Page 45 of To Challenge a Wolf

“I never said that.” His tone was stiff now too. Good.

“You kind of did, though. You’re the worst at commitment, so…this pack that depends on you probably shouldn’t.”

A low rumble began in Rhett’s chest. Also good. She wouldn’t let him shut her out. She had to keep pushing.

“In fact, it’s a good thing this dangerous alpha showed up when he did. A month from now, you might’ve had enough of your life here and moved on, left your pack vulnerable to him.”

Rhett sprang to his feet and blurred away from her, a full-out run farther into the woods. Five or so minutes passed, and the October night air bit through her cardigan and her fleece tights. Shoot. She’d pushed too far this time.

“Rhett?” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Ten more minutes crawled by, and now she wanted the warmth of the cabin. She wanted soft pajamas and hot cocoa. As she pushed to her feet to find her own way, he came back.

He tugged her down to sit beside him and pulled her into his lap. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t think straight. I forgot you’d get cold.”

“Well, it’s my own fault.”

He rubbed her arms gently. “Shoot, you’re so cold, Viv.”

“Not as cold as I feel to your higher body temp. And I’m sorry for confronting too hard.”

“You were trying to help me.”

“I was trying to get what I want.”

“Which is?”

“Which isyou, you lug.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll hurt you.”

Was that really his main issue? “I challenge you to poll your friends and find out which of them has never hurt his”—she swallowed the word that wasn’t hers to claim—“the woman he cares about.”

“Those wolves aren’t me. They weren’t conditioned to violence from a pup.”

“Do you think you’ll physically harm me?” That was a new one. And also nonsense.

“No,” he said. “Never. I’d die first.”

“Then what is it? What do you see happening that scares you so much?”

“I’m not scared,” he growled.

“No? That’s why you took off running and left me here to shiver for almost twenty minutes, because you’re not scared?”

The growl grew. Good. Keep him responding however he needed to. The worst thing in the world was Rhett when he was silent and shut down, knees up in a corner somewhere after Stone had whipped him in training. Maybe after a vampire’s fangs had scarred him. The new thought tore her heart.

“I can’t be what you need, Viv. That’s why fate didn’t make us mates, why you let me leave ten years ago and wouldn’t come with me.”

“I wouldn’t come with you because I didn’t know what you were escaping. Because I was seventeen and I’d been kept in a glass cage labeled ‘Daddy’s Girl,’ and I didn’t know how to exist outside it. You were asking me to break away, and I didn’t know how yet.”

Rhett’s arms tightened around her, so slightly he must not realize he’d done it.

“It wasn’t unfair for you to ask me, Rhett. It also wasn’t unfair for me to be scared of the ask.”

“I know that now,” he said quietly.

“But here’s what you don’t know. I wish—fate’s sake, you have no idea how hard I wish—I’d gone with you that night. I don’t know what we’d have gone through at seventeen and nineteen, but I wish I’d been brave enough to throw my entire life off a cliff and have nothing left butyou.”

---