Page 99 of To Challenge a Wolf

“Worth it. And you smell more like me than him now.” He let his smile show his teeth in a flash of possessiveness. “My mate.”

“We’ve made out before, remember,” Vivian said. “When you said Iwasn’tyours.”

“Mine.” He couldn’t stop saying it. He needed to undo every time he’d told her the opposite. Told her a lie he’d believed more strongly than she ever did.

“I’m just saying, setting me on fire with your make-out skills isn’t proof.”

“Tell me how to prove it, and I will. Right here and now.”

Vivian rolled her eyes. “Rhett. Youalreadyproved it.”

He tightened his arms around her. His wolf heart filled with hope, but hope was a fist that wanted to squeeze him dry, expected betrayal by default.

No. Not anymore. Not Vivian. Not his mate, and not his pack either. He whispered, “How?”

“I was sick and tired of going after you. I wasn’t going to do it again. And I thought it was over because I never dreamed you’d be the one to do the chasing, but you did.” Vivian lay her head on his chest as if she were at rest. At home. “You did the thing that—I know now—feels like it could get you killed. You risked showing your heart, and you came after me.”

He gave a low growl. He brushed one hand through her cute spiky hair. “I’ll learn it all, Viv. How to get healthy. I—I think I’m sort of small inside, given how early he started in on me, but I can catch up.”

“Small inside?” Her tease was gentle as she tapped his chest over his heart. “Like the Grinch?”

His laugh broke a little. “I was thinking more like a clueless pup. It keeps taking me by surprise. The feelings, I mean.”

“Well, you’re on your way, wolf.”

“I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then quietly she said, “No.”

“What?” His arms tightened around her again. He had to stop thinking she’d slip away from him, but she nearly had, and he wouldn’t be so stupid as to let her again.

“Hear me out. I’m your mate. I knew it before you did, now that I think about it. I always thought fate was stupid not to choose us for each other. I didn’t know you were the problem, not fate.”

He gave a huff that ruffled her hair. She was right, though.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “But I don’t want you rushing this process so we can be bonded before your pack. Some of the bondings that have happened there lately, met and married in a few months—it’s working for those couples, clearly, but I’m not Ember or Willow. You’re not Aaron or Ezra.”

“I don’t want to be the problem,” he growled.

“I said that wrong. It’s not a problem, Jamie. It’s what you’ve been through and what you need, and I’m here for it, every step of the way if it takes a year. But we’re going to give your clueless little heart”—she tapped his chest with one finger—“plenty of time to get healthy and whole. We’re going to wait.”

“My Vivian,” he said. He had no other words.

“You’d better believe it.” She kissed him, slow and sweet and confident in who she was, who they were together. Then she gave him a gentle shove toward the edge of the couch. “Now let me up, wolf. First I need to finish the last half of my milkshake before it melts. Then I need to shower.”

Twenty-Four

They waited six months and three days.

They talked almost daily, countless video calls and texts. Vivian flew to Nashville every other weekend, grabbing the cheapest flights she could find while Rhett growled that money was one thing they’d never have to worry about. His constant reminders gave her the freedom to consider (without needing to budget for a minimum salary) what sort of work she could do in Harmony Ridge, a vocation where her creativity could flourish as well as her work ethic. She allowed her desire to work for a non-profit, to know her job made a difference in the world for someone besides herself, back to the forefront after years of setting it aside. No, not a pet shelter, but…something. She quickly figured out a town as small as Harmony Ridge lacked options in this area.

Baby Kolson was around six weeks old when Ember and Kelsey approached Vivian about self-defense lessons. Soon she had a real class including Sydney, Lucy, Willow, and April. Rhett encouraged the class but balked at participating, and Vivian didn’t press him as long as any form of sparring took his mindback to his old training. Anyway she didn’t need him to do this with her. Jeremy and Trevor were quick to volunteer to play the villains, and they convinced Cassius and Aaron to join on occasion. None of her wolf volunteers knew a thing about true sparring, but they were happy to be flipped over Vivian’s back in the interest of teaching the other women how. The day Sydney succeeded in flipping Trevor, both siblings couldn’t stop grinning for at least an hour.

When Vivian told Blaine she’d be moving, he supported her all the way. When she mentioned this to Rhett, he laughed and told her about the letters they’d exchanged, initiated by Blaine’s single-page warning in handwritten calligraphy that should Rhett ever cause Vivian physical or emotional harm, Blaine would come to Tennessee and literally rip his throat out.

“You wrote him back?”

“The envelope had a return address, so yeah. I wrote, ‘She is my mate. I will die to protect her.’ And he wrote me back one last time, also in calligraphy—‘Then we understand one another.’”

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