Page 4 of To Challenge a Wolf

More silence. So much silence.

Screw this. She hadn’t searched all these years to put up with stonewalling.

Whywould he want to stonewall her?

“Rhett, you’re going to talk to me. So you just tell me where. And I’m telling you when: today. Not tomorrow, not next week, not in ten more years. Today.”

So. Much. Silence. When he spoke again, his drawl had receded in favor of the clipped tone he used only when he was training. The tone she hated. “And then you’ll go.”

She bit her lip to quiet her breath, but his wolf hearing wouldn’t miss the catch.

“I mean it, Viv.”

“Maybe you can convince me. Face to face.”

The low growl that came over the phone held fury under tight control. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“Time and place.”

“There’s a park on the east end of town. Give me an hour.”

Before she could answer, Rhett hung up.

Two

It had been a decade. Of course he hadn’t expected her to show up.

“Rhett.”

The raspy voice of his alpha brought Rhett’s head up from his stare at the phone in his hand. Malachi might have said his name more than once. Rhett shook his head and looked around the clearing where they’d been testing security cameras, a weekly routine since July. He wanted more space than these woods offered, though as a wolf he could dart between even closely-growing trees without fear of collision.

South of the forest lay spreading back yards, then the homes of his pack and the dirt road called Lunar Lane. To the north the pack’s land rose to foothills of the beautiful Smoky Mountains. Rhett loved the land here, especially the plot he’d been invited three years ago to call his own. But at the moment he wanted a plain, not a mountain. He wanted flat, open ground, visible horizon, and sky. He wanted to run as only a wolf could run.

“Rhett, are you hearing me?” Malachi said.

Rhett shoved the phone into the pocket of his tactical pants. His hands were steady. His pulse was steady. His affect was flat as a rug—something he could feel in the muscles of his face, no need for a mirror. He looked up and met Malachi’s amber eyes, which held question and concern.

“Hear you,” Rhett said.

“Who is Vivian Rossi?”

Malachi probably expected a growl in response, but Rhett had no need for expressions of emotion right now because…well, because he had no emotion. None.

“She was a friend of mine. Long time back now.”

“Why was she searching for you?”

He flashed his teeth. “My charming personality, of course.”

A low rumble filled the alpha’s chest. He continued to level his gaze at Rhett, but the authority he could exert toward any wolf in the pack remained absent from this conversation. For now anyway. Malachi wasn’t demanding an explanation; he was asking instead. Of course, in the interest of their pack’s safety, if Rhett tried stonewalling, Malachi would probably move on to a demand.

“We meant something to each other once, that’s all. Friends. That’s all.” All they’d been allowed to be, though in the deepest hidden core of him, Viv had been…well, everything.

Another low rumble that sounded like a thunderstorm from miles away. Ever since Malachi had found his mate April, his wolf voice had grown in resonance. Had to be an alpha perk; it hadn’t happened to any of the other wolves who’d taken a mate since Rhett joined the pack. And there’d been three others. Rhett sometimes wondered if his pack were turning into a romance reality show. But they all seemed truly happy, and nothing mattered more than the flourishing of his pack.

“It’s been ten years,” he said when Malachi didn’t push. Easier to talk when it felt like his choice. “Don’t think about her much anymore.”

“Well, clearly she’s thought about you.”

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