Tangling with the Tiger: Lone Pine Pride, Book 5 (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Over the next few days, Grace threw herself into pride business.

She never saw Dominec—though she often searched empty rooftops for the sight of his fur. After a few short hours of sleep to recharge at his place, she had woken alone and returned to her office to get on with running the world.

The Hawk had found Madison and after he brought her in, Grace talked to him about staying on at the pride long-term and taking their ill-trained security forces in hand. He’d resisted, concerned about Rachel’s safety at the pride—what the fuck was it with men and their obsessive need for
safety
?—but eventually relented after talking to the doc.

Rachel had become a pet project of Patch and Lila’s. The Alpha’s mate and her best friend had decided to wage a PR war within the pride to make sure everyone knew that Rachel was not like those
other
Organization bastards. A public ceremony of gratitude was scheduled for the pride’s communal Thanksgiving ceremony—which would be bigger than ever this year, thanks to all the new members.

Grace hadn’t officially accepted the Second position yet, not wanting to rush into anything so major, but Roman had already started directing people to her for smaller decisions on pride business. She had her place. Irreplaceable.

And she still hadn’t gone out to see her parents since she got back.

She told herself it was because she was busy—and God knew that was true—but the fact was she just didn’t know what she would say. If she told them about the Second position and they suddenly stopped judging her and approved of her choices, she might have to hate them for that. Like if their love really did prove to be that conditional she wouldn’t be able to forgive.

Which was ridiculous—at least that’s what she told herself—but she was already on edge, her nerves strung razor-wire tight and the last thing she needed was her parents gouging into her confidence in the way only family seemed to be able to do. She didn’t know how to get to a place where their opinions didn’t matter and she couldn’t control how she would react to their reactions—so she stayed away.

The wolves had—shockingly—proved incredibly helpful. Between Adrian, the Archive and Zoe and Tyler, they now had contact information for a hundred and twenty shifter groups in North America. Since the Organization hadn’t spread to other continents yet—that they knew of—those would be the shifters who would need to rise up and fight against them.

Mateo had figured out whatever code he needed to use the shifter masking technology to identify possible shifter strongholds and that information confirmed the Archive’s accuracy. Kye, Grace and Zoe were working together to compose a plea that would go out to all of them the day after Thanksgiving. Grace agonized over each word, knowing that their message could be the difference between cooperation and failure.

Roman had decided to postpone making the announcement about the coming attack until after the feast—giving his pride a few more days of normalcy, he called it, but nothing was normal these days. Rumors were already working their way around the pride. Everyone knew the fight was coming. It was just a question of when.

Life at the pride consumed Grace—but it did nothing to help her figure out what to do about Dominec.

She only knew he hadn’t left the pride lands because Kye and Adrian reported seeing him.

Her friendly neighborhood stalker was missing. And she missed him.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, Grace bent over a table with Zoe in one of the small conference rooms in the Alpha’s mansion, going over the Big Plea for Unity and Attack one more time. Kye had been called away, but Grace and Zoe were actually doing all right without a mediator.

If she was honest, she was almost starting to like the southern lioness. Amazing how much better Zoe seemed in comparison to Amala and the Creeper Twins. They were practically friends now. Patch hadn’t been wrong that they were similar in a lot of ways. Zoe was more impulsive than Grace, more inclined to push the limits and fly off in a temper, but they both spoke their minds and held their own in prides where males tended to think they were masters of the universe.

It was that mutual respect for forthrightness that told Grace Zoe wouldn’t react badly when she said, “You know, I kind of hated you at first.”

Zoe didn’t even look up from her latest scan of the twenty-seventh draft of the letter. “Of course you did.”

Grace snorted. “Of course?”

“We both want to be Head Bitch all the time. Neither of us could respect a weak female, but neither can we tolerate challenges to our dominance. There was going to be some friction until we figured out if we were going to have to try to kick one another’s ass or if we could work together.” She pointed to a paragraph midway down the page. “Are you sure this language is strong enough?”

“It’s strong enough,” Grace insisted. The verbiage Zoe had originally written sounded more like a thinly veiled threat than a call to action. “When did you decide you didn’t want to try to kick my ass?” she asked, curious.

