  Gio looked up from an old photograph of his dead mother when he heard the knock on his office door. &quot;Come in.&quot; As he expected, Chris strolled
  inside. He had also anticipated Duda tagging along since he was a nosy bastard. Both wolves took the seats in front of Gio&quot;s thick desk. Shoving
  the photo underneath the slip of papers beside it, he focused his attention on Chris.
  &quot;I&quot;m electing you as Danica&quot;s personal bodyguard.&quot; The Head Enforcer nodded agreeably, which sort of stunned Gio. &quot;You know what this means, don&quot;t you? I&quot;ll need to pull you away from your usual duties because your main priority will be Danica&quot;s safety.&quot;
  &quot;Someone else will become Head Enforcer, I know,&quot; said Chris with a nod.
  &quot;I was sort of expecting a protest.&quot;
  Chris shrugged. &quot;I considered it an honor when I was made Head 

  Just as she had each morning over the past week, Danica was on the kitchen counter sipping her coffee while engaged in a staring contest with dear old Lindy. It was practically ritualistic for them to partake in a battle of wills whenever they were in the same room. Each and every time, Danica would leave the room smiling while Lindy was purple in the face and.growling. Once Lindy had realized that she wasn&quot;t going to scare Danica off,
  she had taken to simply insulting her and generally being difficult. In truth, Danica found the whole thing just as entertaining as everyone else did. As usual, they were all eating quietly as they waited for the verbal spar to begin.
  &quot;What are you looking at, hussy?&quot; Lindy finally spat.
  &quot;I haven&quot;t figured that out yet.&quot;
  Huffing, Lindy drank down more of her green herbal tea. &quot;I hope you&quot;re not getting comf

