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"I'm entirely obsessed with you."

I couldn't stand it anymore. I crashed my mouth into hers. I licked at her lips. Devoured her whole right in the center of the room. My parents would've been proud.

When we came up for air, the floodgates opened.

"I didn't get your mother arrested. But my actions maybe, probably, definitely caused it."

"Ma's fine. I think she got a thrill out of it."

"That wasn't the point. The point was to embarrass her. To weaken her in the eyes of the pack families."

"That's your mother's plan?"

"Gaining more power is my mother's. Taking it away from her, taking it away from all the packs; that was my plan. I wanted to burn the whole system down."

I let out a huff. Then a chuckle. "You're fucking insane."

I kissed her again. Hard.

My hand went into her hair, and I pulled her against me, hungry for the taste of her, for that particular brand of crazy that belonged only to my wife. I kissed her deeper, swallowing the little sound she made as her hands caught in my shirt. Every new thing I learned about this woman should have sent me running in the opposite direction.

She lied. She manipulated. She planted rumors like explosives and waited for entire fucking organizations to blow themselves apart.

And somehow, every revelation only made me hungrier. Because underneath all that pink was fucking mayhem. Brilliant, calculating, completely unhinged mayhem that would keep my hands full for the rest of my life. And she'd told me the truth. She'd trusted me with her truth; crazy as it was.

I dragged my mouth from hers just far enough to breathe. Her breath came warm against my lips.

"You're not mad?"

"I'm turned on. My brothers will be pissed."

Her head dropped.

"Siblings piss each other off all the time. You're a part of this family now. Blackwoods put family first. They'll get over it, eventually."

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

ROSALIND

They did not get over it quickly.

Gunnar and I had to wait nearly an hour before the Blackwood family convened to decide my fate. Mei Ling and Fenrir had disappeared upstairs with her still in handcuffs. At some point, I heard a door close. Thankfully, the walls in this place were thick. But we still heard muffled howls. Much later, their bedroom door opened.

We were in the family room. I knew the space well enough now to orient myself without help. Fenrir's chair was directly ahead. The long sofa was to my right. Two chairs flanked the fireplace. The windows overlooked the grounds behind me.

Magnus was somewhere ahead and slightly left. Nell was beside him. Vidar and Addie were to my right. Astrid was near the fireplace. Ivar was close to her.

Mei Ling sat on her husband's lap. She hadn't said a word.

Gunnar stood beside me. His palm moved slowly over my back.

"I started with the Ironwoods. They were the easiest. They had a history of bringing undocumented workers into the country and using their immigration status to keep them compliant. The Vanes came next. They were already vulnerable. Their hotels were over-leveraged, there were questions about the expansion strategy, and the old alpha's relationships with the other packs were deteriorating. They didn't need much help."

I told them about the Lupettos and the death ring rumors. About the shipments and the feds. All my little chaos strings that I'd tugged and then thrown into a pit.

"The packs didn't trust one another. They only needed permission to admit it."

"And you gave it to them," Nell said.