But before Zoe could answer, the door to the small conference room opened and Patch poked her head in. “You guys, go home,” she scolded, shoving the door open farther so they could see Lila in the hallway behind her. “If the letter isn’t perfect by now, staring at it for another three hours isn’t going to help and you’re going to need your rest tomorrow. Lone Pine doesn’t screw around when we party.” She directed the last at Zoe.

“This Thanksgiving is going to be bigger than ever,” Lila put in. The lioness was Patch’s best friend and the former Alpha’s daughter. She was also somewhat of the pride authority on parties. “Everyone needs a reminder of what we’re going to be fighting for.”

And everyone is desperate for one last chance to play before we have to fight,
Grace added in her head, though she didn’t ruin the determinedly cheerful mood by saying the words aloud.

“Tyler and I will be there,” Zoe promised, setting down the tablet they had been using to tweak the letter. “What about you, Grace?” she prodded. “You bringing that sexy hunk of a boyfriend of yours? Or is it not a bring-a-date thing?”

“Kelly isn’t my boyfriend.”

Zoe arched a brow. “I wasn’t talking about Kelly.”

“Ooh,” Lila cooed. “Are we going to gossip about hot guys? Hang on. Lemme text Whiskey. We haven’t had a girls’ night in weeks.”

“And Rachel,” Patch added, when Lila reached for her phone. “We need to remember to include her in pride stuff.”

“This isn’t pride stuff,” Grace protested, but neither Lila nor Patch were listening to her.

“She won’t want to come. She and the Hawk are in the love bubble,” Lila protested as her thumbs sent texts at warp speed.

“Oh please. Like you aren’t in the love bubble too.” Patch rolled her eyes.

“You’re one to talk,” Lila countered.

“Excuse me,” Patch said, exaggeratedly offended. “I do not make moony eyes at Roman and get all girly and fluttery every time I hear his name.”

“If you say so.”

“
I
wasn’t the one who insisted we talk to Rachel about cross-breed pairings with visions of little shifter babies dancing in my head.”

“You weren’t protesting very hard,” Lila taunted.

“Shut up,” Zoe interrupted the bickering. “You’re both in the love bubble. Suck it up.”

“This from a woman who still makes moony eyes at her mate,” Grace put in, lest Zoe get too comfortable up on her pedestal.

“They’re on their way,” Lila interjected, tucking away her phone. “And Whiskey’s bringing refreshments.”

“This is why you always make friends with the pride bartender,” Patch said with a grin. She reached for one of the empty chairs at the table, dragging it out and flopping into it before turning to Lila. “Don’t let me get too hammered. I cannot be hungover during my first Thanksgiving as Alpha’s mate.”

“Hydrate,” Lila advised, grabbing a water bottle off the sideboard where snacks were kept in case meetings ran long. She tossed the bottle to Patch and shot questioning looks at Grace and Zoe who both declined with shakes of their heads. Grabbing a water for herself, she drew another chair back from the table and sat down. “So who are we gossiping about? I feel so out of the loop.”

“You are out of the loop,” Patch told her. “That’s what happens when you spend all your waking hours playing chase the jaguar with Santiago.”

“I don’t spend all my waking hours that way,” Lila said. “Sometimes he chases me.”

Grace grinned in spite of herself. She’d never spent much time hanging out with Lila and Patch. They were enough younger than she was that it had only really been appropriate in the last couple of years and by then she’d been fully engrossed in her role as a pride lieutenant.

She had been bemoaning her lack of someone to agonize over Dominec’s first kiss with only a couple weeks earlier, but now that she had a ready-made pack of females to gossip with, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to talk about the complicated and confusing situation she found herself in with the tiger.

She’d always been the one handing out advice and telling others to get their heads out of their asses and embrace true love, but it was a lot harder to be on the receiving end. She liked her emotional superiority, thank you very much. This being vulnerable and confused stuff sucked.

Whiskey and Rachel arrived within minutes—which at least brought the median age in the room closer to hers. Whiskey came bearing a couple of buckets of beers from the Den where she tended bar and a bottle of licorice-flavored liquor called Lion’s Milk.

