Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
MAGNUS
Someone had marked my mate.
I turned this over in my mind while Nell dressed. She was talking. Normally, I loved this woman's voice. Hung on every word produced by her brilliant mind. Right now, nothing she said pierced.
The mark was not a birthmark. The mark on the back of her neck was not a mole, or a scar, or a patch of melanin that had decided to congregate in one place.
Those were teeth marks. Not a quirk of genetics crafted inside the womb.
It was two crescents. One larger arc sitting above a smaller one.
The upper and lower impressions of a mouth that had closed around the back of her neck.
The skin had healed smooth over it; decades of healing.
The mark had faded to a shade darker than the surrounding skin, softened by time into something that could almost pass for a birthmark if you didn't know what you were looking at.
I knew what I was looking at.
A birthmark didn't have geometry. A birthmark was melanin; pigment distributed by cellular chance, the body's random artistry, edges soft and uneven and entirely indifferent to pattern.
What was on the back of Nell's neck had edges.
Had intention. Had the unmistakable architecture of a jaw that had closed with care around something it was protecting rather than hunting.
Some fucking wolf had put its mouth on the back of my mate's neck. My wolf was not being rational about this.
"Magnus. Are you listening to me?"
She was dressed. In her own clothes now, not my shirt, which the wolf did not like. I put my hand on the back of her neck and steered her toward the door with a grip that was firm without being painful.
"Let go," she said.
I did not.
The enforcer on the other side of the door stepped aside. His gaze widened slightly when he took a look at my face. His eyes slipped to Nell. There was a flash of pity there before his face went blank again.
"Stick close," I said. "Both units. Full formation."
There was a chorus of Yes, sirs. Then we were in motion.
"Magnus." Nell's hands were still working at my grip on her neck. "I am not a dog on a lead."
I kept my hand on her neck. The wolf's need to maintain contact with its mate overrode everything else. The elevator arrived. We stepped in. The two enforcers who had been on her door took positions outside as the doors closed.
Now that we were in a confined space with no place to escape, I loosened my hold.
Nell turned to face me. She looked up at me with those clear direct eyes.
It had to be a trick of the light, or my own anger sparking, but I could've sworn I saw the temper boiling up inside of her flash at me from her eyes.
"No," she said, the word was a complete sentence. "I'm telling you no."
I ignored this.
"I said, stop. I'm withdrawing my consent."
"Too late."
She looked at me for a long moment. The elevator hummed. Rational thought dropped away floor by floor. "Please."
The plea fell on deaf ears.
The cars were waiting at the building's exit; engines running.
My hand captured her neck once more. I walked Nell to the door of the lead vehicle, opened it, handed her in.
She had stopped protesting, which either meant she had accepted it or she was conserving her energy for a larger argument later. With Nell, both were equally possible.
I buckled her seatbelt, pulling the straps tight. She inhaled against the restraints. She did not meet my gaze.
I got in. One car pulled out in front of us. The unit behind fell into position. I pulled into the column and drove.
The city moved past the windows. The lights and the noise were a blurred canvas as I focused on our destination.
Nell was quiet beside me. Not the quiet of defeat, I heard that brain of hers ticking away.
Searching for loopholes and contingencies.
Processing all possibilities that no one else was even considering.
"Where are you taking me?"
"To my parents."
She snorted. "Is that how this relationship is going to go? You tossing me into a car and locking me away at mommy and daddy's?"
I didn't take the bait. I needed my parents' advice. The mark was not a birthmark. I ran through the list of what it could be. A wolf's mark — possible, but none of the wolves she had contact with had been near her. And this was a healed mark, so it couldn't have happened recently.
Darius Omondi had been in her office. He had kissed her hand. The way he'd looked at her had been proprietary, like he'd had a claim on her.
He had smelled… off. Not a wolf. But a predator still.
I knew there were other beasts in this world aside from wolves.
My mother had told tales of dragon shifters.
My hands tightened on the wheel. I wouldn't hesitate to fight a fire-breathing dragon for my mate.
