Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
MAGNUS
Istood on the edge of the clearing. My lungs burned with the sweet, post-run ache that only came from pushing the wolf to its absolute limit. Steam rolled off my bare shoulders in thick, ghost-like plumes, catching the silver of the moonlight.
Behind me, the shadows of the North Woods shifted. One by one, the heavy padding of paws on damp earth slowed to a halt. The pack breathed as one; a collective, heaving lung that tasted the iron tang of adrenaline.
I turned. My spine straight, my human skin tingling from where the fur receded.
Huxley, our head enforcer, was the first from the pack to shift back.
He stood six-four, a wall of scarred muscle with eyes that still held the predatory amber of his wolf.
Behind him, Kael and Bram reached for the gear bags we kept stashed in the hollow of an ancient oak.
Naked bodies stepped into expensive tracksuits and slid feet into sneakers that cost more than most people's car payments.
We were not the kind of pack that left our men to dig through a hollow log for someone's old flannel shirt.
Those wolves existed in paperback fiction for teenage girls.
Whatever those paperback wolves were doing in the Pacific Northwest, it had nothing to do with us.
“Good run, Magnus,” Huxley said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. He didn't look at my face. His gaze didn't rise above my throat; the submissive acknowledgment of the hierarchy. “The younger males are getting faster. Kael almost nipped your heels at the creek.”
I let out a dark sound that was almost a laugh. “A wolf who doesn't hunger for the lead is a wolf I can't use.”
I knew the value of these runs. My father had taught me that loyalty wasn't built in boardrooms or over signed contracts; it was forged in the mud, in the synchronized heartbeat of the chase. The men needed to see me in the lead. They needed to feel the weight of my strength and the reach of my shadow. I’d been running with these men since I was sixteen, when the weight of the Blackwood name was still a new collar around my neck.
I never doubted my brothers. Vidar and Gunnar, even our baby brother Ivar, we were blood and bone, a unified front. But the pack? The pack needed a reminder. They needed to know the heir wasn't just a strategist in a bespoke suit. He was the apex.
“Huxley,” I said, my voice hardening into the register of a command. “I’m keeping a human woman in the cabin. I want you and a rotating detail on the perimeter. Stay back—five hundred yards, at least. I don't want your scents crowding the porch.”
Huxley’s brow furrowed, his tactical brain whirring. “You think the Ironwood stragglers are going to make a move? Or is it the Volki?”
“Both.” The lie tasted like copper on my tongue.
I didn't tell him that the only thing I was truly worried about was another male wolf getting a whiff of the smoky vanilla scent clinging to her skin. I didn't tell him that my beast was currently so territorial he wanted to piss a circle around the entire cabin. “The Volki are losing capital. They’ll be looking for leverage. They know she’s an asset from Sterling. I want them to find nothing but Blackwood teeth if they start digging through files.”
“We’ll hold the line. No one gets past us.”
They disappeared back into the trees, reverting to the silent, golden-eyed sentinels of the woods.
I stood on the porch for a long beat, the steam still rising off me.
I’d told my men I was protecting an asset.
I’d told myself I was following protocol.
But as I looked back towards the cabin, I knew the truth.
I wasn't guarding a resource; I was protecting the shiny new toy that I didn't want to share.
I'd let Nell work through the task I'd given her for a couple of days. I'd check in on her every night. Let her get used to me. My scent in her space. My voice in the dark. The slow, deliberate accumulation of my presence until her body started making decisions her brain hadn't signed off on.
You didn't rush a woman like Nell. You circled.
You got closer each time. A touch here. A look held a beat too long there.
Enough heat to make her aware of the temperature between us without giving her anything to hold on to.
You brought her to the edge of wanting and pulled back just before she could act on it — once, twice, as many times as it took until the edge was all she could think about.
A woman like Nell didn't beg easily. That was what made the hunt worth the patience.
The morning she tells me the task is finished, I'd crook my finger, and she'd fall on my cock. After fucking her blind, I'd let her go. She would have her company, and I would be getting married.
I pushed into the main house. The smell of home-cooked food brought me back down from my aroused state.
"You missed dinner, Magnus. I assumed you were brooding in your cabin."
"Just clearing my head, Ma," I leaned down to press a kiss to her cheek.
Mei Ling Blackwood was small in the way the eye of a storm was small.
Her hair had gone silver at the temples, spreading through the black in a wave so elegant it looked like a decision rather than age.
It made her look wise. She had always been the smartest person in any room she entered, including rooms full of alphas and lawyers and men who believed their own reputations.