“Who’s guarding the booze at the Den?” Grace asked as she accepted a pale ale. The shifter watering hole was known for never closing, but Grace didn’t know if she’d ever seen anyone else behind the bar other than Whiskey. Though Grace wasn’t exactly a regular. There had to be someone else. The tigress had to sleep sometime.

“One of the new cougars has some bartending experience and he’s started taking a few shifts when Tarron and I both want a night off.”

“Tarron from the advisory council?” Grace put her ale down before she sprayed it across the table. “He tends bar? Stodgy old lion with a stick up his ass?”

“I like Tarron,” Patch interjected.

“The same,” Whiskey confirmed. “He makes a Manhattan to die for.”

“Huh.”

“You didn’t get me out of my nice warm bed to talk about stodgy lions with sticks up their butts, did you?” Rachel inquired, gingerly taking a shot of Lion’s Milk. She cringed and coughed at the liquor’s kick, accepting Lila’s water when she kept choking.

“Sorry,” Whiskey said. “Should have warned you about the
raki
.”

Rachel waved away the apology, eyes tearing.

“If it comes with a warning, I’ve got to try it,” Zoe said, reaching for the bottle and a shot glass.

Which led to all of them doing a shot together out of solidarity. Grace hissed at the familiar punch of the alcohol, feeling the warmth of the potent liquor tingling all the way to her fingertips.

“So,” Patch said, thumping her shot glass down and turning to Grace. “
Dominec
.”

Whiskey held up a hand. “Wait, I thought you were with Kelly.”

“No, it’s definitely Dominec,” Patch insisted.

“
Dominec
?” Rachel asked incredulously. “Like
Dominec
Dominec?”

“What happened to Kelly?” Whiskey poured another round of
raki
one-handed. “He’s hot.”

“He’s
nice
,” Grace said, the Lion’s Milk already loosening her tongue.

“Nice is bad?” Rachel’s brow furrowed with confusion.

“Bad can be
fantastic
,” Lila said, raising her freshly refilled shot glass in a reverent toast.

Murmurs of agreement rippled around the table as they all did a shot to the wonder of
bad
.

“Is that Dominec’s appeal?” Rachel asked dubiously. “The bad boy thing?”

“No. Or, well, not entirely. He…” Words wavered and failed in her mind.

“I still don’t understand how you got from Kelly to Dominec,” Whiskey said, saving her from trying to explain exactly what she and Dominec had.

Right now it seemed like all she had was confusion.

“Things with Kelly got complicated,” she explained. “He was supposed to be this wonderful no-strings fuck buddy—and he was—but then he announced that he wanted to
court
me and he wanted us to be exclusive and have a real relationship and I just didn’t want…that.”

“Yes,” Patch said dryly. “What woman wants a man to commit to her? The horror.”

Whiskey was frowning into her beer.

“He doesn’t know me,” Grace said flatly. “When Kelly looks at me, he doesn’t see a soldier, he sees a woman.”

“Well, you are female,” Zoe snarked.

“He wants to be my shoulder to cry on. He needs me to need him. To be that needy girl who wants to let her man carry half of her burden, but that just isn’t me. Even if I was madly in love with him—which I’m not—I wouldn’t want to become who he wants me to be. So when he said he wanted us to be forever and happily-ever-after, I just…”

“You needed a replacement fuck buddy,” Lila chirped helpfully.

“No. Well, yes, but that’s so inadequate to describe it. It’s not just sex. I don’t think Dominec is capable of a simple no-strings anything.” Though he certainly excelled at the sneaking-out-in-the-middle-of-the-night portion.

“You said he was chugging the crazy Kool-Aid,” Rachel protested.

“I know and he is, but it’s complicated. He…. I don’t know. He gets me.”

Which didn’t say positive things about her own mental state, but it was still true. Dominec understood things about her without being told, things that no amount of explanation had been able to convey to Kelly.

“So Dominec is your boyfriend?” Rachel asked, still obviously confused by the idea of the tiger who terrified her being Grace’s sugar pie.

Boyfriend?
“No. That isn’t—” She tried to think of a way to explain it. “I don’t think there’s a word for what we are.”

“Grace-inec.” Patch snickered.

“Please don’t. That sounds like a chokehold,” Grace groaned.