Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
NELL
For the first time since undergrad, I had to resort to paper files.
Luckily, Darius had given me a dossier. The Omondi files were a collection of manila folders with typed labels and handwritten annotations in the margins.
I turned a page and ran my thumb along the edge as I read about the highland estates outside Kisumu; the volcanic soil, the altitude, the unique conditions that produced Kenya's purple tea.
The files described the elevation in careful detail.
The morning mist that settled in the valley before the sun burned it off.
The way the cold nights and the warm days created something in the leaves that didn't exist anywhere else on earth.
My grandmother had described that mist once. She'd said the mist in the morning made the world look like God was waking up and wiping the sleep from his eyes.
I rubbed my eyes and refocused on the document.
I had been working from screens for so long that the texture of the paper caught me off guard.
The weight of a document that existed in the world rather than on a server somewhere.
The slight grain of the page under my fingertips.
The way the ink sat on the surface, the slight skip in one line where the ink had run thin.
A ghost of a fingerprint in the upper corner from whoever had handled this before me.
Wait? I blinked again. But it was clearly visible: the ridges of a thumbprint pressed into the corner of the page.
Not smudged in ink. Was that the natural oils of someone's skin, the whorls of it catching the light at exactly the right angle?
I should not have been able to see that. I must be imagining things.
My nose twitched as the scent of cloves entered the building along with the cool night air. Faint at first; the ghost of a scent rather than the thing itself. I lifted my head from the paper. Sat very still. And breathed.
There. Warmer now. Closer. Moving through the building.
The elevator. Stepping onto my floor. Measured steps.
Not fast. Low voices. His, and then the enforcers, a brief exchange I couldn't make out through the door.
Then footsteps moving away; likely the enforcers clearing the hallway, peeling off to their positions, the pack reorganizing itself around its center of gravity before their leader came into my den.
The doorknob turned.
I looked back down at the Omondi files.
I did not look up.
I had been working on the Omondi proposal for three hours, ever since I got off the phone with Elias and the burner phone had died.
I'd needed something to distract myself from that conversation.
The Omondi Group's export infrastructure was elegant — not optimized, exactly, but settled.
I had been going through Kenyan trade frameworks and agricultural export law and the history of the highland estates, and I had found myself absorbed in it.
Magnus crossed the room. He came to stand behind my chair. His nose dipped to the curve of my neck. He inhaled deeply and made a satisfied sound.
"Pervert," I said.
"I'm going to do a great many perverted things to you."
"I'm no longer interested in collaborating with you outside of the office, Mr. Blackwood."
His hands came to the back of my chair, one on each side. Another cage. He peered over my shoulder. "I told you that you're not taking that client."
"I told you that you will not dictate who I do business with. Or who buys me drinks. Or who I fuck. Save all of that for your arranged marriage."
His hands tightened on the chair. He put his forehead against the top of my head. "I was coming here to tell you about that."
"Sure you were."
"I broke it off."
"How convenient that it happened just after I find out."
"How did you find out?"
I set the papers back in the folder. I turned in my chair and gave him the full, direct version of my attention. "Not from you."
I moved to stand. His hands found my waist. I pushed away. He held onto me. The tips of his claws pressed through the fabric of my top. The wolf was in his eyes, as if the animal was making sure I knew it was present.
"Do not run from me, Petronella."
"Let me go, Magnus."
"Never."
"So what? I'm supposed to just be your mistress?"
"You were supposed to be a one-night stand. The last one before I met my fiancée for the first time. My wolf decided you were its fated mate. So that wedding is off." His eyes held mine. "And ours is on."
He was serious. That was the thing about Magnus — he was always serious. He did not say things to hear how they sounded. He said them because they were the thing he had decided. In this matter, the deciding was already done.
"I don't want to be a wife. I'm not sure I want children. I do not want to be an alpha female outside a boardroom."
He was watching me with amber-edged attention. Not arguing. Receiving. Which was almost worse.
"Choose the other girl," I said.
"I didn't tell you the whole truth."
"Yeah? No duh."
"Last night, what happened when I was inside you…"
I pressed my legs together, remembering the delicious pressure as his knot swelled inside me. That alone was almost enough to make me want to take vows. Almost.
"Wolves only knot one woman. Their fated mate.
Once it happens, there is no other choice.
Not for the wolf. Not for the man. If I had married Rosalind before I met you, if I had given the wolf no other option, eventually it would have knotted her.
Because she would have been its only outlet.
But I was with you first. My wolf chose you that first time. There will be no other woman for me."
I sat with the full weight of what he had just said. The biological permanence of it was one thing. But I wasn't a wolf, so that didn't resonate with me. What did was the choice. I had been chosen.
Not because I was useful. Not because I was the best available option, or the most competent person in the room, or the woman who kept the infrastructure running while someone else got the credit. Because his wolf had decided I was the only one for him. Full stop. No asterisk.
I took a deep breath, filling my nose with his scent. Then I reached out and patted him on the shoulder. "Good luck in your life as a monk."
Magnus’s hands caught me. He pulled me to him in one motion.
Off my feet and into his chest. I did not fight it.
My body made several decisions about Magnus Blackwood that my brain was pretending to debate.
I knew I wasn't going anywhere. I'd known it before the call with Elias dropped, and I hadn't asked him for a rescue.
For the first time in my life, I understood the fairytale. I understood why the princess didn't pick up a sword and fight her way out of the tower. With Magnus Blackwood towering over me, there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
His hands snared around my waist. My hands found his heartbeat, strong and steady. Both of us were breathing faster than the exertion of simply holding each other warranted.
Neither of us moved. The moment stretched. The city outside held its breath.
"Tell me no." His voice was low. Something more careful than a command. "If you're telling me no, say it."
I parted my lips. Nothing came out. Because I wanted it. I wanted to belong to this man.
And that was the problem. It was dangerous to belong to a man. To give your whole heart to him. My mother had belonged to my father — completely, without reservation, with the kind of wanting that reorganized everything around itself and left nothing untouched.
I had grown up in the wreckage of that wanting. I was not going to be half a person. At the same time, I knew that stepping away from Magnus would not leave me whole.
I stood there between the step back I had taken and the step forward I couldn't stop wanting to take. And it pissed me off.