Unfortunately, fire wasn't going to be my next opponent. It would be water.
We reached the bridge. I saw the trucks too late. Two of them, heavy commercial vehicles, positioned across the lanes with the coordinated precision of an operation that had been rehearsed. It wasn't until I saw the logo for the Volki that the clear and present danger registered.
The enforcer unit in front braked hard. Their vehicle took the impact of the first truck. I had half a second. It was enough to register the geometry of what was about to happen.
The second truck came from the right. The barrier was on the left. There was no space between them that a car could fit through.
Half a second was not enough time to react.
The impact came from the right side with a force that lifted the car. The full momentum of the commercial truck traveling at speed, hitting a sedan with the intention of putting it over the barrier, was exactly what happened.
The world tilted.
The barrier.
The drop.
Nell screamed. That's when fear kicked in for me. I was tough to kill. If she got hurt, it would end me.
The water came up fast. The car hit the river. The sound was like a thousand Fourth of July fireworks going off at once. Everything became impact and cold. The vehicle filled with black water in the dark. The car sank.
I had my seatbelt off before we stopped moving. My door was jammed. The impact had warped the frame. The water was at my knees and rising.
Nell worked at her seatbelt with both hands. The buckle jammed. The water was at her waist. She was frightened. It almost made me want to smile. Didn't she know that I would never let anything or anyone near her? The water called me a liar as it raced in to surround her.
I reached across her and snapped the buckle free with my claw. The belt released. I had my arm around her and was looking at the door.
The car was not yet fully submerged. If I waited until it equalized, I could open the door, but by then we would be deeper. Nell could not hold her breath that long, and I was not going to wait.
I kicked the door.
Once. Twice. The warped frame held it closed. I kicked it a third time with everything the wolf had. It gave — swinging outward against the pressure of the water. The river poured in around the edges, cold and black and tasting of the city.
"Breathe," I said. "Deep breath. Now."
She did as she was told
The cold of the river was a physical blow, even for me.
For Nell it would be worse; the shock of it, the darkness, the disorientation of which direction was up in the black water.
I kept my arm around her and drove us upward with everything I had.
The wolf's strength fully deployed. My legs worked against the current that was trying to separate us.
She was not deadweight. She was not panicking. She swam through the water like she was born to it. Her arms dove upward. Her arms were pulled toward the surface. Still, I did not let her go. I did what she was doing, but with one arm around her waist. The other punched towards the surface.
I could see the faint disturbance of light through the dark water, the bridge above it, the city's ambient glow. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.
Then the hands.
Multiple sets, came from above. They reached down through the surface. The hands found Nell before I could prevent it. She was pulled upward, away from me. I reached for her ankle. Caught it. Held — one second, two. The current and the hands above, my grip below, Nell in the middle.
Then bodies. In the water. Multiple, moving with the coordinated efficiency of people who had been waiting here, who knew exactly where to be, who had rehearsed this. Viktor Volki would pay with his life.
I got my hands on the nearest one of his men.
The man doubled over with a splash as my claws sank into his throat.
I was already reaching for the next one when something closed around my throat from behind.
An arm. Expert placement, the lock of someone who understood that a chokehold wasn't about the air as much as it was about blood flow.
I threw myself backward. The grip held.
I drove my elbow into whatever was behind me. The grip tightened.
My hands found the arm, and I pulled. The arm did not give because there were other hands now. On my wrists. On my legs. Multiple bodies in the black water holding the lock in place while I fought it.
Nell.
I needed to get to Nell.
My vision went gray at the edges. The chokehold was working.
My body was doing what bodies did when the blood stopped reaching the brain.
The gray spread inward from the periphery.
The sound of the water became distant. The cold of the river receded into something that was almost warm, which meant it was almost over.
I fought it.
I fought it with everything. The wolf roared against the inside of my chest. The image of Nell being taken away from me drove my limbs past what they should have been able to do. My fingers found something — an arm, a wrist. I applied pressure until I felt the bone begin to bend—
The arm tightened one final time.
The gray became black.
Everything went dark.