That it would, was certain.

As a DarkRiver sentinel, she should’ve been considering their defense strategy, working out possible scenarios. Instead, she was going so insane with need she couldn’t think of anything but the fever in her body, the hunger in her throat, the clawing want in every cell, every breath. Intimate touch was as necessary to her predator’s soul as the forest she called home, but things might not have been so bad if she hadn’t also been trying to cope with the impact of a conversation she’d had with the pack healer, Tamsyn, a few days earlier.

Mercy was the one who’d said it. “There’s a strong possibility I’ll remain unmated.”

“You don’t know that,” Tammy had begun, frown lines on her brow. “You could mee—”

“It’s not that. I might not be able to be with anyone. You know that happens.”

Tammy had bent her head in a reluctant nod. “The chances are higher with dominant females than males. It’s an inability to give in . . . to surrender. Even to your mate.”

And that was the hell of it, Mercy thought. She might want a mate with everything in her, but if he appeared, and he was the strong, take-no-shit partner she knew she needed, she might refuse to acknowledge him on the level necessary for a true mating bond. Oh, the mating urge would probably overpower her into taking him for a lover, perhaps more . . . but if the leopard in her didn’t truly accept his right to her, then she might go roaming for months at a time, coming back to him only when she could no longer fight the need.

It was a special kind of torture reserved for those female leopards who got strangled up at the mere idea of giving a male any kind of control over them. And put it any way you would, unless her mate turned out to be a weak submissive—and she’d never be attracted to someone like that, so that was a no-brainer—he was going to try to dominate her.