“Am I the only one thinking it’s a hell of a coincidence that he was there when Rosemary shot Mila?” asked Dante, to which Ryan grunted in what was probably a “no,” but Dominic couldn’t be sure.
“Rosemary didn’t know him,” said Mila. “He tried to sneak up on her, and she warned him off. There was no flash of recognition on her face.” Mila shook her head, repeating, “This just doesn’t make sense. I never got the impression that he had any beef with me.”
“He watches you,” Dominic remembered. “Not with lust, though. Not with distaste. But something about you has his attention.”
Vinnie rubbed at his jaw. “I only spoke with him briefly earlier. He left the barbershop shortly after you did. Do you have his address, Mila?”
“All his information is in the client database,” she told him.
Tate whipped out his phone. “I’ll get the address from Archie.”
“Good,” said Vinnie as his son left the room to make the call. “Then I’ll pay the bobcat a visit.”
Mila straightened in her seat. “I’ll be with you.”
Dominic stiffened as everything in him rebelled against the idea of her being anywhere near the bastard who, for some unknown reason, wanted her dead. Especially while she wasn’t at 100 percent. “Baby, you’re still tired from blood loss. You haven’t had enough rest to recover.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“No, you’re not. You’re pale and shaky. And don’t even lie and tell me you’re not drained—I can feel it.” Her exhaustion brushed at his mind somehow, and he knew it was a result of the imprinting process progressing.
She frowned. “Feel it?”
“You can’t feel what I’m feeling right now?”
Mila realized that, yes, she could feel the echo of an emotion that wasn’t hers. A soul-deep anxiety. She sighed. “Dominic—”
“You almost died today, Mila.” The reminder made his chest tighten and his wolf snarl. “No one can bounce back from something like that in a matter of hours. Rest. Get your strength back.”
Mila couldn’t deny that she needed that rest, but she also couldn’t sit back while others apprehended the person who’d put her life in danger. She lifted her chin. “I’ll stay if you stay.” Which she was positive he’d never agree to do.
His brows snapped together. “Excuse me?”
“If you get a grip on Dean, you won’t ask questions. Not while you’re in this mood. The only thing on your mind is eradicating the threat to me.” She could sense it as clearly as she could sense the tension in the room. “You won’t even give him a warning. You’ll just kill him. I want answers.”
Dominic clenched his jaw, not bothering to refute her accusation. “The ‘why’ of what he’s done doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. If you stay, I’ll stay. If not, we both go.” In which case, she could stop him from killing Dean until she’d at least questioned him. Mila shrugged, leaving the decision up to Dominic, but pretty sure he’d back down. Seconds of uncomfortable silence ticked by, but she met his cold stare boldly.
His nostrils flared. “Fine. I’ll stay.”
Her head almost jerked back. “Seriously?”
“I know you were counting on me being so determined to get to Dean that I’d backpedal and agree to not fight you on coming along, but your health is more important than my need to rip out his throat.” Even though that need pounded through his system, fraying the edges of his control. “Besides, it’s best if you keep a low profile for a while.”
Mila’s spine would have snapped straight if she hadn’t been so tired. “It’s not in my nature to hide.”
“I’m not asking you to hide. I’m asking you to lie low—that’s different.”
“No, it’s not,” she clipped. “And you don’t get to dismiss my strength.”
Dominic ground his teeth, anger blowing through him hot and fast. “A jackal tried to shoot you. A death adder tried to drown you. A cheetah poisoned you while I was standing right there. At no point did I ask you to hide, even though I wanted to, because I know exactly how strong you are. I didn’t even fight you on your determination to stay in your apartment building.
“I know you’re a force to be fucking reckoned with, Mila. And I know it would hurt you if I implied differently, so I shelved my own fears for you. But today, a neurotic bitch shot you in the fucking chest. A human. Easy to take down. But none of us managed it before she could hurt you. None of us. Sometimes, being strong isn’t enough.”
Mila couldn’t argue that, but . . . “There’s no longer a price on my head, and Rosemary is no longer a factor, so the danger has passed.”
Dominic shook his head. “Pierson’s articles and my pack’s responses garnered a lot of attention. His daughter just tried to kill you. This is going to turn into a media circus. He’s going to lose his shit, and he’s going to somehow blame us for Rosemary’s actions. Extremists will side with him, deeming you a shifter groupie, and they might try to attack you.
“All kinds of people are going to show up near your building and the barbershop. Reporters, video bloggers, nosy-ass people. It’s going to be a security nightmare for your pride. There is no way they can keep a close watch on you during that time.”
Vinnie sighed, his expression grim. “He’s right, Mila. The street was packed with people when we left. This will be plastered all over the internet. You know from what happened to Bracken’s family exactly how far the extremists will go. You know how much they love tossing firebombs through the windows of shops, houses, and apartment buildings.”
“Don’t think of staying here as lying low,” Luke said to her. “Think of it as making it hard for any bastards to get near you. Think of it as protecting the pride, even. If the extremists choose to target you, and they believe you’re here—”
“They’ll bomb Phoenix Pack territory,” Mila snapped. “Does that not matter to anyone here?”
“The dwelling is too deep within the land for any bombs to hit it,” said Trey. “They might cause damage to the surrounding woods, but that would be all. And we have precautions in place to deal with such events.”
James tilted his head as he spoke to Trey. “It won’t bother you to have her here, knowing it could bring danger to your territory?”
“She’s Dominic’s mate—that’s all I need to know,” said Trey. “And there’ll always be a possibility of danger coming our way, because there’ll always be extremists. That’s the reason why no shifter in their right mind would ever start a war with the fuckers. You can’t kill prejudice. It’ll sadly always exist, which means there will always be people who want to act on it. A war would only lead to pointless deaths, nothing more.”
Alex nodded. “The Movement does a good job of handling the extremists anyway. The rates of attacks have lowered dramatically, and the extremists have lost a lot of support from their own kind. With all the PR work that shifter groups have been doing, humans and shifters are coexisting more peacefully than ever before. But, as you said, there’ll always be prejudice. Dean’s problem with my sister could be that he has something against pallas cats.”