Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
NELL
The deck was very quiet for a boat with so many predators on it. I stood in the cabin doorway with Darius's hand light on my shoulder and counted the variables.
The Volki wolves, leaderless, were doing the calculations on whether to hold or break.
Katya was doing grief converted to rage.
The panthers on the adjacent vessel were still and watchful.
The Lobo wolves ranged along the railing, looking eager to attack either side of the looming battle.
They were looking to the woman in the designer coat who'd called Magnus her future son-in-law.
I should be focused on her, but my gaze stayed attached to Magnus.
He looked like a brute, a disheveled, hardened warrior.
He looked magnificent. He was looking back at me, gaze roaming over my body.
Nostrils flared when they rested on the bruise on my cheek.
Hands clenched as though he wanted to do more damage. My gladiator in a suit.
"Alpha Lobo," Darius stepped forward. "The Omondi clan thanks you for your presence here tonight as witness to the reclaiming of our heir." He inclined his head towards me.
Magnus's eyes flared, his gaze landing on the hand Darius had at my elbow.
"The Volki took what was not theirs to take. Your willingness to stand witness to the resolution of this matter will be remembered. The Omondi do not forget courtesy."
The Lobo alpha smiled, looking like a goddess receiving worship due her. "The Lobo are always pleased to support the resolution of misunderstandings."
Darius took my hand. He moved around Katya, who still had her claws out and was glaring at me, but she did not attack. Darius guided me toward the railing, toward the adjacent vessel, toward whatever came next in a plan I had not been fully briefed on and was apparently a major player.
The sound that came from Magnus was not a word. It was low. It was a warning. It was the wolf bypassing the man as though it had run out of patience.
Katya's head turned, a cruel grin on her face as she looked up at Sorsha Lobo. "There. You see it. He's here for the woman."
"That can't be right." The pleasantness of the female alpha's voice had not changed.
The temperature underneath it had. "Magnus is marrying my daughter.
The Blackwood and Lobo alliance has been ten years in the making.
" She looked at Magnus directly. "The Lobos are here tonight to keep the peace.
To witness. To ensure that this conflict between the Volki and the Blackwoods finds a resolution that doesn't destabilize the entire council. We are here as allies. As family."
Magnus hadn't taken his eyes from where Darius’s fingers gently cupped my elbow.
"My brother is dead!" Katya cried. "And he—" her finger moved to Magnus, "killed an Alpha over a human woman.
Look at him. Look at where he's looking.
" She was breathing hard now, the grief and the fury tangled past separating.
"There's a mark on her neck. A claiming mark. I saw it with my own eyes.” She looked at Sorsha.
"Ask him. Ask the Blackwood heir if he has claimed that woman. "
The river moved beneath both boats, dark and cold and carrying the city's ambient light on its surface in broken pieces.
The reflections of bridge lights and building lights shattered and reassembled with every small wave.
The current pushed. The boats shifted against it, their hulls groaning faintly at the lines that held them together.
"Magnus, is this true?"
Magnus pursed his lips as his jaw worked.
His eyes were still on Darius's hand holding my elbow.
If Magnus said yes — if he said I was his fated mate, Sorsha would have two options.
She could attack. Or she could withdraw the Lobo support and leave Magnus on a boat with Katya's remaining wolves and a dead Alpha and the political fallout of having broken his engagement.
Either way, the Lobo alliance was gone.
Either way, Magnus was significantly more exposed than he had been thirty seconds ago.
Either way, he was going to pay for it.
Because of me.
"The mark is my father's," I said. "He used to carry me in his panther form when I was a baby." I lifted my locs to show the evidence of the aged scars. It was clear to anyone who looked closely that the mark wasn't fresh.
Sorsha's eyes moved over my face, not bothering to look at the mark. I knew women like her. She needed more.
"As for the rest of it; more than anything else Magnus and I are business partners. We did sleep together. He was very clear that he had a fiancée and that once he was mated, he would be faithful. It was a fling. A brief one. A good one. Your daughter is a lucky woman in that department."
It was all the truth. Every word of it. Just not in the proper order of events. I did not look at Magnus. I could not look at Magnus and hold any of this together.
The deck held its silence. The river washed up against the boats and things I left unsaid.
Sorsha looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked at Magnus, who still was struggling. Struggling to hold words in? Struggling to get them out? I wouldn't find out. Sorsha, the woman who held all the power in this moment, was delivering her verdict.
"The Volki have suffered a significant loss tonight. I suggest the remaining members take time to grieve and regroup before any further decisions are made or actions are taken. The Lobo will bear witness to the resolution of tonight's events and will report to the council accordingly."
Katya looked at her dead brother. She looked at me. The promise she had made with her eyes when her claws retracted was still there, unchanged, with a longer timeline now.
Darius's hand tightened on me. I followed him toward the railing. Towards the adjacent vessel. Away from the Volki boat and Katya's grief.
Away from Magnus.
I did not look back.
I knew if I looked back, I would see his face.
His face would have the expression it had in the small hours of my apartment when he thought I was asleep, the unguarded one.
If I saw that expression right now in this context — with the lie still in my mouth and the distance already opening between us — I was going to do something that would undo everything I had just managed.
So I did not look back.