“I’m not going out there to play alpha.”
“I know.”
An idea came to him. “I need to make some calls.”
“Let me know—” Nico said, sounding surprisingly desperate and firm.
Mateo met his eyes. “I will. I promise.”
He had several promises to make.
23
Mateo sat in his office fidgeting. It had been a week since Nico’s intervention. He’d wanted to rush to the airport and get on a plane right then, but cage bars weren’tthateasy to snap. Still, they were proving far easier than he expected.
He thought he had to spend the week fighting his wolf, but it was more eager than he to go back to her. More proof, as if he needed it, that she was everything to all parts of him.
He had not expected the grief. No, he didn’t want this life anymore but losing it still hurt.
“Planes exist,” he told himself angrily.
His wolf perked up, confused, and insisted it was aware of the tiny metal tubes hurling through the air.
He pushed the beast away.
She could not live here. He knew that, and neither could he, not really, not after experiencing his wolf in the woods and knowing the difference between the frenzy of defending indefensible territory and the freedom of his own land. But they could visit.
He’d made some very important phone calls to various real estate agents before dismissing them all and resorting to his own hacking skills, because he didn’t want to take her home to the Double Thirteen house. It seemed he wasn’t the only wolf in his pack that had fallen in love with the woods, and he wanted it there for the others who would choose to come as well.
Besides, he had a better place in mind.
There was a sharp knock on the door he recognized. He shouted, “Come in,” seconds before the door opened.
Matt was not really his brother but had become closer than one—his right-hand man and confidant—until a few weeks ago, when Mateo sent him to Colorado first, and Matt had disappeared. Tracking him down had also taken a moment.
He opened his mouth to say hello when a compact woman, tough and built, trailed in after Matt. He closed his mouth.
“This is Tori,” Matt said with an edge in his voice.
“Hello, Tori,” he said automatically as several things clicked into place. “Tori Griffin?”
“How the hell did you know that?” Matt asked and then threw up his hands. “I don’t know why I asked that.”
“Yes,” Tori said coolly, squinting at him. His wolf wanted to soothe her; her pulse was racing
Mateo sighed. “I sent you to Silver Spring. You disappeared and now show up with a woman. If it had been literally anyone else in that town, you would not have hidden her from me.”
“She could’ve been human.”
“I would have been happy for you. You know that. I am happy for you. Congratulations.”
“So what do you want from me?” Matt asked. “So badly that you would send a private car and plane to fetch me from the joint I was housesitting, where my name did not appear on any lease or any official document whatsoever.”
Mateo was suddenly aware of how high-handed and inconvenient that must have been.
“I’m sorry.”
Matt looked shocked. The woman smiled.
