Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
VIDAR
We took the car as far as the block would allow and covered the last two hundred meters on foot.
The neighborhood was quiet this time during the weekday hush of a residential street that had priced urgency out of its tax bracket.
I could smell the park before I saw it. Old iron, bare trees, cold stone, bare earth.
And underneath all of it, something that snapped my wolf to attention like a live wire: Vane wolves.
Not Addie's scent. She smelled like me. I'd made sure of it.
This was the other kind of Vane wolf. The flat, stale musk of a pack that had been running on fear and diminishing returns for over a decade. Four men at minimum. And underneath that—
"Adolphus," Magnus said quietly beside me. He'd caught it too.
We didn't run. Running was what prey did. We walked to the gate at a pace that was worse than running. It was the absolute, zero-negotiation stride of men who had already decided what would happen next and were simply crossing the distance required to begin.
The gate was unlocked. Someone had forced it, or had a key, which told me everything I needed to know about how long this had been planned. I pushed it open. The scene assembled itself in the space of a single second.
Addie, on her feet, near the far bench. The human Nell behind her, one hand gripping the back of the bench, her brown face stripped of its professional composure. Elias trying —and failing—to hold his wolf back. Adolphus Vane in the center of the path. Four enforcers at his back.
My gaze went to Addie. It always went to Addie.
She was facing her father. Her back was to me.
She hadn't heard us come in over the sound of whatever Adolphus was saying.
For one unguarded second I saw the scene the way it looked without context; my wife, slipped from her detail, standing in a private park with her father and her brother and her human friend, the Vane pack arranged around them like a wall of protection to take back their prince and heir.
Something cold moved through my chest. I crushed it immediately. That was not what she was doing.
She hated her father; that much I was sure of.
She loved her brother; I didn't doubt that either. She'd agreed to marry me to save him. But was it enough? Was I enough?
I watched her, trying to deign the answer. Her spine was straight. Her shoulders were set. She was not cowering, not appeasing, not performing the submission. She was standing in front of Nell with her body between the woman and the men at her father's back.
Addie was not hiding from her father. She was blocking him.
She turned. The expression on her face when she saw me was not the one I'd braced for. It wasn't relief, exactly. It was too complicated for that, too much still moving behind her eyes.
But her body did something when she saw mine. A slight release, almost invisible. The unwinding of a woman who had been carrying a weight alone and felt another pair of hands reach for the burden. Was she glad to see me?
Elias moved. Not toward his father. Toward his sister.
It pissed me off because it's where I wanted to be.
Her little brother came up beside her, his shoulder touching hers. Elias looked at her face for a long moment. Whatever passed between them was wordless, the compressed communication of two people who had survived the same childhood in adjacent rooms.
Elias reached up and pressed a kiss to her cheek. Addie went still. I'd seen this expression before. She disagreed with whatever was about to happen, but knew better than to interfere. It's how she'd looked at me when I'd proposed.
Elias turned to face his father. He took one step forward, placing himself between Addie and Adolphus, and looked his father in the eye.
"I'm done," Elias said. Simple. Flat. Like a door closing. "You were a fuckall father and an even worse alpha."
"Are you challenging me, pup?"
Elias nodded.
Adolphus stared at his son for a long moment. The amusement was gone. In its place was something colder: the calculation of a man recalibrating an asset that had stopped behaving as expected.
Then he laughed. It was a short, dismissive sound. He lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. The four enforcers moved.
My brothers bristled on either side of me. It was a disgraceful move for others to enter a direct challenge. Because the Vane enforcers obeyed, they would not be spared. I didn't have to look at my brothers to see if they agreed. We'd been here before.
The change moved through me in a single, fluid second — the suit jacket gone, the restraint of the human form dissolving as the wolf came forward with the calm, total authority of a creature that did not have to think about what it was. Beside me, Magnus and Gunnar did the same.
What followed was not a fight. A fight implied a contest.
Gunnar took the two on the left. Magnus took the right. I went through the center with my jaws at the first man's throat before he'd completed the first step of his charge. The sounds were brief and wet, and final. The whole thing was over in the space of a few seconds.
Four men. Four silences. I stood in the center of the path in my wolf form and looked at what remained.
Adolphus had not shifted. Neither had Elias. But while Adolphus was eyeing the three of us, his son had his sights set on the prize.
The Vane Alpha took a step back. His eyes were completely yellow now, the wolf pushing through the surface of the man.
Even a diminished Alpha was not nothing.
Vane was bigger than his son, older, decades of violence in the architecture of his body.
They should have been unmatched. When they shifted into their wolf forms, it was clear Adolphus' larger wolf had the advantage.
But Elias had the strategy. Elias had the pent-up anger. Elias had something to fight for.
I shifted back. Found my jacket, which Gunnar had inexplicably caught before it hit the ground and was now holding out to me with an expression of total innocence. I put it on.
I did not watch the fight.
My eyes found Addie. She was in the far corner of the park, her arms around the human's shoulders.
Nell was utterly still; the kind of stillness that follows shock when the body has run out of responses and simply waits.
I got the sense Addie hadn't even watched me fight.
All of her attention was on her damn friend.
I crossed to my runaway wife. Behind me, I heard the sounds of the fight; the snarl and impact of it, the grunt of effort, the sounds of a young wolf discovering for the first time that fury, when it has enough reason, is stronger than size. I let Magnus handle the witnessing.
I stopped in front of Addie. She looked up at me. The silk scarf at her throat had slipped — the mark was visible, still dark, still vivid against her skin. Her arm was still around Nell. Her chin was up. Defiant and without apology.
"Time to go home," I said and began the process of extricating her from her friend. But Addie would not let the human go. I flashed my golden gaze at Nell, letting her get a close up at my unhappy wolf.
Nell fainted.
Addie glared at me.