Page 8 of To Challenge a Wolf

“Then you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive. It was ten years ago. Shoot, I was barely more than a pup.”

“I know,” she said, her voice suddenly quiet.

Not what he meant. “If this is what you came for, you wasted a lot of time and effort.”

Her jaw tightened, and her arms tightened across her body. She said nothing.

He met her gaze and stood in equal silence. If she wanted to glare at him until the park closed, he’d oblige her. How far had she come to find him? Not that he’d ask. Their friendship was history. Their paths would not cross again after today.

One more question needed an answer though. “How’d you know to come here, to this pack?”

“A decade’s worth of process of elimination.”

“Oh come on, Viv, don’t expect me to buy that.”

“It’s the absolute truth, you idiot!” Her eyes still reminded him of chocolate lava cake when she got mad.

Off limits. A distraction.Stone will make her pay if I—No. Enough. He was dead to his father, and Stone was dead to him.

“You searched for me,” he said as it finally sank through his thick skull into his stubborn wolf brain.

“Look at you, catching on at last.”

“You went to other packs.”

“Almost two dozen.”

“What if they’d been hostile to humans?”

She stepped closer, and her arms lowered to her sides. “I can throw one of you over my shoulder with your own weight. Remember? If I can get myself into a scrape, I can get myself out.”

“Did you go to Missouri?”

“Once. The pack I met was nice enough, but they said they didn’t know you.”

Nice enough. Not the pack who currently threatened his own, the pack for whom the security system was installed.

“Rhett, what’s in Missouri?”

The memories were four months old, but the images were as vivid as if they’d happened this morning—Malachi bleeding out on Rhett’s dining table, his strong body clenched and shuddering from the pain. And his voice, raspier than ever, weak for the first time since Rhett had met him.

“My pack…for the rest of my life. Then…if unexpected loss…yours.”

He blinked, and the memory retreated to wherever it usually stayed stuck in his brain, ready to flash before his eyes anytime.

“Rhett?”

“A rogue pack,” he said. “Violent.”

“They’d have tried to hurt me?”

“Theywould havehurt you if you’d gone to them. Might have killed you.”

“How do you know?”

“Long story. Not important.”

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