Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
VIDAR
When I’d first climbed the stairs, still vibrating from the slaughter, all I’d smelled was her.
My wolf had surged against my ribs, a mindless, starving thing wanting only to claim, to bite, to fuck.
I’d wanted to go straight to her bedroom, tear back the covers, and gorge myself on the woman I’d just bound to my soul.
But I was covered in the raw ingredients of violence: sweat, dirt, blood, and the cheap beer Gunnar liked to chug after a battle.
I wouldn't go to her like that—not on our wedding night.
So I’d gone to my own room to wash the kill away.
I'd thought the scent of her was strong in the hall; it was concentrated at my bedroom door.
My wolf had sat up, ecstatic, certain she had finally come to me, that she was waiting in my bed.
But when I opened my door, my bed was empty.
The scent of my wife was concentrated in a single, clinical radius.
My desk. My laptop.
She’d spied on me. She hadn't even tried to mask the trail.
I’d stood there in the dark, my jaw tight enough to crack bone.
I’d never felt the need for a password within the fortress of my family home.
My brothers knew better, and my father didn't care. But I’d let this she-wolf in, and she’d already sniffed out the secrets.
I’d spent the walk to her room wondering which deal she was trying to sabotage, which ledger she’d planned to leak back to her father.
And then I’d found her sleeping. The peace of the caught.
"I warned Nell."
Who the fuck was Nell? Was there some lover I’d missed in the dossier? Some human anchor I needed to find and erase from the map to ensure her world began and ended with me?
Then the data clicked into place. Petronella Odhiambo. Nell. Her supervisor.
The fury shifted, cooling into something sharper. Addie hadn't called her father. She hadn't reached out to the Vanes to warn them of the Blackwood shadow falling over their assets. Her loyalty wasn't to her blood; it was to a human woman who shared her cubicle.
It should have been a relief. Instead, it was a fresh insult.
I wanted that loyalty. I wanted the fierce, desperate protection she offered that woman to be aimed at me. I wanted to know that if the world were ending, I was the one she would shout a warning to. I wanted her to be the shield at my back, not the leak in my hull.
I leaned down further; the scent of my wife's fear and her desire swirled in a cocktail that made my head swim.
"You're a Blackwood now, Addie," I said, my hand sliding from the mattress to the column of her throat. My thumb rested over her frantic pulse. "When you bark, people listen. And when you betray me for a human, you don't just cost me money. You cost me my patience."
I tightened my hand around her throat. Not to hurt. To possess. Because she was mine.
Her skin was devastatingly soft; a delicate silk that made my calloused palms feel like sandpaper. The pulse jumped under her jaw. I wanted to see her when that frantic rhythm shifted, when she was gasping for air not in fear, but at the peak of an orgasm.
Addie wasn't thinking about the bed. She wasn't thinking about me.
"Nell... you can't destroy her," she rasped, her voice strained against the pressure of my thumb. "She’s the one who actually runs Sterling. The partners are just figureheads. If you take the firm, you need her. Just put her in charge. She’s brilliant, Vidar. She’s—"
"Enough!" The growl ripped from my chest. It was infuriating. I had just dismantled a rival pack, waded through blood to secure our future, and come back to find my bride's mind occupied by a human middle-manager.
I leaned more of my weight onto her, caging her deeper into the mattress. "What will you do to save your pet human, Addie? What is her livelihood worth to you?"
Her brow furrowed at the pet comment, but her lungs were starting to labor under my grip. Her hands flew up to mine, her fingers searching for a way to pry me off.
I didn't move. I lifted a brow, a silent warning that any struggle would only end in her being pinned harder.
She understood. My Addie was a quick study. She dropped her hands to the sheets, her chest heaving as she stared up at me.
"What do you want?"
I shook my head, a dark, joyless smile touching my lips. "I don't need to ask for things, sweet Addie. I take what I want." I leaned closer, my mouth grazing her ear. "The question is: what are you offering to balance the scales?"
A shadow of disappointment darkened her eyes, a flicker of something—maybe hope—dying out as she realized this wasn't going to be the romantic surrender she’d dreamed of.
It was a transaction. The sooner she realized that, the better we'd get on.
Everything between us would be a business transaction. It was my only love language.
"I'll give you what every man wants; I’ll give you a blow job. Just leave Nell out of the fallout."
The arousal that had been a wildfire between us moments ago dampened. Her tone was clinical. It was a line item on a ledger. It was an insult to the wolf in me that wanted her soul, not just her mouth. But I was still a man. I wanted the blowjob, too.
I released her throat. The sudden absence of my touch left a faint red mark on her pale skin. I stood up, the bed creaking as I withdrew my weight, and looked down at her with a coldness that matched her own.
"I’ll add it to your ledger to collect at a later date. I prefer my debts paid with interest, and right now, your heart wouldn't be in the trade."
I turned toward the door, my shadow stretching long across the floorboards.
"Are we keeping score now?" her voice followed me, hoarse and jagged.
I paused at the threshold, looking back over my shoulder at my wife with her red hair and pale skin against the pillows. My red mark was a brand on her throat. It turned me the fuck on. Which is why I had to leave. I didn't fuck with a fogged head. And right now, I wasn't seeing straight.
"Always," I said. "You owe me, sweet Addie. Don't forget it."