“It’s fine, Stewart. These are the two gentlemen I told you about. They’re looking for Jasmine.”

“Do you know where she is?” Stafford demanded.

The young man looked him up and down with more haughtiness than he had ever seen in someone who wasn’t one of his own species. “She’s not here. And my master says you’re not good enough for her.”

Mr. Washington chuckled, genuine affection warming his voice. “Now the boy starts listening to me.”

Hayden turned and looked over his shoulder, then he looked back to Mr. Washington. “He is your pack,” he observed. “He’s your mate.”

Mr. Washington nodded.

“Jasmine is our pack,” Hayden told him seriously. “She is our mate. She belongs with us, just as he belongs with you. Can’t you understand that?”

“Both of you?” Mr. Washington asked.

“Yes,” Stafford said, without even thinking about what he was actually saying.

The human looked back and forth from one to the other of them. ”She’ll be here tomorrow,” he said. “It’s her choice if she will accept you or not.”

“You said it was her choice before.”

“If you hadn’t come to get her now, you wouldn’t have been worth choosing. And she was in no condition to make the choice right then.”

Stafford narrowed his eyes. “If anyone has hurt her, we will kill you.”

Mr. Washington didn’t seem at all impressed with the threat.

Stafford stepped back, seeing nothing else to be done with the human. “Tomorrow,” he said and turned away.

Hayden followed along behind him and got into his car as if it was obvious he would be welcome there.

Stafford started the car and considered his options. He wasn’t about to leave the wolf on his own, so Hayden could go off and search for Jasmine without him. “You can stay at my place,” he offered.

Stafford ’s bedroom door swung open. Hayden stood framed in the moonlight, just visible as a shadowy outline.

“What?” Stafford demanded, leaning up on his elbow. After finally getting the other man to go to bed in the early hours of the morning, he was damned if he was going to get up before noon. He glanced at his watch. “It’s four o’clock-you haven’t even been in bed an hour!” God, it was like babysitting a damn toddler!

Hayden calmly walked across the room and got into the bed next to him.

“Get out,” Stafford demanded.

“Wolves don’t sleep alone,” Hayden said, making himself comfortable in Stafford ’s bed.

“Well, vampires do!” Stafford informed him.

“You didn’t sleep on your own a few nights ago.”

“That was different-Jasmine was with us then.”

“We aren’t a proper pack without Jasmine,” Hayden said sadly.

Stafford hesitated when he saw the pain and the worry in the other man’s eyes.

“We’ll find her tomorrow,” Hayden said. It sounded suspiciously like he was trying to reassure himself, not Stafford.

Stafford sighed. “I suppose I can put up with you for one night if I have to. Just stay on your side of the bed.”

Hayden turned his head on the side. “Why?”

“I’m not used to sharing my bed with another man.” He would have felt a hell of a lot better about it if Jasmine was sleeping in between them.

“Packs always sleep together,” the wolf explained.

“Fine-here are the rules. You stay on your side of the bed and you keep your hands, your tongue and all other parts of your anatomy to yourself. Understand?”

“You think I want to have sex with you,” Hayden observed. “Like Mr. Washington and Stewart.”

Stafford hesitated. He really didn’t want to have this conversation on top of everything else, but perhaps it would be better to have everything sorted out between him and Hayden before Jasmine got back and got caught in the middle of this mess as well.

“Do you?”

Hayden shook his head. “You are not my mate. Jasmine is my mate. You are a member of my pack. It is different.”

Stafford tried to fit that idea in with a grown man getting into bed with him in the middle of the night.

“Packs usually sleep closer together,” Hayden observed after a little while.

“You’re in my bed, don’t push your luck, pup.”

Stafford watched the wolf warily as he thought about that. Reaching his decision, the other man pushed the blanket back and climbed on top of the covers. Moving firmly onto Stafford ’s side of the bed, he crouched over his legs.

Before Stafford could even decide what curse word best fitted the situation, the man began to morph. In seconds Stafford was looking down at a perfectly formed wolf.

Yawning to work his jaw into just the right shape, Hayden stretched and settled himself comfortably close to the only available member of his pack. Stafford looked down the bed at the other man… at the wolf… at Hayden.

He supposed it was a compromise of a sort. Humans let dogs sleep at the bottom of their bed all the time. Vampires didn’t generally get on well with animals they couldn’t eat or bite, but as he met the wolf’s eyes he saw how much the other man was trying to make him feel better about the situation.

Stafford sighed once more. “Very well then, you can stay there, but I meant what I said. You keep your paws and your tongue to yourself-especially when I’m asleep.”

The wolf… Hayden nodded.

Stafford lay back and looked up at the ceiling. “Jasmine will be fine,” he told Hayden, because the wolf and the man he’d been until a few seconds ago obviously needed to hear it.

As he closed his eyes, he repeated it to himself without so much as an excuse to hide behind. Jasmine would be fine. She had to be.

Stewart was waiting for her as Jasmine stepped through the back door of the club.

Jasmine hesitated. “Mr. Washington told me I could go away for a few days,” she said.

Stewart smiled. “I know. But my master wanted to speak to you before you go through to the front of the club. There are a couple of guys looking for you, and I think he wants to make sure you have fair warning before you run into them.”

Five minutes later, she was sitting in Mr. Washington ’s office behind the club.

“Did your time away help you gain some perspective on recent events?” Mr. Washington asked, as Stewart put a cup of tea in front of her and settled himself on the floor at Mr. Washington ’s feet.

Jasmine nodded and stared into her cup.

“You’re not in a scene now, Jasmine,” Mr. Washington corrected. “Look up and look me in the eye when you answer me.”

She met his eyes across the table and forced a weak smile. “You were right, sir. The vampires, the werewolves-they get inside your head somehow. I’ll get over it.”

“So you’re still committed to living this lifestyle, to finding a master?”

She nodded, very determinedly.

The older man was silent for a few minutes. She waited, wondering if he had another man in mind for her.

“Stafford Ingram and Hayden Griffith came to look for you,” Mr. Washington said.

She blinked at him. “They…” Jasmine could feel the colour drain out of her face.

“You’re not quite over them, then?” Mr. Washington asked.

She looked back to her tea, her hands were shaking. She wrapped them around the cup and let the heat from the tea seep into her palms.

“It’s your choice if you meet with them. It’s your choice if you leave the club with them. But, if you doubt your ability to say no to them and mean it, I would suggest you think very carefully before you agree to speak with them. They both appear quite…” he paused, searching for the right word. “Quite intent upon making some sort of arrangement with you.”

Jasmine took a deep breath, trying to calm herself as her pulse raced. “They want me to belong to them?”

“Vampires and werewolves don’t often take on human submissives,” he said. “I can’t guarantee what sort of arrangement they have in mind or how long it would last for.”