good for the two of them. She needs to feel safe, and he needs to prove himself capable after the mess with Maren.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” I assure her. “You’re his Luna, send him wherever you see fit.” I’m certainly not going to argue with Luca spending a few days away from my mate.
“Thank you. Let me get the two of them on their way off, then I promise I’ll come to bed.” This time when she goes up on her toes, it’s for the kiss.
* * *
After another hour, we finally manage to make it to our bedroom in the pack house. I slide into the bed as Tess finishes up in the bathroom, my eyes trained on the door waiting for her. I almost insisted she keep it open, but I knew that would end in a fight.
I’m not expecting her to walk out completely naked.
