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He nodded. “I know, and maybe mine won’t either, but I still want to try. There are Ulfrics that have a wife and family separate from the pack. I’ve been trying to find a new lupa for the pack, and no one measures up. No one is you.”

I was back to not knowing what to say, so I said nothing. I rarely got in trouble keeping my mouth shut.

“I think the reason your beast got out of control today is that you’ve been spending too much time with just one animal. I think if you have personal contact with something besides leopards that your beast will go back to being just amorphous, more metaphysics than physical. I want your permission to send some of the wolves over to bunk with you.”

“Richard—”

“I don’t mean fuck them, but sleep with them. Or take some wererats home, pick an animal, but if your power only touches leopards, it’s going to think it’s a leopard.”

“And you’re one of the wolves that will be stopping by?” I couldn’t keep the irony and the unhappiness out of my voice.

“I don’t mean it to be casual, Anita. I mean, be our lupa. Bring the leopards with you, and they can hunt with us on the full moon.”

“I’ll be your lupa, which means, what? What changes?”

“We’re a couple within the lycanthrope community. You’ll have more contact with my wolves outside of just crisis situations. Micah has really been working his tail off helping everybody out. We need at least one other person full time on the hotline. He’s running himself ragged.”

“I didn’t know you were keeping track.”

“I’m trying to pay attention, Anita. I’m trying to see what’s there, not what I want to be there. I couldn’t share you the way Micah shares you with Nathaniel, not everyday, every night. I don’t think I could tolerate you dating Jean-Claude and Asher. I certainly wouldn’t be able to play blood donor on as regular a basis as Micah and Nathaniel do.”

I just blinked at him, because this was a talk I never thought I’d have with Richard. It was way too logical. “I agree with everything you said in that last bit. But it doesn’t change anything, does it?”

“I felt the power of your triumverate with Damian and Nathaniel. Damian’s not a master, and Nathaniel is no Nimir-Raj, but the three of you together are an amazing amount of power. What would we be, the three of us, if we did this right? If we did this the way it was meant to be done?”

“That so doesn’t sound like you,” I said.

“Tell me you haven’t thought about it since you did the other triumverate?”

I couldn’t in all honesty, so I didn’t try. “I felt what Jean-Claude and I could do at his club when Primo got out of control. I felt what Jean-Claude could do when I let him feed the ardeur in a way that was closer to a full feeding with other women. So, yeah, I thought about it, sort of.”

“You said it yourself, Anita, we don’t have enough soldiers. We need to look strong and not just for the vampires that might want this terriotory. Our pack has a bad rep, thanks to me, and Raina and Marcus before me. My reputation is shit among the other Ulfrics. They think I’m weak, and I’ve had some scouts from other territories that have too many dominants and not enough land. So far our pack is so screwed up that they leave without a challenge. No one wants the mess I’ve made of it. But as I get a better handle on my wolves, that may change. If we all joined together the way you and Jean-Claude did last night, if we were really a triumverate of power, no one would touch us, Anita, no one would dare.”

It was almost a direct quote from something I’d thought earlier. I looked past him to Jean-Claude. “We’re parroting what you’ve been thinking for months, aren’t we?”

He shrugged those lovely bare shoulders. “Oui, but I did not put the thoughts there, ma petite. I believe that both of you have come to the same conclusion at the same time. Is that so hard to believe?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I was tired. Tired of the games, tired of hurting, tired of being scared.

Richard lay back on the bed, one knee up, the other down, so that he looked winsome as hell against the red sheets.