One of my first memories was of watching my father watch her. He always waited until the room cleared before he sought her out, his voice dropping to a private register, seeking her counsel. Fenrir Blackwood never made a consequential decision without her.
"Eat. You're too thin." She put a plate of lo mein and cut steak that barely kissed the fire on the table. "Should I have a plate sent to your cabin?"
It was work not to go still and betray my surprise. Of course, my mother knew everything. She swiped two fingers through that gray streak, placing the hair behind her ear as she regarded me.
"No, Ma. It's taken care of."
The less I said, the better. I picked up the utensils, aiming to use the food as a weapon to stop this interrogation, when my phone buzzed. Looking at the caller ID, I debated briefly whether I could avoid this interrogator. If I did, she would only put the phone down and come flying over here.
"Where is she, Magnus?" Addie’s voice was so loud I might as well have put it on speakerphone.
"Resting."
"Nell needs a friendly face after her shock."
"You're on your honeymoon, little sister. You tend to your husband. I'll tend to your friend."
"What do you mean by tend to?"
"Nell saw things in that park she wasn't supposed to see. There are protocols for humans who witness the shift. You know that, Addie. I'm following the rules."
This was all technically true. Addie didn't need to know I'd be veering off the protocols by leading Nell into my bed.
"She’s my best friend," Addie countered, her voice softening. "I vouch for her. She won't tell a soul."
"I'm not worried about her telling anyone. I'm worried about people coming after her. Did you know Sterling was doing business with Volkov Industrial?"
I could feel Addie's surprise coming through the line. "No, I didn't know that. At least not before yesterday. Elias said he uncovered a plot between some of the families aimed at the Blackwoods."
"Nell built the infrastructure."
"She didn't know—"
"I'm aware. Which is why she is under my protection. Trust me, Addie."
"I do. I know you're a fair man, Magnus. I know you won't hurt her."
I said nothing. I didn't like to lie if I didn't have to.
Hurting Nell wasn't of interest to me. Unless she was into a bit of spanking.
I wanted her brain, and I also wanted to suck on those pert breasts.
They appeared the perfect size to fit one fully in my mouth.
I would give myself one night to explore that theory.
Her brain would remain the permanent asset of Blackwood Holdings for the rest of her life.
"If it were Gunnar, I'd be kicking down doors," Addie was saying, her voice calm now that she believed her friend was out of danger.
I chuckled. "I don't doubt it."
Before I could hang up, there was a muffled scuffle on the other end of the line. Vidar’s voice came over the phone with Addie's receding into the background. I caught the word bossy, but it was said without any heat. A door shut, and then my brother came on in hushed tones.
"Did you send the Odhiambo woman to Anchorage?"
That was the plan my brother had set up for Nell. Before I'd gotten a whiff of her.
"I have her working on the Volki problem. She’s dismantling their industrial merger as we speak. It'll probably take her a couple of days.
"She can do it in Alaska. That woman is not a good influence on my wife. She's the reason Addie was in the park when her father was taken out. She could've been taken from me. Or worse. Addie’s distracted enough without that Iago whispering in her ear."
I couldn't help it; a dark grin tugged at my mouth. "Are you jealous of your wife’s best friend, Viddo? That sounds dangerously like a personal feeling."
Vidar growled—more wolf than man—and hung up.
My brother had always had the emotional range of a thunderstorm: loud and over quickly. I set the phone face down on the table and looked up to find my mother watching me from across the kitchen.
She was smiling. Not the sharp, knowing smile she deployed when she had caught one of us in something. The quieter one; private, almost to herself. She covered the remaining food, slid the containers into the refrigerator, and padded out of the kitchen without a word.
Addie thought I was protecting her friend. Vidar wanted Nell gone. My mother had heard asset. Nobody suspected anything.
Good.
I picked up my utensils and ate until my plate was clear. I wasn't full. I was starving. I knew what I wanted. It was back in the cabin.
My wolf was eager, a little too eager. It had been a while.
I had no idea what the frequency of sex would be when I got married.
I knew my brother couldn't keep his hands off his new wife.
But Vidar and Addie had accidentally fallen in love after being forced to marry.
My parents were the same way. I doubted luck would strike a third time.
In a few weeks, I’d be meeting Rosalind Lobo. I’d be signing my life away to a woman I didn't know to secure a future for my family, for my pack.
Nell was a toy. A final indulgence before the cage closed for good. She’d be on her knees soon, I promised the wolf. I cleaned my plate, rinsing it under the faucet before putting in the dishwasher like I'd been taught, and headed up to bed.