Page 5 of To Challenge a Wolf

Rhett sighed. Caution was building layers into the alpha’s musk-and-ginger essence. “What do you want to know, Malachi?”

“Why she’s here. How she’s here. Whether she’s bringing your past with her.”

“Don’t know why. Guess I’ll find out when I meet her in an hour.” Rhett shrugged, the movement easy, his face tightening a moment as his body came back online after the emergency shutdown Vivian’s voice had set in motion. “As for how…” He gestured to the nearest camera, installed at a six-foot height and calibrated to 101.6 degrees. “I thought she saw the purchase.”

“Ah. The trust money.”

“Yeah. But she said she didn’t, so…don’t know thehoweither.”

“And?”

“And that third one’s ano. She wouldn’t come here if she could bring him down on me. That’s not how Vivian works.”

“She might not intend to do it.”

“She’s smart. The only way she leads him to me is if she chooses to.”

Malachi nodded. Rhett’s body flickered with a little more life, warmth traveling from his previously frozen chest down his arms into his fingers. His alpha trusted him to get this right.

His alphatrustedhim.

The enormity of it—not even Malachi understood, though Rhett had opened more of his true self to Malachi than to anyone else in the pack. Rhett blinked once. It was his only tell, but he’d never been able to get rid of it. He bolted for the next line of cameras.

As he ran, he said, “Might as well keep working while we talk.”

At six-foot-two, he was on the shorter side for a wolf. The alpha stood nearly six inches taller, so Rhett was the better camera tester. Just because Malachi’s massive frame and intense heat signature set off alarms, that didn’t guarantee a smaller wolf would. But if Rhett could set them off, then a wolf his size or greater surely would.

On top of logical reasons, Rhett really enjoyed darting around the forest while Malachi watched his sat phone for the alerts. His rasping voice came at regular volume while Rhett ran.

“Ten years ago, you were nineteen.”

“Yeah,” Rhett said, not winded of course.

“I assume she was also young.”

“Seventeen.”

“And you didn’t date her.”

“No.” He didn’t slow his stride, kept at his job. “She was off-limits. Considered a distraction.”

Malachi was quiet while Rhett continued blurring past each security camera. His wolf hearing caught the vibration of the sat phone in Malachi’s hand as each camera sent a text alert with an attached photo. Rhett had paid for the best available cameras; they could catch a clear shot of a wolf moving at full speed. Anything less, and he wouldn’t sleep at night.

Finishing the test took another fifteen minutes as Rhett and Malachi moved across the back border of pack land, Malachi in a steady, more-or-less straight line and Rhett surging forward in zigs and zags. At last they met at the far end of Arlo and Rebecca Chapman’s property, farthest from town.

“Everything’s in order,” Malachi said as he had every time they’d run this test so far.

“Good,” Rhett said. He pushed his fingers through his inch-long hair and sighed. “Guess I’d better head into town.”

Malachi nodded.

“No more questions?”

Malachi cocked his head. “Did I miss one?”

“No,” Rhett said. “I’ll see what she wants and then I’ll send her on her way. We don’t need a human pushing her way into pack business right now, not as long as we’re still under threat.”

“Is that all she is to you? Just another human?”

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