Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
VIDAR
Iwas a light sleeper by design. I slept like a stone last night, deep and dreamless and heavy in a way I hadn't felt since I was young enough to believe the world was simple and everyone was on my side.
I knew the cause of that restful sleep. Addie's scent was all over me.
My pillow, my skin, my cotton sheets she had cocooned herself into, as if she was trying to disappear inside them and take me with her.
I'd held her through the night. That was an anomaly. I had never woken to a woman pressed to my side.
I lay still in the light of the new day. I let myself have thirty seconds of it; the weight of her, the warmth, the silence that comes after the wolf has finally gone quiet. She had quickly become the only variable that cut through the static of numbers and figures and facts in my head.
My sweet Addie was awake. Had been for a while, probably. Her eyes tracked along the line of my shoulder. The curve of my neck.
The mate bond registered the direction of her attention before my brain did. A low, bone-deep frequency started in my sternum and spread outward. I knew the trajectory of her thoughts, her desires. She wanted to mark me. I wanted her to do it.
My mate carried my claim on her throat, raw and pulsing and visible against the pale skin of her neck. A brand that would never fade. I turned my head and let her see that I was watching her watch me.
She met my gaze steadily, that fine color rising in her cheeks. She said nothing. She pressed her palms into my chest, pulling herself closer, right over the pulse point at my throat.
I lifted my head, giving her access. To my clavicle. To my Adam's apple. To my throat. She could take whichever she wanted.
Addie licked her lips and—
A knock landed on the door. Three quick fist-poundings. Then an irritating series of knuckling-knocks.
"It's me." Ivar's voice filtered through the heavy oak, sheepish and slightly muffled. "Magnus sent me. He said you were less likely to bite your baby brother's head off. He said to tell you it wasn't optional."
I stared at the door. The urge to punch my fist through the frame wasn't exactly brief. Fratricide did flit through my brain.
"Hi, Addie."
"Hi, Ivar," she said cheerfully.
I growled.
Addie pressed her face into my chest. Her shoulders were shaking. The sound she was making was, unmistakably laughter.
"Give me five minutes," I said to the door.
"Okay." Then. "Hey, Addie. Did my brother satisfy you in the way a husband should?"
"He did just fine, Ivar, thanks for asking."
I growled loud enough that the door did shake.
"What? I'm being polite."
"Run away, or Ma will find you in pieces."
Ivar exhaled with the full weight of a young man who didn't fear for his own skull. His footsteps retreated down the hall.
I looked back at Addie. She surfaced from beneath a pillow, the laughter still bright in her eyes, her hair a spectacular disaster.
In the gray morning light, with my mark on her throat and the sheets bunched around her waist, she was perfect, like a balanced spreadsheet—every variable accounted for, every column aligning exactly as it should.
I got out of bed. Found my trousers on the floor and pulled them on while she sat up against the headboard. She drew her knees to her chest, watching me with that assessing, green-eyed quiet. I picked up my shirt, shook it out, and started on the buttons.
"Do you want help?"
"If you put your hands on me, the pants are coming back off."
Addie grinned.
I missed a button.
"I didn't mean help with your clothes. I meant with whatever business issue is going on. That's what Magnus wants you for?"
I looked at her for a moment. Her dark hair. The mark. The way she'd been studying me just minutes ago with her whole mind engaged, like I was a set of numbers that had finally reconciled—clean, exact, undeniable.
"No," I said.
Her chin went down a fraction.
"I'm not finished with you in this bed. Whatever Magnus needs will take longer if I'm distracted."
The color in her face shifted. She looked away, pressing her lips together. I had the rare satisfaction of watching Addie Blackwood at a loss for words.
I finished the buttons. Found my watch on the nightstand. Snapped it on. I leaned over her and pressed a kiss to her swollen lips. "I'll be as quick as possible."
"Don't let Ivar hear that, or he'll get the wrong idea."
I laughed. When was the last time I'd laughed? I snagged her lips again. Then pressed a reverent kiss to the mark, still healing at the base of her throat, and left the room.
In the family room, Magnus stood near the window, a coffee mug in his hand. Gunnar was sprawled across the long sofa, still in yesterday's clothes. The stench of Lupetto was on him, but not a drop of blood. My gaze snagged on the couch.
The leather was barely distinguishable from yesterday, but I knew the precise geography of it now in a way I hadn't before; the slight give of the center cushion, the creak of the armrest, the way the lamplight fell across it from the left.
I had spent the first twenty years of my life treating this room as an extension of my own body.
The furniture, the worn rug, the faded marks on the doorframe where my mother had tracked our heights in pencil.
All the spills on the upholstery. Now my wife's essence was added to it.
"Lupetto is dealt with, " I said to Gunnar. It wasn't a question. I simply wanted confirmation.
"We delivered him to his sons."
It irked me that the man still breathed. By what I knew of his sons, and what the elder alpha had done to them, I doubted that would last long.
"Romeo and Casanova didn't look particularly upset about the condition he was in when I dropped him off. Nova even thanked me."
The Lupetto sons had been managing their father's deterioration for years; watching him cling to old alliances and older debts while the pack bled credibility. We had done them a service, and they knew it. They were now in our debt. But most alphas didn't like owing anyone who wasn't beneath them.
"The Lupettos aren't the problem," I said. "So what is?"
Magnus set down his mug. He turned from the window and looked at me with the expression he used when he was about to say something he'd been rehearsing.
"The Sterling deal; there's a wrinkle."