“Diesel,” Wolfe snapped.
He lifted both hands. “What? I’m just saying what everyone here is thinking.”
Dex squared his shoulders. “If the Pack Council is controlling rogues, then none of us are safe. Not Emberfell. Not Blueridge. Not Stonefang.”
The Hollow pulsed under my feet—sharp, warning,angry—and I shuffled my feet.
Diesel’s head whipped toward me. “You feeling that?”
I nodded slowly. “It’s reacting to his words.”
“Or to him,” Diesel muttered.
Dex looked exhausted. “I’m not your enemy.”
“Not yet,” Diesel said. “But I’m watching you.” He leaned in, low enough that only Dex and I heard it. “And if you lie to my alpha again, I’ll gut you before he even gets the chance.”
Dex didn’t back down. “Then let me prove myself instead.”
Diesel snorted. “Good. I love watching people fail.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Diesel?—”
“What? I’m being honest with him.”
“He threatened to gut me,” Dex said, baffled, looking to his alpha and Wolfe for support.
“He was being nice,” I said to Wolfe, trying to defend the male beside me, and then remembered that Wolfe knew Diesel better than I did.
The other alpha looked at Wolfe. “Should we go?”
Wolfe sighed. “No.” He held out his hand to me, and I walked over, taking it and squeezing his fingers in warning, because he and I had a fight coming; it wasn’t just Diesel who was pissed at him today. “This is my mate, Rowen.”
“Jaxson, Alpha of the Emberfell Pack.”
I nodded. “The second oldest brother.” I remembered meeting Dex all those months ago when he came to court me. To court my pack.
“I am.” He looked at me curiously.
“Your brother told us, when he came here the first time.”
“Ah, that.”
“Indeed,” Wolfe murmured. “That.”
There was an awkward silence, and since I’d missed the start of it, I wasn’t sure how to salvage this. Plus, my mate had let the druid drug me. So there wasthaton top of everything else.
“You told the druid to keep me away from the fighting?”
Wolfe’s fingers tightened slightly around mine. “I will do whatever I can to keep you safe. I won’t apologize for that.”
“They drugged me.”
Wolfe turned to look down at me, his eyebrow raised. “What do you mean the druid drugged you? Is that safe? For your or our child?”
“Make sure it doesn’t happen again,” I murmured to him. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Diesel was grinning, and I narrowed my eyes at him, which only made his grin wider.
