Page 6 of To Challenge a Wolf

See, he knew it. One more question. “After ten years, how could she be anything more?”

The alpha continued to scrutinize him, which was just annoying.

“Yes, Malachi, she’s just another human. I don’t know her anymore.”

After a moment, Malachi nodded. “All right.”

Rhett turned and started for the road. Malachi liked to roam the foothills alone and often stayed out after he and Rhett conducted the weekly security test. But today, the alpha kept pace with him all the way home.

Black tea, praline, and amber.

Rhett shut the door to his pickup truck and stood beside it. Breathing. Smelling the various human signatures and the moods that spiced them. Thinking? No. Feeling? Definitely not. Just breathing and smelling. Sweet autumn foliage, fading flowers, split wood, soil under the sunshine, musty feathers of birds, a squirrel that hadn’t noticed him and darted into hiding yet, and humans’ individual scents—all of it faded in his consciousness as a single essence found him. Black tea, praline, and amber.

Well, a human’s signature scent didn’t change. He’d known she would smell the same. He hadn’t known her scent would freeze him after two steps, right here beside his truck. Rhett closed his eyes and could see her as she’d been at seventeen. Jetblack hair in thick waves down her back. Tall enough at five-eight that she looked natural beside him, not dwarfed by his mass. Hourglass curves and a fashion sense to compliment them—high-waisted skirts and flattering tops, heels that brought her nearly to his eye level, bright colors and feminine prints.Pinup, she’d called it. He had no idea what that meant but he could recognize it now when he saw another woman wearing the same style. He always bristled, as though the other woman had copied Vivian, stolen from her.

He opened his eyes. Her scent was moving away from the gravel lot, farther into the park. He followed it past the playground where children hollered and cartwheeled and leaped off swings into the space between the seat and the ground, the small space that would feel like a mile to their little selves. If he didn’t look directly at them, parents ignored him as he passed. Without the wolf’s gaze he wasn’t big enough to make humans uneasy from a distance, unlike Ezra and, of course, Malachi. Up close was another story.

Past the playground the ground made a shallow dip, smooth and scooped-out at the bottom, the red dirt and sparse grass punctuated by a few weathered picnic tables that hardly held a scent anymore, paint nearly gone and wood long sun-bleached. A few birch and oak trees shaded most of the picnic area, and at one of the shaded tables sat Vivian.

Her scent enveloped him as he approached. She was looking at her phone with what appeared to be singular focus but wasn’t. Vivian was never unaware of her surroundings. As the thought passed through his mind, she looked up.

She’d changed. And she hadn’t.

Her brown eyes widened when she saw him, and her scent spiked with nervous energy and…relief. So much relief it nearly buckled his knees.

She stood and stepped away from the picnic bench, one hand loosely holding her phone. Her thick waterfall of hair was now short and perky, poking out from her head. Her heels were purple, as was her ruffle-sleeved top. The skirt that hugged her lower half was classic black. She looked like herself. She looked older. She looked amazing.

No. None of that. He blinked once. He focused on the two questions Malachi had asked for which he didn’t have an answer. But she spoke before he could.

“How have you been?”

“Fine,” he said. Keep it basic.

“You’ve always been fine? I mean, he never found you?”

“I moved the money and I moved around a lot. Anyway we have an agreement.”

“You and Stone?”

“He won’t come after me, and I won’t inform on him to the vampires he’s double-crossed during his illustrious career.”

Her lips parted, and she stared at him for a long moment. “I had no idea.”

“Not like Stone would’ve told you.” But Rhett would have, if she’d been willing to listen.

“Did the agreement include the money?”

He gave a grating laugh. “Not so much.”

“But he’s stuck to your agreement anyway.”

“You don’t know everything I have on my father, Viv. I wouldn’t have taken the money if he could’ve done a thing about it.”

“Well, it was your money. But even if it hadn’t been, I guess he owed you in a way.”

He couldn’t growl in public, so he sneered instead. “You could say that.”

“What about Savannah?”

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