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“He taught me to make an impact,” I shoot back. “I couldn’t go for your dick because I had plans for it. But when I thought you gave your heart to someone else, that’s what I aimed for. You’re just lucky I didn’t rip it out.”
I had been close. Furious, embarrassed, and dealing with a broken heart of my own, I straddled this male, my claws jabbed into the meat of his chest, and really thought about yanking that sucker out. But I didn’t, and I’m glad my wolf talked me out of it since I would’ve regretted never getting the chance to love him.
Ryker slips his thumb under mine, circling my palm.
His claws are gone, I notice, as he says almost solemnly, “No, sweetheart. I’m lucky that you gave me another chance after I fucked up with the whole Trish thing.”
Even though I’m comfy, cozy, and well-boned, just hearing Ryker say that name has some of my post-coital bliss wearing off.
I try to cover my sudden unease up with a tease. “Really, Ryker? This is your idea of pillow talk?”
I just… I know what Ryker was trying to do last year. As much I hate it, I understood after he finally explained himself. Trish Danvers had been blackmailing him, using the fact that she knew that I was a female alpha to keep him from officially mating me when I first arrived in Accalia. She wanted him, and she was willing to do whatever she had to to get him.
It wasn’t anything personal. Not really. Any female who got in her way would’ve been a target, and the fact that I was Ryker’s fated mate—confirmed by the Luna herself—made her despise me. When Shane gave her the proof she needed to try to convince Ryker to choose her instead, she must’ve thought she hit the freaking jackpot. So determined to keep my secret for me, Ryker decided to play along until he could figure out how she’d gotten that proof—and who she was working with since it was obvious she wasn’t doing it alone.
Turned out, it was Ryker’s “devoted” Beta, Shane, who had done everything he could to throw Trish at his Alpha. Not because he thought they were a good match or anything, but because he was also aware that I was a female alpha and, instead of blackmailing Ryker, he used the information to try to convince me to matehim.
He even went so far as to plant the idea in my head that Ryker really did choose Trish and that he was stringing me along. I believed him, and when Ryker went ahead with his plan to hold off on our mating until he got to the bottom of what was going on in his pack, I walked out on him.
Well, no. I threatened to rip out his heart, had to hear him tell me that I was nothing to him, and tore out of the Alpha’s cabin like a bat out of hell.
So, you know. Po-ta-to, po-tah-to.
Ryker’s a born alpha himself. He thought he knew what he was doing. At the very least, he figured he could make me understand—but then I drove my Jeep out of Accalia and by the time he was ready to come after me, I’d met Aleksander Filan and started my new life in Muncie.
For a year, Ryker couldn’t find me, all thanks to Aleks’s help. Of course, I had no freaking clue at the time that he was even searching for me, or that Aleks’s feelings for me had the vampire claiming me as his future mate long before I even knew he cared for me as more than the stray he brought home with him.
Now I do, and now I also know that Trish wasn’t working against Ryker. She just really wanted to be his mate. Out of some sick, twisted form of affection, she tried everything she could to get him to choose her.
Shane, though? Shanewasworking against him. Even worse, he was working with my psycho sperm donor to take down Ryker and get to me.
Shane Loup wants to be an Alpha. To do that as a born beta wolf, he needs to mate an alpha female. He needs to mateme.
Yeah. Good luck, asshole.
But just like Ryker loses his shit whenever anyone mentions his former Beta—who is currently the Beta of the Western Pack, according to Ryker’s intel—I can’t get over how much Trish Danvers bothers me. Even if the pretty brunette shifter isn’t so evil as to have been involved in Shane’s scheme, she still tried to take Ryker from me. I… I can’t forgive that.
Knowing that he kicked her out of the pack a month and a half ago helps, but not all that much. She’s a chink in my armor, a weakness that I wish I could get over, but Ican’t. And Ryker knows it.
Lifting my hand to his lips, he kisses my knuckles softly.
I love this side of my fierce, rugged alpha. Usually, he’s either cold and in control, or bristling with rage as his wolf comes to the forefront. Only when it’s the two of us alone together, vulnerable and close, do I get to see the Ryker that stole my heart when I was just a kid.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought her up.”
Ugh. And now he’s being so understanding, too? It’s like he wants to fall even deeper in love with him.
3
Ishake my head. “No. I’m not. I’m being a bitch. Sorry… if you can laugh over me trying to rip out your heart, I should be able to deal with the whole Trish thing now that I know the truth. Especially since you promised me no more secrets.”
Ryker shifts his head so that his dark gold gaze is locked directly on me. In the depths of his eyes, I see the same promise he made to me at the beginning of our courtship. He’ll remember that I’m an alpha and that he doesn’t get to make decisions for me, just like I’ll remember thathe’san alpha and, sometimes, it’ll be inevitable.
Just like us.
“No more secrets. From the moment we first mated, we’re in this together, Gemma. We’re partners.”
I love you.
