Page 9 of Wishes in the Moonlight (Rocky Mountain Wolves #4)

~Amanda~

When the door closed behind the others, I let out a deep sigh simmering with anxiety and frustration.

The anxiety stemmed from the unexpected turn this day had taken and the unusual visitor waiting to speak with me again.

The frustration? Well, that mostly came from Troy.

He seemed to take everything I did or said as a personal affront to him.

When I cut him off for speaking out of turn in front of Kalo, he bristled, even though he’d been the one in the wrong.

His impatience when I asked Savannah and Jasper for their thoughts before him practically vibrated off him even though I simply followed protocol.

Our pack cleaved to its traditions, and one of the ones I’d learned from my father had been always addressing his advisers in order of rank.

My Beta came first, obviously, and Jasper, as her mate, outranked a captain of the guards.

Yes, if we’d accepted each other as mates, Troy would outrank them both, but at the current moment, when nothing at all had been agreed between us, he held the lowest position in the room. That wasn’t me being vindictive towards him; it was simply a fact.

Him not understanding that or just not accepting it added another layer of stress to my day that I really didn’t need.

Pushing my growly, overprotective mate from my thoughts, I pulled up my father’s personal archive on my computer. With all the other business of taking over the pack, I hadn’t had a chance to really delve into any of his files yet, but I knew where to find them and how they were organized.

First, I accessed his visitor log where he maintained a full list of all formal visitors to our territory during his tenure as Alpha.

Names, dates, pack affiliations and more were all carefully documented.

I did a search for the name Kalo, in every spelling variation I could think of, but each search returned the same message: ‘no results found’.

So, Kalo had never met with my father, at least not under that name.

Broadening my search, I clicked into the folder of his personal notes, made up of hundreds of documents over the years of his rule.

Each week, he summarized the important activities that had taken place in the pack, and a search for ‘white-haired man’ and ‘strange visitor’ returned several results, none of which were relevant.

My eyes flitted to the phone on my desk, wondering if it would be more efficient to simply call my father and ask him.

He and my mother were still in the United States, staying with the scientist who had helped treat my mother from the illness which nearly claimed her life.

Calling my father would be the most direct route, but he might be busy and the idea of adding to the worries they already had didn’t appeal to me, especially since nothing was necessarily wrong.

Not yet, anyway.

Besides, I needed to prove to the pack that I could handle things on my own without running to my father every time I had a question.

I needed to prove it to myself too.

With a sigh, I locked my computer and stood up, straightening out my clothes. From my drawer, I pulled a small compact mirror to check my makeup and hair, ensuring nothing had come out of place before I squared my shoulders and headed to the library to meet Kalo.

The library had always been my favourite place in the pack house.

As a child, I spent hours sitting in one of the window bays, curled up on the cushioned bench with a book until someone called me for dinner or to work on my lessons or to go to bed.

My father approved of reading as a hobby since it meant staying inside and away from any potential dangers, so he instructed my tutors to indulge me in it.

The library sat on the ground floor of the pack house, directly beneath the ballroom upstairs and almost the same size.

Rectangular and wide, the walls were lined with in-set bookshelves, complemented by free-standing ones forming a back-to-back column in the centre of the room.

A comfortable seating area by the fireplace had been my mother’s preferred place to read on the occasions she took advantage of the space, but I preferred the privacy of the window bay, pulling the curtain closed around it when I really wanted to escape.

That morning, Kalo stood in the centre of the room, perusing the titles on the middle shelves with his hands behind his back.

The posture added to the old-fashioned air that surrounded him despite his youth.

At the rear of the room, a man clad in black stood, his hands clasped in front of him and feet spread as he watched Kalo’s every move.

That had to be Devon, the man Troy mentioned bringing in, and his surveillance of our visitor was hardly subtle.

Troy himself managed a little better. He stood close to the wall by the windows, just a few steps from my favourite window seat, and his eyes, rather than watching Kalo, were fixed on me.

I gave him a nod of acknowledgement when I entered to confirm I knew he was in place before I strode over to our visitor.

“Anything catch your eye?”

Kalo turned to me, his golden gaze even more striking close up than it had been across the desk in my office. “Now that you’re here, I can honestly say yes.”

