Page 10 of To Challenge a Wolf

“You don’t.”

He couldn’t be sure of that. She’d found out a lot after he left. But he might be right that her understanding still gaped with missing pieces.

“Anyway that topic’s off limits,” he said.

“But it’s why you left. It’s what you wanted to tell me that night, that I wouldn’t hear.”

“Limited time offer. Very expired.”

“Maybe I found a coupon code. Copy and paste to get Rhett to talk.” She didn’t glance away from his stormy eyes as she continued to match his tone. “Oh look, here it is.annoying-wolf-is-still-annoying123.”

He made a buzzing noise. “We’re sorry, that coupon code is invalid.”

When he got like this, she had two choices. She could back off and maintain her own inner peace. Or she could force the locked doors in his wolf heart off their hinges and barge inside. The trick to being Rhett’s best friend? Knowing when to employ each tactic.

But she wasn’t his best friend anymore.

He pitched the chunk of wood away into the grass. He wouldn’t speak again until she made her choice.

“Wearegoing to talk about it,” she said. “But it doesn’t have to be tonight.”

Rhett could convey layers of meaning with a single grunt. The one he emitted now said she’d never get him to talk about this, if she knew him for the next seventy years. It said her retreat was surprising (fair enough) and disappointing (the jerk). He hadn’t changed his mind in the last thirty seconds; he didn’t plan to tell her. But if he could keep her working this topic, he could stonewall for a while and then abruptly stand up and say they’d had the conversation she’d asked for, and now it was over, and now he was going home to his pack and she could go to her room at the bed and breakfast, wake up in the morning, and drive out of his town. For good.

All that in a grunt.

For tonight, she’d let him have his guttural noises. And his secrets, if he was right about what she didn’t know. “Are you happy here, with this pack?”

“Wouldn’t still be here otherwise.”

“And here I thought you must’ve run out of alphas to challenge.”

His face blanked. “What?”

“Well, I know you challenged two of them. They told me. Cautioned me against pursuing such a dangerous wolf, said there was no telling what might happen to me if I found you.”

He gave a slow, calculated blink, and then his facial expressions seemed to come back online. Right. An old Rhett trick. When you’re not sure how much the other person knows, conceal all until they’ve shown their hand. For Rhett, concealment included a face so blank as to suggest catatonia. But what had he just tried to hide? That he’d challenged two alphas? Or…

“No way,” she said. “All of them? You challenged all of them. I’ve tracked down six packs you approached and left before this one. You challengedsixalphas and—and beat them all, didn’t you? You’d be dead if you ever lost.”

A low growl came from deep in his chest, but dang if she’d walk away from every topic that mattered.

“Quit that,” she said. “I’m just trying to understand. If you wanted to be alpha, you had six opportunities.”

“I didn’t want to be alpha.”

“Then why on earth go to the trouble?”

“Forget it,” he growled.

“I gave you one pass already. You don’t get this one.”

He pushed his fingers through his hair, which was at least an inch long on top of his head though still buzzed on the sides. It was a good look on him; he’d always hated the military standard hair he wasn’t allowed to grow out.

She arched an eyebrow to let him know she’d wait him out forever.

Finally he said, “I had to know the alpha could beat me before I could submit to him.”

Oh, for crying out loud. This was next level even for Rhett. “Because you have to make life as difficult as possible.”

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