"You can't call dibs on an assassination," Gregor said.
"I just did."
"That's not how dibs work."
"I'm expanding the definition. It's called growth."
Artem stood up and buttoned his jacket. "We tell her now. She deserves to know before he gets any closer."
We walked down the corridor together, three men moving in the synchronized rhythm of people who'd been fighting alongside each other since adolescence. The house was quiet. The guards straightened as we passed. Somewhere upstairs, Mac was napping and Fergus was probably standing guard over the bassinet like a furry little gargoyle.
I knocked on the nursery door. "It's me. You can unlock it."
A moment. The click of the bolt. Then the door opened and Maeve was standing there with Mac in her arms and Fergus at her heels, and her green eyes went from curious to sharp in the space of a breath. The bond meant she could feel us now. The adrenaline, the banked violence, the thing we were bringing her.
"What happened?" She didn't sound frightened. She sounded like a woman who'd spent her whole life receiving bad news and had learned to meet it standing up.
Artem didn't soften it. "Finn O'Shea knows you're alive. Callum told him. He's gathering men and he'll be here within the week."
I watched her face.
I'd been prepared to flood the room with calming pheromones, to catch her if the name sent her somewhere dark. I'd seen what Finn had done to her. I'd traced the scar with my fingers in the dark and felt the old damage beneath the new claim. A name like that could be a trigger or a cage or a ghost, depending on the day.
Maeve looked down at Mac.
Then back up at Artem.
Her face went very still. It was as if all the softness drained away, leaving only the hard, unbreakable core of the woman who'd survived the worst the world could offer and then married it.
"Good," she said.
I blinked. So did Gregor, which was more or less the equivalent of someone else falling off a chair in shock.
"Good?" I repeated.
"I've been waiting three years to be done with him." Her voice dropped into a register I'd only heard her use once before. When she was in the sitting room, telling her father she wasn't currency. "Let's be done with him."
The pride that hit my chest was so bright and sudden I nearly laughed out loud. This was our mate. This was the woman who was going to stand beside us and run the European underworld with an iron fist and a perfectly timed insult.
"As you wish," Artem said. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and I saw the pride in his face too, banked but burning.
I looked at Gregor. The massive enforcer was smiling, but it was a terrifying, savage smile that promised absolute destruction and punctual delivery.
"So," I said, turning back to Maeve. "Quick question about the dismantling. Are we thinking public execution, or something more creative? Because I have ideas. Several ideas. I've been workshopping them for ages in what I'm now realizing was a very healthy and productive use of my imagination."
"Define ages?" Maeve raised an eyebrow.
"Since Prague, approximately."
"You've been fantasizing about killing my ex since the night we met."
"In my defense, he made a very bad decision claiming you. "
Maeve looked at me for a long moment. Then she moved Mac to her other shoulder and said, "Tell me the ideas. But if any of them involve a pit and a pendulum situation, I'm vetoing on grounds of impracticality."
"Noted. The pendulum was option four anyway. Option one is much cleaner."
Gregor sighed. "There's a list."
