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"You'll do great," Addie said, giving my sleeve a firm, reassuring squeeze. "Just be the sweet mama's boy you actually are under all those muscles."

I turned my head back toward the far corner of the sanctuary. Rosalind was still standing by the stone pillar, her shoulders stiff, her gloved fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides. Although now she wasn't alone. There was a male wolf next to her. He was standing entirely too close to my wife, as if he had a right to be in her space.

CHAPTER FOUR

ROSALIND

Out of all my mother’s guards, Diego was the most dangerous to himself and the easiest for me to weaponize. Most of Sorsha’s enforcers used my body for cheap power plays, thinking that getting between the Alpha’s daughter's thighs gave them clout or curried favor. They took what they thought was offered and preened like roosters.

Diego was different. Diego was stupid enough to be in love with me.

I knew him by his scent. He always wore too much aftershave. It was thoughtful, really. He shaved every day in hopes of making his way up my skirt to my sensitive skin. He stepped too close, his shoulder almost brushing mine. Through the black tint of my sunglasses, his form was just a blurry, tall gray silhouette, but I knew the exact look of tortured devotion on his face.

"Stand back, Diego. My mother is watching, and so are the Blackwoods."

"Fuck the Blackwoods," he gritted out, his fingers twitching at his side. "And fuck your mother. You don't have to do this, Rose. Say the word. Just one word. I'll get you out of here. I'll rescue you."

Rescue me. Men were so painfully, predictably foolish. They always assumed a woman was a damsel awaiting a knight on a white horse. They never stopped to consider that the damsel might be the one setting fire to the castle.

I didn't need or want to be rescued. Certainly not from Gunnar Blackwood, and definitely not by a Lobo guard whose brain turned to mush the moment I let him touch me. I was exactly where I wanted to be. Exactly where I needed to be to escape my mother’s chokehold on my life once and for all.

"You can't fight the Blackwood pack, Diego," I said, modulating my voice to sound small, tragic, and heartbreakingly fragile. I picked at the silk ruffle on my sleeve, letting my lower lip quiver just enough for him to catch it. "They're too powerful. Gunnar... he's a monster. A brute who breaks men for fun."

"I don't care what he is," Diego insisted, leaning in further. "I'll kill him for you."

"Violence won't free me." I ghosted my fingertips over his sleeve. "Information will."

That was the first true thing I'd said all evening. I felt him go still, drinking in my touch like a starving man offered a crumb.

"If I'm going to survive inside this pack—if I'm ever going to find a way to break these chains and finally be free... with you... I need leverage."

"Anything. Tell me what you need."

"My father still had loyalists in the Ironwood pack when he died. Men who thought he should take the helm and not his brother. I need you to get a message to one of them."

"What's the message?"

"Find Corin Petrakis. And I need you to tell him this for me." I leaned up and whispered it in his ear. I just hope he heard me over the shudder that went across his shoulders as my breath reached his earlobe.

Diego swallowed hard enough for me to hear. He was putty in my hands. Completely, hopelessly pliable.

"I'll find him," he promised, his voice tight with dark resolve. "Whatever you need, Rose. I'll bring it to you."

"Good boy," I purred.

Before I could pull my hand back, a shift in the heavy air made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The atmosphere around the pillar went instantly cold, thick with an overwhelming, oppressive scent that slammed into my senses like a physical wall. Copper. Heavy, metallic, blood-soaked copper, wrapped in the sharp, burning heat of peppermint.

Gunnar.

A low growl vibrated out of the darkness behind Diego. It wasn't the shallow, posturing snarl of another guard jockeying for position. It was the guttural, chest-caving rumble of a predator marking his kill; a sound so pure and dangerous it rippled straight down my spine and pooled heavy and molten in my core.

My thighs involuntarily clamped together as a throb echoed through my center. I blinked behind my dark lenses, irritated by the sudden flare of heat in my own body. It was just because I hadn't had a decent orgasm in almost a week. It had nothing to do with the brute standing behind us. Nothing at all.

"Step back from my wife," Gunnar commanded.

I'm not sure if that was Gunnar's voice or his wolf's. His voice wasn't loud, but it possessed the kind of dense, suffocating weight that made the floorboards feel as though they were vibrating.

"I'm just doing my job," Diego said, but his voice sounded more like a petulant child's than a dangerous werewolf enforcer.