Page 37 of The Last Ultimatum: Part 1

“But if they did they had to have known your scent would drive me crazy here. I honestly hadn’t even put it together yet, but that has to be it. It’s your scent. It’s everywhere. I realize that now. It’s what called to me to come into this room and why my dingo relaxed enough that I nearly fell asleep in there.”

“We can’t keep encouraging this. What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t have the strength to stay away from you, Tilly.”

He called me Tilly. My heart melted just a little.

With only that one little factor, if I dared to compare Lachlan and Aiden, I knew my true mate would come out on top.

“You’re going to have to find the strength, Lachlan. We can’t encourage this bond. My sister was taken right from under our noses. She was in territory.”

“I know. We’re here to investigate that. You also need to know that there is a threat to all dingoes right now. I need you to be safe. I don’t think I can get through this and do what I need to do if you aren’t safe.”

“It’s not your place to protect me.” But damn, did it feel amazing knowing he wanted to.

He sighed. “I know. And I’ll try to respect your boundaries, well, as long as you don’t climb in bed naked with me again.”

His eyes soaked in my body from head to toe. It should have mortified me, but it had the exact opposite effect. I couldn’t even find the strength or desire to cover myself.

“Then you can’t be climbing into my bed either,” I reminded him.

It was so easy to talk to this man. I’d never felt so comfortable with anyone, aside from Kayla, who I couldn’t even talk about this with.

“You know we have to stay apart, right? At this rate, we’re only going to encourage a bond to form,” I added.

He rolled on his side, looking sexy as hell.

“Pretty sure that’s already happening.”

“It can’t.”

“He’s really that important to you?”

“What? No. He’s an arsehole. But my Tribe is that important to me.”

“So it’s an alliance, then?”

I shrugged. “I guess. I’m still trying to wrap my head it all.”

“What if Michelle comes back? Would that get you off the hook?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now and it scares the shit out of me.”

Lachlan

Chapter 11

Talking to Tilly gave me hope that everything would work out in the end.

She'd called Aiden Campbell an arsehole. She clearly wasn't in love with him. It was a forced mating and that meant it was very unstable and potentially easy to break.

I had to admire her determination to see it through for her Tribe, though. I'd been briefed on the King-Campbell alliance situation. It was shaky at best.

King territory was being infringed by the humans. To survive, Tilly's father had been forced to sell off a piece of the land to a human group for the construction of a new neighborhood development. Not only did that hurt his pride, but it was a potential danger to his dingoes. I'd heard about the same things happening to my own family’s Tribe before my birth. We were still thriving, but we'd been forced to evolve our human sides and suppress our natural animal instincts.

My Tribe had bought up land out in the bush as a sort of vacation spot where we could take refuge in emergencies and travel to for weekend runs and such. It was a very different lifestyle than our dingo cousins in the bush lived.

The Campbells were so far out in the Whoop Whoop that they were still many generations away from the effects of urban development, but the Kings were close enough to feel that pressure now.

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