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It’s a shifter thing.
As if he’s asking only to be polite, he nods at the card clasped in the other wolf’s hand.
“What’s this?”
He holds it out to me. “My Alpha thought you might need it spelled out for you. You’ve ignored all his other summons home.”
Oh, you poor moron. It’s almost like you want Ryker to send you back home to the Wolf District in a box.
Again, Ryker moves so that he’s blocking me from Patrick. “This is Gemma’s home.”
“Gemma.” Patrick looks past Ryker’s shoulder, directly at me. “Nice name.”
“Thanks,” I say, giving him a dazzling grin. “My mom always liked it.”
When I was still pretending to be an omega, a smile like that had dominant wolves tripping over themselves to do anything I asked. So enchanted by the act, they never noticed the sharp edge to the curve of my lips—and neither does this idiot.
He lifts the envelope again. “This says ‘Ruby’ on it.”
Of course it freaking does.
“There’s no Ruby here. And, if you know better, you’ll bring that back to your Alpha and tell him not to try this bullshit again until he’s ready to give me my packmate back.”
With an almost apologetic look shot my way, he shrugs his massive shoulders. “If you really want your other girl, then take this.”
For a second, I’m sure Ryker’s going to refuse. But he doesn’t. Though the envelope is clearly meant for me, he rips it out of Patrick’s loose grip.
He doesn’t open it. Not yet. Instead, with his eyes lighting up like they’re on fire, he says, “You have five minutes to get off my territory. If you’re still here, I’ll assume you’re just like Loup. That you want to challenge me. I assure you that the outcome will be the same.”
Patrick nods. With the envelope in Ryker’s possession, he’s done his job. And maybe he isn’t such an idiot, after all, because he doesn’t need a second warning. With only one backward look at me, he slinks back into the tree.
The two of us wait outside our cabin until Ryker’s wolf announces that the outsider is gone. Since my wolf assures me the same thing, I immediately forget all about the Wicked Wolf’s errand boy.
He’s not important, but the envelope he left behind with Ryker sure is.
I move into Ryker, reaching up on my tip-toe to look over his shoulder. Patrick wasn’t kidding when he said that the envelope is addressed to ‘Ruby’. In the same sharp lines as his signature at the bottom of his last note, Walker’s drawn my name so deep, that the ink bleeds through to the other side.
Ryker offers me the envelope. I wave at him to open it instead.
He does.
The first thing I look at is the bottom of the page. And there they are: the same twelve crisscrossing lines forming three Ws. Wicked Wolf Walker. He’s such an arrogant bastard, he actually signs his missives with his cruel nickname.
As I’m looking at the bottom, Ryker’s reading the words centered on the page. Halfway through, he grips it so tightly, he crinkles the thick paper.
I nudge him in the side. “What’s it say?”
“You are cordially invited—”
With a scoffing laugh, I say, “You’ve got to be shitting me. It doesn’t say that.”
“Read it.”
This time, when Ryker offers me the page, I take it. Within seconds, I realize that Ryker was dead serious. It’s an invitation—and, yet, it’s infinitely more threatening than Walker’s actual threat:
* * *
“No.”