Fabric rustled from behind me, where Troy stood. Obviously, he overheard that and didn’t appreciate the compliment. Werewolf hearing could be too good sometimes.

I didn’t take Kalo’s comment to heart, however. Flattery formed part of diplomacy, so I doubted he meant it sincerely. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Let’s take a seat by the fire so we can continue our conversation.”

I gestured to the sofa and chairs arranged around the crackling fire, and a ghost of a smile flickered across Kalo’s face. “As you wish.”

I took a seat first, choosing one of the comfortable armchairs that sat perpendicular to the fireplace and Kalo took the one across from me. From his vantage point, Troy couldn’t see me but he would have a full view of Kalo, exactly as I wanted.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot this morning,” I started, giving him a smile as I sat back and crossed my legs, trying to look at ease.

Since demanding answers hadn’t worked before, perhaps a little gentle coaxing would be more effective.

“Your sudden appearance took us all by surprise, and when cornered, wolves tend to get a little aggressive.”

“My introduction was clumsy,” he agreed, relaxing into his chair a little more with my words and softened tone. “I’m a little rusty at offering my services and I apologize if I’ve been too forward.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “Is this something you do often, then? Go around offering to help people out of the blue?”

“That is pretty much my business model, yes.” His golden eyes twinkled with amusement. “Very few of my clients are quite so charming, though.”

I ignored that to focus on the first part of what he said. “And your business deals are usually successful?”

“I suppose that depends on your definition of success.” For a moment, a dark cloud of something close to pain passed over his expression, erasing the merriment that had been there a moment earlier. When I blinked, it had gone. “My clients are satisfied in the short term. I’m usually less so.”

“Aren’t you the one who sets the terms?”

He inclined his head in agreement, his eyes never leaving mine. “Yes, but people rarely keep their word when the time comes to settle our debt. I’ve been disappointed many times, but I live in hope that each time will be different.”

A hidden meaning lingered beneath the surface of his statement, so close I could almost feel it, but what that meaning might be, I had no idea.

Before I could say anything else, he turned his head, glancing around the room. “This space holds a special significance for you, doesn’t it?”

The blood in my veins cooled, remembering how I had just been thinking about that before I came into the library, and how he had appeared moments after I said that I needed some help.

Could he read my mind? Some species had that ability, and if I was dealing with one of them, he might be more dangerous than even Troy believed.

“What makes you say that?”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug, the light from the fire playing along his bronzed skin with the movement.

“You’re more relaxed in here than in your office.

A lot of our behaviours are rooted in our childhood memories, even when we don’t realize it.

I’m guessing that as a child, you felt safe in here and on edge in your father’s office. Is that right?”

I didn’t answer, mostly because I was still stuck on wondering whether he had dug that out of some part of my memory without me realizing it. Finding out his species seemed more urgent than ever.

Kalo chuckled at my silence. “I’m sorry. I told you: observation is one of my skills. People tell you all sorts of things about themselves if you know where to look, but sometimes, they find it off-putting when you point it out.”

My eyes narrowed on him as I considered his explanation. “Do they ever accuse you of reading their minds?”

His head tilted back as he laughed, a deep, melodic sound pushing past his white teeth. “You can’t imagine how often. Unfortunately, that’s a skill I don’t possess, as useful as it would be.”

That’s too bad. If you could hear this, I’d take you to my bed tonight.

I put the thought out into the space between us, the same way I did when mind-linking with one of my pack, and watched Kalo carefully for any sign that he’d heard me. A twitch of his jaw, a flare of his nostrils or a widening of his eyes would be proof enough for me.

However, nothing changed, other than his smile slowly fading as he watched me.

“If you’re trying to talk to me telepathically now, I’m afraid it truly won’t work. I’m good at reading people but I’m not a mind-reader. I promise.”

“A promise means little without an honourable person behind it, and I don’t know enough about you to know whether you fit that bill,” I replied, and he bowed his head again.

“That’s fair, but I hope you’ll give me a chance to prove myself to you. I think we could be good for each other, Alpha Amanda. There’s no reason we can’t be friends.”

Friends were never something I had many of and not at the top of my list of concerns now. “You said you won’t tell me what you are or where you come from, but if we’re going to work together, I do need to know one thing: how do you know anything about me or my pack?”

His smile reappeared, lighting up his face once again. “That, I can tell you.”