  Those urges had nothing to do with Danica as a person and everything to do with the fact that she was who he had mated. If she had been someone else, things would still have been the same.
  Would they really though? a voice in his head questioned, a part of him who thought he was talking out of his ass.
  Of course it would. That wasn"t to say that he didn"t like Danica. He did.
  And he respected her which said a lot. And yeah, okay, there was that weird thing between them, that primal hunger. And she made him laugh, and she was refreshing because she wasn"t afraid of him or to speak her mind in front of him, and she;
  Dammit, no! No, the attraction was mostly just due to their mating. It was just his instincts driving him, not his regard for Danica. Gio wasn"t at the mercy of those instincts or his wolf. He had a mind of his own and that mind was going to rule how he behaved from here on out.
  Unless the situation required him to touch her, like when they were posing as mates, he would resist doing so. Probably be best not to have sex with her again given that he could never resist the urge to mark her whenever he was inside her, but he couldn"t guarantee that sex wouldn"t happen because if she made advances he very much doubted he"d be able to ignore them.
  To satisfy his overprotectiveness he would allocate her a bodyguard. No his wolf wouldn"t like her spending large amounts of time with another
  male, but his wolf would just have to deal with it because Gio was going to get a handle on this situation and he was going to start now.
  Danica jerked awake at the sound of laughing. Three heads that had been leaning against her legs swerved around.
  "Oh sorry," said Chris, "it"s just that this episode of Friends is hilarious."
  "They"re all hilarious," she mumbled as she sat upright. Andrew and Chris each scooted over a little so that she had room to stretch her legs out.
  "How are you feeling?" asked a voice to her right as a finger trailed down her cheek.
  She looked up to see Michey. "Fine, thanks." It was only then that she realized that they were all gathered around her. She understood what this meant. Not only had they been offering her comfort, they accepted her as a member of the pack. Temporary member of the pack, she reminded herself.
  "You look better," said Chris.
  "How long was I out?" she asked no one in particular as she stretched her arms which were a little stiff from her position.
  "About an hour," replied Dante.
  "You should have woken me, I didn"t need to sleep that long."
  Chris, who was rubbing his jaw against her knee, asked, "Do you always need sleep after you use your gift?"
  She shook her head. "I was just tired because Gio had so many injuries, even though they weren"t serious and that bad . Where is he anyway?"
  Duda suddenly seemed a little uncomfortable. "He went to have a shower and um&hellip;he"s probably making some calls or something in his
  office."
  In other words, he hadn"t reappeared to check on her. Why should he though?
  "You need anything?" asked Michey. "Coffee or something?"
  Danica waved her hand. "I can get it, I"m fine."
  "No," they all said in unison before Michey rushed from the room.
  She rolled her eyes. "I"m not an invalid."
  "No," agreed Lucy, "but you"re our Alpha female which means we look out for you."
  "Come on, you know it"s only temporary, you don"t need to take things so far."
  "Then let us just do it temporarily."
  "Is there anything else you want?" asked Michey as she handed her a huge mug of coffee.
  Danica took the mug gratefully and sipped from it. "Actually, I was wondering if any of you have a computer I could use once I"ve had a shower."
  "I do," said Jeremy. "It"s in my room."
  "Then let"s go." Seeing that they were all ready to object to her moving just yet, she held up her hand. "I said I"m fine. As much as I appreciate the
  concern, I"m going to need you all to stop fussing." Wearing petulant expressions, they gave her space to rise and leave. A shower and a change of clothes later she was in Jeremy's bedroom. It
  was smaller than Gio"s and had quite a geeky feel to it. He led her to his computer corner and introduced her to his amazingly hi tech contraption. He had almost every program she could think of, thousands of games, access to all
  kinds of confidential shit and a mind that worked just as fast as that piece of technology. She didn"t know whether to be impressed or freaked out. "So, in short, you"re a hacker. I can just about manage e-mailing."
  "Hacking"s not as hard as you might think. It"s pretty much like sex; you want to get in and out leaving little trace of you ever having been there.
  So, what do you need?"
  "I just need access to the internet. I"ve probably been disconnected from my old pack web so I"ll need to join yours."
  "Your what?"
  "You don"t have a pack web?" Danica was surprised considering he seemed to have everything else.
  He shook his head. "What is it?"
  "It"s kind of like a social network but it"s exclusive to whoever is in your pack." "A little like Facebook and Twitter."
  "Exactly, only it"s not so much to encourage social interaction as it is to showcase your pack. Let me show you."
  After typing in the http address, Danica took them to the homepage of USA Pack Webs. Entering her name and password, she was then immediately
  transferred to a visual of what was termed the Dark Moon pack web; her old pack.
  It was a little like looking at an image of the solar system, only instead of the sun being in the center it was a photo of the Alpha, her dad. And instead of planets being dotted around the eight surrounding circles of the sun, individual photos of each pack member were randomly dotted around the circles. Her own photo was set aside as if free floating in space. Oh yeah she"d been disconnected alright.
  "Because we"re not part of the pack, we don"t have access to this web which means we can"t see the public blog and add to it, but watch this."
  Using the mouse, she moved the arrow to point on one of the photos and instantly the photo enlarged and a little personal information on that pack
  member came up; it was like looking at a baseball card, only it was referred to as an information card.
  Jeremy read it aloud. "Full Name: Mingan Ashina. Gender: Female.
  Age: Twenty one. Status: Unmated. Rank: Subordinate. Challenges: Six
  Challenges Won: Four."
  "That"s all you can know unless you were to gain permission from the Alpha to browse through the pack web." He turned to look at her. "Every pack has one?"
  She shook her head. "Not every pack. They"re a good thing to have, because not only is it a good way for all pack members to socially interact no
  matter where they are, but it means that other packs can get a vague idea of how powerful yours is. Look at this." Danica pointed the cursor at and
  instantly a photo popped up with a small amount of personal information underneath.
  Again Jeremy read it aloud. "Full Name: Carrick Hart. Gender: Male. . Status: Mate Deceased. Rank: Pack Alpha. Challenges: Twelve. Challenges Won: Twelve. Number of Alliances: Forty six. Total Number of Wolves: Thirty two." He seemed lost in thought for a moment before turning his attention back to Danica. "So we could create our own web?"
  She nodded. "Easy. You just need to sign up first to USA Pack Webs.
  You know, this would be a good way to form alliances. Other Alphas now have a way of getting in touch with Gio without risking turning up only to
  get their head chewed off."
  "How could they contact him?"
  "See the option on the top right of the information card, Send Message. The same option is on everybody"s information card. Speaking of which, let me just check to see if I have any." She double-clicked on her own card and saw a notice that she had forty nine messages.
  "Forty nine ?"
  "It"ll just be people wanting to know if the mating"s real and all that.
  All I"m interested in is whether Suza and Rick have been in touch." It turned out that they had both been in touch. Again they both expressed
  concerned about her safety and tried convincing her that she was wrong about Gio being her true mate, asking to meet up with her so they could all talk. "I think that"s exactly what I"m going to have to do."
  "What?"
  "Meet up with them. They"re not buying that the mating is real. If they hear it from my mouth, if I can convince them that I"m fine and Gio doesn"t
  intend to hurt me, then maybe they"ll accept it. They"re both tenacious bastards, they won"t let this go."
  Jeremy sighed. "I doubt Gio will let you leave the property."
  Let her leave? Snort. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms.
  "Actually I was thinking that if they see me here in this setting it might be more believable for them."
  "You"re probably right there. Okay, you got time to help me with this before you go ask Gio?"
  "Sure"

Gio looked up from an old photograph of his dead mother when he heard the knock on his office door. &quot;Come in.&quot; As he expected, Chris strolled
  inside. He had also anticipated Duda tagging along since he was a nosy bastard. Both wolves took the seats in front of Gio&quot;s thick desk. Shoving
  the photo underneath the slip of papers beside it, he focused his attention on Chris.
  &quot;I&quot;m electing you as Danica&quot;s personal bodyguard.&quot; The Head Enforcer nodded agreeably, which sort of stunned Gio. &quot;You know what this means, don&quot;t you? I&quot;ll need to pull you away from your usual duties because your main priority will be Danica&quot;s safety.&quot;
  &quot;Someone else will become Head Enforcer, I know,&quot; said Chris with a nod.
  &quot;I was sort of expecting a protest.&quot;
  Chris shrugged. &quot;I considered it an honor when I was made Head Enforcer and I enjoy that position, but it will be just as much an honor to be my Alpha female&q

CHAPTER 20