We'd more or less recovered from the challenger who had almost killed James and me. James was still pissed at me, but Jaclyn had agreed to leave her people here for another few days to give me time to try and bring James around. Dominic was actively trying to calm him down too, but unfortunately even that was backfiring this time around. Because she'd been the leverage I'd used against him, her efforts to smooth things out were just making him angrier. Isaac was fully healed and seemed resigned to the fact that we were going to have to deal with another challenger fairly soon. He seemed to have bought into Ash's philosophy with a vengeance. As a dominant, Isaac's life would be better in another pack than Ash's life would be, but it would still represent a rough, potentially fatal, transition period while he worked his way into the pecking order of the new pack. Jess was still pretty much a non-asset when it came to a fight, but it seemed like she was trying harder than before. She'd started out scared of fighting, but after dealing with first the batch of vampires and then the werewolves, she seemed to have realized that being scared and ignorant wasn't any kind of protection when something bigger and meaner than you came calling.
