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Eight weeks ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because no way in hell would I be lying in bed with Ryker Wolfson.
Six weeks ago, I would’ve scoffed and lied straight to his face. So what if he could tell?Iwasn’t comfortable then.
Four weeks ago, I would’ve rolled into Ryker, poked him in his naked chest, and said, “Don’t call me sweetheart.”
But now? After close to a week’s separation, I snuggle closer, moving my hand up his chest until I can press my palm to the five distinct scars that mark the location where his heart is, and sigh.
“Yeah,” I admit. “I did.”
He places his massive paw over mine. I can feel him rumbling in pleasure, almost vibrating in place. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m purposely calling attention to his mark, or because I actually told him that I missed him. Knowing Ryker, it’s probably both.
“You could’ve come with me.”
“I had work. You know that.”
“Mm.”
BecauseIknow what he’s getting at—and that he’sright—I don’t rise to his bait.
Using my job is a cop-out. In so many ways, it’s a cop-out. If I asked, Charlie would’ve given me the week off to attend the annual Alpha gathering. But I didn’t ask, and I used my shifts at the bar as an excuse why I couldn’t go with Ryker when he left the East Coast five days ago.
The meet happens every year, and families—including intended mates, bonded mates, chosen mates, and pups—are invited to go with their Alpha, so I definitely could’ve gone with him.
But, even if our relationship status wasn’t in flux, there’s another reason I should’ve been there.
Sometime during the end of July, beginning of August every year, all Alphas get together for a large convention-style gathering and, welp, there’s my invitation right there. It’s a meet foreveryAlpha in the States, and over the last two months, it’s gotten out that I’m not just the only female alpha that the American shifters know of, but after I staked my claim to Muncie, I’m technically considered the Alpha of the Fang City I call home.
I didn’t mean to do it. Honestly, I’m not so surehowI did it. After everything that happened when Shane revealed his true colors—that he was working with my sperm donor, that he wanted to steal me away from Ryker—there’s a noticeable division between territories now that can be traced back to that night.
Everything near the mountains that border one side of Muncie belongs to the Mountainside Pack. Ryker’s pack. Crossing from the more rural side to the urban sprawl of the city, though, it’s not just the vamps that rule this territory.
It’s claimed by an alpha wolf shifter. It’s claimed by me.
I always teasingly thought of myself as an Alpha of a pack of two, back when it was just me and my vampire roomie, but after the fateful howl beneath the moonlight, I guess my reach went just a liiiittle bit further.
Wonderful, right?
So, yeah, I could’ve gone to the meet, whether as Ryker’s guest or an Alpha in my own right. But that’s the thing.EveryAlpha is invited to the meet and that includes the one wolf that I desperately don’t want to face just yet.
Wicked Wolf Walker.
Alpha of the Western Pack, one of the largest and most powerful packs in the country, and my bio-dad—who just so happens to have a huge bounty on my head.
Now, I know that he hasn’t gone to the gathering in more than twenty-five years. Not since my mother left him and mated Paul, my adopted father and the Alpha of the Lakeview Pack. Dad—because, until the day I go to meet the Luna, Paul Booker will be the only father I claim—once got the upper claw over the Wicked Wolf and warned him that, the next time, he’d give in to his instincts to slaughter him.
As far as I know, the fight with my dad is the only challenge that Wicked Wolf Walker has ever lost. Since then, he’s closed ranks, growing his pack while proclaiming that the Western Pack has seceded from the rest of the United States’ shifter community. The dickhead also refuses to answer to any shifter laws and hasn’t attended a single Alpha meet for nearly my whole life.
With my luck, though? This would’ve been the first one he decided to grace with his presence.
I couldn’t risk it. And though Ryker didn’t know that the Wicked Wolf of the West was my sperm donor until recently, he understood why I wanted to stay away from the gathering even if this thing between us is so new that it was painful to be separated for as long as we were.
“He wasn’t there,” he says suddenly, as if he can read my mind. Who knows? Maybe he can because he got it right. I’m in bed with him, but my mind is thousands of miles away in the Wolf District of California. “I saw your dad, though. Paul. He threatened to go for my balls if I ever hurt you again.”
See? And that right there is why I adore mychosendad.
“They say that the Wicked Wolf never bluffs. But my dad? Believe me. He might seem like a nice guy, but I grew up sparring with him. He taught me how to fight. He’d have your nuts on a necklace and you singing like a soprano before you even shifted.”
Ryker chuckles, squeezing my fingers gently. “He teach you to go for the heart, too?”
