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It doesn’t matter to me that I can scent no deception coming from him. I was there, and I’m not about to let him make me doubt what happened.
I scoff. “You rejected me for her. Don’t deny it.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he says, “That night… you didn’t give me a chance to explain. You just left, and then I spent… oh, that’s right… a whole fucking year trying to find you so that I could finally explain.”
Explain? Seriously?
“‘I have no intention of mating you this moon or the next’,” I mimic. All these months later and his off-handed comment is still burned in my brain. “Sound familiar? If you can explain that, go right ahead. Otherwise you wasted a year and, sorry. But that seems like a you problem.”
With a soft snick, I notice that he just set free his claws. Ooh… looks like I finally touched a nerve there. “I couldn’t mate you, Gemma. And, yes, Trish is part of the reason why. But it’s not what you think.”
“Please.” Does he think I’m an idiot? Or does he just hope I’ll fall for his story? “I heard rumors about you and Trish from the moment I arrived on the mountain. And it wasn’t just the pack gossips. Even Shane confirmed you were spending all your free time with Trish.”
He definitely wasn’t spending it with me, that was for sure.
“Shane?” Ryker echoes.
“Yeah. Your Beta. You remember? The one who got stuck with babysitting duty while you were busy with Trish.”
“Omegas need to be protected,” he reminds me. “What did you expect me to do?”
Honestly, I expected him to be the one doing the protecting if he really believed I needed it. Sure, I didn’t, but he didn’t know that then, did he?
Ugh.
“Make up your mind, Ryker. You challenged me on my turf. You just admitted I was an alpha. So am I? Or should we go back to pretending I’m still an omega?”
“Omega, hardly? You’re like me, Gemma. Pure alpha, but you’re not the Alpha. Without a pack of your own to lead, you have no idea what it’s like to be responsible for every life, from the retired gammas to the youngest pup.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I tell him. “Muncie is my new pack.”
“You belong to the Mountainside Pack. You belong with me.”
“You wish.”
Ryker looms closer. A spark of temper has the height of his sculpted cheeks going red as he says in a low voice, “You think this is a challenge. You don’t know how right you are. But not like you think, sweetheart. You’ll never be my mate? I told you. We’ll see about that.”
That’s it. I don’t care if I stab my own hands, I let out my own claws.
Rising up on my tiptoes, going nose to nose with Ryker, I say, “Oh, yeah?”
His eyes drop to my mouth. “Yeah.”
I swallow. His gaze follows the motion of my throat before locking back on my mouth. And I know that he’s going to kiss me, almost as much I’m absolutely sure that I… I’m not going to stop him.
I tilt my head slightly.
Ryker’s so close, I can feel the heat of his breath on my skin.
“Gem— oh. I’m sorry.”
I’m not. I swear to the Luna, I’ll never, ever complain about Hailey’s habitual lateness ever again. Because right now? Her timing couldn’t be any more perfect.
I back away so quickly, if it wasn’t for my shifter’s reflexes, I would’ve landed on my ass. I recover, purposely giving my back to Ryker while hoping against hope that Hailey didn’t realize how close I came to falling under his spell like that.
“Hailey. What’s up?”
She tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, biting down on her lip.
Oh, yeah. She realizes.
“Sorry,” she says again, “it’s just that Clark has a complicated order I keep messing up on, and Charlie’s on the phone again. I thought I’d see if you were done out here.”
“Uh. Yeah. Just give me a sec— oh. Never mind. I’m coming.”
Because when I turned around again, I saw that all that’s left of Ryker is the stink of his piss in the air and a sinking feeling in my gut that I’ve only just tapped the surface of what he’s doing here.
And I was right. It has everything to do with me.
