Chapter 3

Aaron threw his head back and laughed. Couldn’t help it. She had to be delusional. While it was true that he had taken himself out of the picture for the past year, he still had a fearsome reputation. And here she was, this chit of a girl, thinking she could tell him what to do. He was an alpha. Had been an alpha, he thought as his eyes turned sober again.

“I know how you can redeem your reputation and help me at the same time,” she insisted.

“Do you, now?” Sarcasm was dripping from his voice as he leaned against the kitchen counter, crossing one long denim-clad leg over the other as he smirked at her.

“Yes.” She walked to the window overlooking the vast expanse of the desert beyond the backyard.

“Do you know what that is?” she asked, pointing to a strangely shaped mountain in the distance.

“Boulder Mountain.” He found himself replying to her question despite himself.

“A pack of werewolves lives there.”

He could only gape at her open-mouthed. Then he shook his head and came back to his senses. His mother hadn’t sent her to track him down. She couldn’t have, because he was sure that the female standing in front of him was batshit crazy.

“Look... Keyah you said your name was? I don’t know who put it in your head, but there are no werewolves on the mountain, nor is there a magical fountain of spring that will bless you with eternal youth.” He spoke to her in a gentle, soothing voice. One could never predict how the crazy ones would react.

“There is a pack of werewolves on Boulder Mountain.” Her chin jutted stubbornly forward as she not only met, but held his gaze.

“It’s a myth. A fantasy. A fairy tale told to our children.”

“It is not. I know because I belong to that ancient pack.”

“You are telling me that you are one of the Silver Wolves, the most ancient breed of werewolves, thought to have gone extinct about five hundred years ago?”

“I am,” she said, squaring her shoulders and holding her head high.

“Prove it.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know you can easily prove it,” he goaded her with a smirk.

“Very well. Would you mind stepping out of the room?”

“Why should I?”

When she fixed him with a baleful stare, he lifted both his hands and walked out of the kitchen into the backyard. He knew one of the two things would happen now: a Silver Wolf would walk out of the back door and into the yard, or he would hear his front door opening and shutting, and he would hear this certifiably insane female leaving. The only realistic outcome was the second one. Just where had she gotten that crazy idea from, he wondered. Silver Wolf indeed!

He would eat this empty beer can if she turned into a Silver Wolf, he thought, eyeing the can in his hand.

Since his back was turned to the door, he didn’t see her coming out at all. When he turned, she had already broken into a gallop and was in the process of leaping at his throat.

It was the shock at seeing the Silver Wolf that had him rooted to the spot, petrified and unable to react, he told himself later. It was the shock that had made him drop the can and screw his eyes shut as he felt her paws on his shoulder.

When he opened his eyes, he was staring into her hazel eyes. She was standing on her hind legs with her paws on his shoulders, and he was sure that she was laughing at him.

“Okay! Alright! Fine! I believe you!”

She was definitely laughing at him, he thought as she withdrew her paws from his shoulders, dropping them back to the ground, and with a swish of her tail, walked towards the back door. When he tried to follow her back in, she glared at him over her shoulder, daring him to enter.

“Fine. I’ll stay here. Just let me in when you’re done.”

He kicked the pile of beer cans by the hammock as he watched her go. She was magnificent. And she was a Silver Wolf.