Page 97 of To Challenge a Wolf

“Huh. Fair point.”

Vivian shook her head once, then again. She put the classic red-and-white-striped straw to her lips and sipped the milkshake. He held in the sigh, but relief seemed to start in his feet and fill him all the way up. She had accepted his offering. She was going to hear him out.

“It’s only slightly melty,” she said. Then she opened the door and motioned him inside.

Her condo was homey the way he expected it to be, the way an acquaintance would not expect. Vivian put her heart and soul into places: décor, vibe, welcome. Trends and comfortablesoft things, all combined. She led him through the open-concept main area to a set of barstools tucked under the overhanging counter island that separated kitchen from living room without walling anything off. Rhett pulled out a stool and sat, and she did the same.

She took another sip of milkshake, then set it aside on the counter. “Well? Talk.”

“You look really tired.”

“Aftermath of crying. Puffy eyes.”

His fault. He pushed his palm over his hair. “I can’t undo how I pushed you away. What I said to you. But I’m ready to prove myself. Whatever it takes.”

“That’s not an explanation.”

“The explanation is I have a mate, and it’s you, Viv.”

“And you figured this out when exactly?”

“This morning.”

Her lips formed a silent O. Then she narrowed her brown eyes in a glare of challenge. “Figured it out while I wasn’t even there.”

“Malachi and April, Trevor and Kelsey were all waiting at my cabin when I came in from a run in the woods, and I thought they were delivering news. Of—of your death.”

Slowly she shook her head. Calmly she said, “Continue.”

“That’s it. I charged them and roared my head off and—and there you were in my mind, my Vivian, but you were maybe dying, and I was yelling, demanding to know what had happened to my mate.”

“Might not count. Maybe you were just worried and didn’t know what you were saying.”

“I knew. Everything in me knew. Malachi said you were fine, that they’d come because they were…um, worried for me. But I had recognized you—in my head, in my wolf heart—and knowing you were fine didn’t change it. Nothing’s going to change it.”

She shifted on the stool, and the place their knees touched was like a brand. “Still waiting for an explanation.”

He gave a huff laced with a growl. “What do you call everything I just said?”

“A claim. No details whatsoever on why you were too dense to notice your mate the whole week I was standing in front of you.”

The hard part. Details. How and why. He had to draw in a deep breath before he could start. “Today I found out just how badly Stone screwed with my head.”

He told her everything, withheld not one piece of it. He told her about the research Malachi had discovered. About the source of the fever she’d witnessed, the severity of the attack on his porch this morning, Trevor giving him what he needed to reclaim his mind from his past. And reclaim his heart. About the fading illness that had latched onto him so fast and Trevor stepping up for him again to bring him to his mate. He told her about the waves that had been rolling over him since then, feelings he’d never experienced before; or if he had, he’d been such a small pup when Stone’s walls went up in his mind, he couldn’t even remember what the feelings had been like.

“I’ve got a lot to work on,” he said at last. “It might take some time. To get better at all this. But I’m going to work on it, Viv. My word to you, I will.”

Just please don’t send me away. Please don’t do to me what I did to you.

Vivian sat quietly on the stool and studied him a long time. Then she said, “Trevor told me about his time fading and the sickness he got first. The only way that would happen to you is if…if we really are mates.”

He nodded.

“Okay, I’m starting to get my head around it. But meantime we need to talk about the day we met baby Kolson.”

He tried to maintain his signature outward detachment, but shame rolled over him like a hurricane wave, and he bowed his head. “You were right about all of that.”

“All of what?”

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