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Silence. A longer silence than I wanted from a man I had called for help.

"Elias?"

"Yeah, I heard you. You said Magnus is doing this? I thought you two were business partners."

"We… are."

Another pause. Elias was younger than me, but the texture of his pause sounded like an older brother who sensed his little sister made out with his best friend after curfew.

"I'm surprised Magnus has taken on a new… business partner when he's getting married in a few months."

There was that word again. Marriage. Why was everyone thinking that since I slept with this man that I would…

"Elias? How do you know Magnus is getting married in a few months?"

"He's been engaged to Rosalind Lobo for as long as I can remember."

That was not my name. Rosalind Lobo sounded like a Barbie doll who matched her shoes to her underwear, but that was not kenough. She sounded like someone you played Candyland with, not chess. She sounded like the kind of woman waiting for a prince to come kiss her awake, not someone who would snatch his sword and slay the beasts alongside him. She sounded like the kind of woman who bedazzled her phone.

The plain black burner phone was warm in my hand.

Two percent battery.

I looked at it for a long moment. At the number on the screen. At the closet around me.

Magnus was engaged. He had been engaged the whole time.

The cabin. The garden. The elevator. The desk. Last night — his hands and his mouth and his there will be no other woman for me delivered in the dark with the conviction of a man who meant every word he said.

And he had been engaged the whole time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

MAGNUS

Irounded the corner of the estate's east wing and found them at the side door. Gunnar had his jacket over one arm and his knuckles wrapped in cloth. Ivar was three steps behind him, wearing a bruise under his left eye the size of a plum and deepening by the minute. His right knuckles were swollen.

"Ma will have your balls when she finds out you took him."

"Ma won't find out if certain people keep their mouths shut." Gunnar shot Ivar a look that communicated a full paragraph in two seconds.

"You, me, and Vidar were all going out with Dad at his age," Gunnar continued, turning back to me. "I just helped put hair on the pup's chest. The bruise will fade in another hour." He reached out and ruffled Ivar's hair with the hand that wasn't wrapped.

Ivar grinned. Winced immediately because of the bruise. Grinned again anyway.

"Don't tell Ma," Gunnar warned, and steered Ivar through the side door before I could respond.

I watched them go. Gunnar's broad back. Ivar half a step behind him. The two of them moved through the door together. Gunnar's voice drifted back, low and instructive — already debriefing, already teaching, the same way our father had debriefed us on the drive home after our first runs, our first fights, our first kills.

My brother was right; this was how we were raised. This was who we were.

The family room was quiet when I came in. Late morning light moved through the tall windows. The house felt like it was resting, waiting for the commotion that would occupy it later in the day with the noise that was my parents and siblings. This room had seen blood, tears, sweat, and everything in between.

My father's study door was open. Fenrir was in his chair behind the desk, but he was not at the desk. He had turned it sideways, the way he did on weekend mornings. My mom was in his lap. His arms were around her. She had her hand against his jaw. They were kissing with the unhurried ease of two people who had been doing this for four decades.

I had walked in on variations of this my entire life. At twelve I had found it mortifying. At twenty, I had found it embarrassing in a way I pretended was irritation. At thirty, I had started wondering if it could be within my reach. My parents’ marriage had been arranged. So had mine. After last night, I knew I could have what they had. It just wouldn't be with the person they had directed me to.

My father's hand moved slowly up my mother's back, settling between her shoulder blades in the possessive, habitual way of a man who knew exactly where his person was and intended to keep her there.