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Magnus pursed his lips as his jaw worked. His eyes were still on Darius's hand holding my elbow. If Magnus said yes — if he said I was his fated mate, Sorsha would have two options. She could attack. Or she could withdraw the Lobo support and leave Magnus on a boat with Katya's remaining wolves and a dead Alpha and the political fallout of having broken his engagement.

Either way, the Lobo alliance was gone.

Either way, Magnus was significantly more exposed than he had been thirty seconds ago.

Either way, he was going to pay for it.

Because of me.

"The mark is my father's," I said. "He used to carry me in his panther form when I was a baby." I lifted my locs to show the evidence of the aged scars. It was clear to anyone who looked closely that the mark wasn't fresh.

Sorsha's eyes moved over my face, not bothering to look at the mark. I knew women like her. She needed more.

"As for the rest of it; more than anything else Magnus and I are business partners. We did sleep together. He was very clear that he had a fiancée and that once he was mated, he would be faithful. It was a fling. A brief one. A good one. Your daughter is a lucky woman in that department."

It was all the truth. Every word of it. Just not in the proper order of events. I did not look at Magnus. I could not look at Magnus and hold any of this together.

The deck held its silence. The river washed up against the boats and things I left unsaid.

Sorsha looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked at Magnus, who still was struggling. Struggling to hold words in? Struggling to get them out? I wouldn't find out. Sorsha, the woman who held all the power in this moment, was delivering her verdict.

"The Volki have suffered a significant loss tonight. I suggest the remaining members take time to grieve and regroup before any further decisions are made or actions are taken. The Lobo will bear witness to the resolution of tonight's events and will report to the council accordingly."

Katya looked at her dead brother. She looked at me. The promise she had made with her eyes when her claws retracted was still there, unchanged, with a longer timeline now.

Darius's hand tightened on me. I followed him toward the railing. Towards the adjacent vessel. Away from the Volki boat and Katya's grief.

Away from Magnus.

I did not look back.

I knew if I looked back, I would see his face. His face would have the expression it had in the small hours of my apartment when he thought I was asleep, the unguarded one. If I saw that expression right now in this context — with the lie still in my mouth and the distance already opening between us — I was going to do something that would undo everything I had just managed.

So I did not look back.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

MAGNUS

Sorsha's boat was well-appointed. It communicated that its owner had money and wanted passengers to know it without her saying so. Dark wood and brass fittings. Built-in shelving with creased spines facing outward to indicate they had actually been read. A bar cart secured against the wall with unopened, expensive bottles. I came out of the interior to sit in the stern with my forearms on my knees. I watched the city's lights move past on the water as I held the wolf and the man together. It felt like gripping two ends of a rope that were pulling in opposite directions.

The wolf wanted its mate. But the animal was smart. It knew that reaching for its mate back on the Volki boat would have brought harm to Nell. Right now it was regrouping, biding its time until it could get her back. Meanwhile, Nell's words played over and again in my head.

I understood why she'd said those things. She was the smartest person I knew. She'd thrown my words back at me, and they'd done what I had originally intended them to. I'd wanted a fling before my marriage. Only now I wanted my fling to be my bride.

The water moved past. The city lights grew brighter. The darkness of the river taunted me. This was the place I had gone under, the place where I had lost her. She was safest with Darius. For now.

He was a cousin. Not a rival. He was a leopard shifter. And Nell was...? I didn't know what she was, except that she was meant to be mine.

She hadn't smelled like a leopard. She hadn't smelled like a shifter. She'd smelled like herself, and me.

Everyone had smelled the scent of me on her. If she returned to the leopards of the Omondi clan, would she stop smelling like me? Would she smell more cat than wolf?

Everyone had seen the mark on her neck; her father's mark. It should be mine; my claiming mark. But if Sorsha had seen that, she would've gutted Nell on the spot. The only reason Nell was still breathing air and not gasping blood was because she was with the Omondi. The only reason Katya hadn't gouged her eyes out was that she was with the Omondi. If it became clear that she was mine, if I openly claimed her as my mate, Nell would be in the middle of a pack war that wasn't in the Blackwood's favor.

As things stood, the battle between the Blackwoods and the Volki had been settled by the old ways. The alliance between the Lobo and the Blackwoods was intact. We had potential new allies in the Omondi for returning their lost heir. Everyone would get what they wanted; except me.

I was going to be Alpha. The Alpha did not get the luxury of putting himself first. That was the whole of it, the entire architecture of the life I had been building since I was sixteen in a snowy clearing, giving up a girl I had a crush on. Giving up the woman who had my heart was not going to be that easy.