Once I was comfortable with Mac being in a panic room with the housekeeper, I went to Artem's study. I chose it because I'd spent the morning there with Mac asleep in his bassinet while Artem read the shipping reports that came from his Dutch contact, and Ivan taught Fergus to retrieve a tiny rubber knife.
Finn had turned my home into a cage once. I wasn't giving him a room that had never seen me happy.
The fire was going. It was too warm for a fire, technically, but I'd asked the groundsman to lay one anyway because fires made rooms feel occupied in a way central heating couldn't. I sat on the edge of Artem's desk with a mug of chamomile tea and my feet dangling.
The cashmere sweater was deliberate. Soft. Oversized. And it kept slipping off one shoulder to show my love marks.
All three of them now. Artem's over the old scar, the one Finn had carved into me and called a bond. Ivan's high on the opposite side, bright and defiant. Gregor's at the junction of shoulder and throat, deep and steady, the one that had made me cry out not from pain but from the sheer overwhelming rightness of it.
They ached, the new ones. Not like Finn's had ached. Finn's bite had been hot and infected and wrong, a wound my body had tried to reject even before the bond was dissolved. These ached the space between my legs, like proof these were my alphas.
And I wanted Finn to count every tooth mark.
Artem was by the bookcase, turning his phone over in his hands with the ease of a man who had already won and was just waiting for the other side to notice. Ivan leaned against the far wall near the door, cleaning his nails with a knife that was definitely not designed for nail care. Gregor stood by the window with Fergus cradled in one arm like a fluffy grenade.
The dog was vibrating.
Not growling yet. Just vibrating, the way he did when he sensed something wrong and was waiting for Gregor's signal to escalate. His ears were flat. His tiny teeth were visible.
Fergus had never met Finn. Fergus had been a stray in Edinburgh, half-starved and shivering, when I found him. But he knew. Dogs always knew.
The doors opened.
Finn walked in with two men behind him and went straight for me. He didn't look at Artem. Didn't register Ivan. Didn't see Gregor at all, which was impressive given that Gregor was six-foot-four and built like a war bunker.
"Get your coat." The Belfast accent hit me in the chest before the words did. "You've made a fool of me for years. We'll be dealing with that."
I took a sip of tea.
It was chamomile. I hated chamomile. I was drinking it because it was the tea the housekeeper had brought and I hadn't wanted to make a fuss, and now I was going to be stuck drinking chamomile in front of my abusive ex.
Chamomile. For the most important confrontation of my life. I should be drinking vodka.
Presley would never let me live this down.
"You brought six men," I said. "That seems optimistic."
"I brought six men because I know what you're like.”
“What am I like? I’m surprised you even know.”
“You always were dramatic."
"I was dramatic? Again, how would you know when I spent most of our relationship locked in a bedroom."
He took a step forward. "I'm not asking, Maeve. I bought you. You're coming with—"
He stopped.
He stopped because the two men who'd followed him in were no longer behind him. The doors were closed. Ivan was standing in front of them, and he was smiling, which was significantly worse than if he'd been frowning.
Finn's hand went to his jacket.
Artem was already there. Not a rush. Artem was stealth-like, a liquid glide that ended with the barrel of a suppressed Glock resting against the center of Finn's forehead.
"Do not raise your voice to my omega," Artem said.
Finn froze. His eyes went wide and I watched him finally register the pheromones in the room. The scent of three alphas, fully bonded, none of them pleased to see him. He looked at Artem. At Gregor. Then at Fergus, who had started a low, continuous growl that sounded like a lawnmower in another room.
