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He just nodded, face pinched and pale with pain.

I looked up at Claudia. “Where the hell were you guys while Haven was abusing Travis and Noel?”

“If I say ‘right over there,’ will you get pissed?”

I stood up. “Yes.”

She gave me empty cop face, though I knew she’d never been a cop. “This was a dominance challenge. We are not allowed to interfere in challenges of other animal groups.”

“This wasn’t a challgene for leadership of anything,” I said.

Claudia gave me a look that said, clearly, I’d missed something. Whatever showed on my face finally let her know that I didn’t know what the hell she was hinting at.

She sighed. “Sometimes I forget that you miss the obvious.”

“What did I miss?” I asked.

“Your Ulfric has established himself as dominant to this guy.” She smiled down at Richard. “Truthfully, I didn’t think the Ulfric had it in him.” There was a grudging compliment in her voice. “You needed for someone to establish dominance over him, if you planned to keep him.” She jerked a thumb in Haven’s direction. “Guys like this have to be forced to obey the hierarchy.”

“You mean the hierarchy of the werelions?”

She shook her head. “Anita, if you add this guy to your men, then someone had to beat the shit out of him, at least once, so he’d know who was boss.”

“I’m boss,” I said.

She smiled at me. “I like you, Anita. I respect you. I take orders from you. But a guy like Haven is going to see you as a girl, a piece of ass. Unless you can personally beat him to a pulp, he’s not going to behave for you. He’ll tell you to your face what you want to hear, but you’ve got Nathaniel, Micah, Damian. I mean you have a lot of non-coms around you. You don’t want to bring home a lion to play with your kittens unless you have a big dog to balance it out.”

I frowned at her. “Are you saying that Richard is my big dog?”

“Maybe it’s a bad example, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

“You don’t think he would respect me—Haven, I mean?”

She shook her head. “He’s got trouble written all over him, Anita.”

“You think I should throw him back?”

Her dark eyes widened, surprised. “Does my opinion count?”

“I trust your judgment, and you’re the only girl here.”

“Why do you need a girl opinion?” she asked.

“Because I’m tired of all the damn testosterone.”

She grinned at me. “I’m not sure I’ll say anything that the men won’t say on this one, Anita. Estrogen doesn’t make me stupid, and you’d have to be stupid to want to keep Cookie Monster over there. I mean he could be a bodyguard, if we made the rules clear, but to take home as a lover, no way.”

I nodded. “I agree.”

“Then why ask?”

I hugged myself. “Because, knowing all of it, I still want to touch him.”

She shrugged all that muscled upper body. “Then you’re fucked.”

Richard’s voice came strained. “You can’t want to keep him, not now, not after this.”

I knelt beside him. He grabbed my hand, so hard and sudden it startled me. “I don’t want to keep him.”

I watched him try to think past the pain. “But,” he said.

“But it’s not always about what I want.”

His hand convulsed around mine, until I had to fight not to cry out. “Shift, Richard, you can heal this if you shift.”

He shook his head. “If I shift I’ll have to spend at least four hours in animal form. Can’t go to the ballet as a wolf.”

“You’re not going to enjoy the evening like this.”

His grip on my hand loosened, just holding me for a moment. He stared into my face like he was trying to memorize it. “Do you want me not to go?”

I frowned at him. “Why would you ask that? Of course, I want you to go.”

He almost smiled, but winced instead. “You’ve got a lot of men to juggle, maybe one less would make tonight easier.”

I drew his hand against my breasts, and touched his face. “You didn’t just assume I needed help to handle Haven. You asked me first, and waited for me to answer. I know you wanted to wade in and pull him off us. Thank you for asking, for waiting.”

He grimaced, and tried to make it a smile. “I’m glad you’re happy about it, but my waiting cost Travis a broken arm. Joseph’s not going to want us to borrow his lions,