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I was not going to marry Rosalind Lobo. That decision would have consequences. My family would stand behind me. But there would be casualties. Unless my plan went sideways.

My phone rang. Vidar. I answered on the second ring.

"Addie slipped her detail two hours ago. She texted me that she was with Nell. They left the Waldorf Astoria thirty minutes ago. They're headed into Lobo territory."

I was on my feet before he finished the sentence. "How many took them? Do we know which⁠—"

"Magnus—"

"Gunnar," I shouted, even though he was on the other side of the house. I was already moving toward the door. "I'll have the full unit at the Lobo perimeter in twenty minutes and⁠—"

"Magnus." Vidar's voice came through the phone at a volume that was not his usual register. Sharp enough to cut through my panic. "They weren't taken. Nobody captured them. They are walking in there of their own will."

I stood in the kitchen doorway. I looked back at my mother, who watched me with a small, knowing smile, like she'd figured out the gameboard strategy being executed and she liked the move. I didn't even know what game was being played.

I knew Nell — had been learning the shape of her mind since the cabin, the way she moved through problems, the architecture of how she thought. She must have found a structural weakness. She must have found a load-bearing clause nobody else had looked for. She must have looked at this situation — at the arranged marriage and the pack alliance and the wedding in two days — and found a variable nobody else had accounted for.

Didn't matter. I wasn't going to let her save me again. I was going to be her fucking hero whether she liked it or not.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

NELL

"There," Addie said quietly. She pointed to a girl who would've given Paris Hilton a run through Tiffany's.

Rosalind Lobo came through the main entrance of the Four Seasons in a cloud of expensive pink luggage, dark suited security, and the careless ease of a woman who had never been required to do anything for herself.

She was pretty. Objectively, undeniably pretty; tall, with the kind of bone structure that photographed well and would age well. Her hair was dark and glossy. Where I had just been handed the title of pack princess, she looked born to it. I wondered if her diapers were silk. A thousand count cotton that would be discarded after use.

She was wearing sunglasses inside. One of her wolves stepped forward to take her bag before it had fully left her hand. Another moved ahead to clear the path to the elevator. A third was already at the panel, pressing the button, holding the door. Rosalind walked through the parted sea of her own detail with serene unawareness of the choreography that made her existence possible.

I hated her instantly.

Magnus had said he had a weakness for intelligent women. Rosalind Lobo, from this distance, looked like a woman who had never been required to count to two because everything she had ever needed had been handled for her. Which was not her fault. But it was also definitively not Magnus's type.

He was going to be miserable.

"Penthouse is on the twentieth floor," said Addie. "You good with stairs?"

"I'm a panther. Remember that time I took you to the climbing gym?"

"No, because I canceled and pretended I was banging Chris Peters in Accounting. Wolves don't climb."

"I knew you were lying about Peters. An accountant? Really, Addie."

"Vidar is excellent with numbers."

"Ughh. Spare me."

"You know the two of you are going to have to get along if you're going to his sister-in-law."

I still wasn't onboard with the whole marriage thing. Or the alpha female thing. I just knew I wanted to be with Magnus. So, I followed behind my best friend and climbed up the service stairs.

The penthouse corridor had two Lobo wolves at the far end and one positioned near the elevator. Addie assessed this with the brisk attention of a woman who had grown up watching pack security operate and understood its patterns.

"Shift change will be in four minutes," she said. "The one by the elevator will step away to check in. That's our window."

"How do you know this?"