The fool believed my act. He carried me into a small, dank room. Dante shoved me toward a twin cot pushed against the damp stone wall. My wolf was a trapped bird, wings beating wild and useless against the cage of my ribs along with my heart.
With my wolf suppressed, my human senses had gone into a panicked overdrive. I became fixated, almost manic, on the details. The sheets were thin—translucent, almost—the kind you buy in a crinkly plastic bag at a discount store for ten dollars. The low thread count felt like sandpaper against my skin. I was going to be broken on a twin cot, on sheets that cost less than a lunch at the mall.
Deep down, beneath the leaden weight of the wolfsbane, I could hear her. My wolf was howling, a battle cry, each growl a reverberating beat of a drum in my ears. For years, I had starved her. I had denied her the run, denied her the raw kill, denied her the very air she needed to breathe just so I could pass as human. And yet, here she was, throwing herself against the bars of her chemical cage to save the woman who had shamed her.
If I got out of this —no, when I got out of this— I vowed I would never lock her away again. I’d let her run every night. She wanted to hunt with Vidar. She wanted to let him bring us the choicest meats. I wanted that too.
I wanted him. I wanted the gilded cage. I wanted the demanding weight of his hand on my back and the way he looked at me like I was the only variable that mattered in his equation.
The metallicclink-clinkof Dante's cufflinks hitting the wooden table beside the bed sounded like a firing squad prepping their rifles. He reached for the top of my dress and pulled it to the side, exposing my collarbone. It was just a bare hint of skin, but it felt like he'd spread me eagle on the bed.
"We’ll do this properly. The Old Way. I'll mark you first."
That upset me more than if he'd put his gnarled fingers up my skirt. I thrashed, my heels digging into the scratchy, low-thread-count sheets as I tried to buck him off. The thought of his teeth in my neck was repulsive. That was Vidar’s place. Vidar was the only one allowed to break that skin. I wanted my husband's mark on my collarbone for the whole world to see; I wanted to carry his scent into every boardroom in Manhattan.
I fought with everything I had—woman and wolf merging into a single, desperate blur of teeth and nails. I bit Dante's hand, tasting the salt and the old-man bitterness of his skin. He growled, a wet, guttural sound, and pinned my wrists above my head. His face descended toward the curve of my neck.
"I'm glad you've got some life in you. My dearly departed wife would just lie back motionless every time I fucked her."
That would never be me. Not the wife part. Definitely not the lying back and taking it part. I would fight him with my every breath. Until my teeth were stubs. Until my fingers bled dry. Dante Lupetto would never know a moment of peace if he tried to keep me.
And then I heard it.
A howl tore through the cellar. It wasn't the ragged, starving sound of the Lupetto pack. It was deep, resonant, and filled with a cold, apex-predator fury. I had heard that specific frequency once before, back when I was fur and claws running free on the Blackwood estate.
Dante's head snapped toward the door. His nostrils flared. He scrambled off me, his face pale as he reached for the doorknob.
The door exploded off its hinges. The wood splintered into a thousand jagged shards. The boom echoed off the stone walls like a grenade.
I scrambled back against the headboard, shielding my eyes, waiting for the dark, broad-shouldered silhouette of my husband to storm through the dust.
"Vidar?" I choked out, my voice trembling.
The man standing in the wreckage wasn't Vidar. He was leaner, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, luminescent gold that swallowed the dim light of the room. He was covered in blood that wasn't his own, a tactical knife held in a reverse grip that looked like an extension of his arm.
"Close your eyes, sis," Gunnar said, his voice a low, vibrating hum of pure violence. "This is going to get messy."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
VIDAR
Ipaced the length of the Persian rug, my shoes digging into the weave. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the grainy footage of Addie being hauled into that car. Every time the image shifted—merging with the memory of twenty years ago.
I remembered the blood on my father’s shirt. I remembered the way the man my father had called brother had smiled while his snipers took out the enforcers guarding our perimeter. The cowardice of bringing bullets to an Alpha challenge instead of his own claws. That's what the next generation would snicker about for years to come. What stuck in my maw was the betrayal.
I'd learned a valuable lesson that day as my brothers and I stood at our father's back as we took out the gunmen and my father decapitated the traitor: blood was the only currency that didn't devalue.
I stopped in front of Elias. The boy was staring at the screen. He wasn't blood. He was a Vane. He was the brother of the woman who had just slipped through my fingers. He was the one who had been whispering to her in the darkness of a private server.
"Was this part of your plan?" I rasped, the words catching in my throat like jagged glass. "You were going to help her leave me."
"Addie isn't yours." Elias stood up, shoulders back and chest puffing out, the glimmer of an alpha in his eyes. "She’s a person, not a?—"
I didn't let him finish. The rage, cold and blinding, snapped my arm forward. My fist caught him square in the jaw. It wasn't my full strength—I would have snapped his neck—but it was enough to send him reeling back against the desk.
To my surprise, the boy didn't cower. He let out a choked sound of fury and lunged back at me, swinging a wild, desperate punch that caught me grazing the temple. I grabbed him by the throat, pinning him to the wall, my claws pricking the skin of his neck.
"Enough!"
