Fenrir waved the offer away like smoke. "We’re past money. If this were about cash, you’d already be dead. Besides, we already own you. You belong to us. Which, when you think about it, makes you something like family. "
All three of us Blackwood sons tensed.
"You have a sister, don’t you?"
At the mention of his sister, Elias Vane managed to look fierce through the bruises and blood.
Magnus’s jaw locked. He held still like a cockroach on the wall whose puny brain believed it wouldn't be seen so long as it didn't make a move. Gunnar grinned and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing blood along his chin like war paint.
But it wasn’t them my father looked at. It was me.
His gaze found mine and held. And there it was again—that light. Approval. Pride. Expectation. The thing I’d chased my whole life without ever admitting it aloud.
In that moment, standing beneath the full weight of my father’s regard, I knew exactly what he was about to ask. I knew my answer before he spoke.
I would say yes.
I straightened, already bracing for the shape my future was about to take.
I was about to get hitched.
CHAPTER FOUR
ADDIE
Over the years, the Vanguard had grown into a chain of hotels along the eastern shoreline of the country. I pushed through the doors of the first hotel built. It was housed in upstate New York, a two-hour drive from Manhattan that I'd made in ninety minutes.
The Vanguard didn’t smell like home. It smelled like a corpse being sprayed with cheap perfume. As I pushed through the heavy revolving doors, the first thing I noticed was the disarray. The brass was tarnished, the marble floors were scuffed and dull, and the air had a stagnant, heavy quality that felt like a physical weight on my shoulders. Because the den was rotting from the inside out.
I’d been gone for ten years. I left at eighteen with nothing but a suitcase and a scholarship, and I hadn’t looked back once. Not for holidays, not for birthdays, not even when the guilt of leaving Elias behind kept me awake at night. I’d spent six years climbingthe jagged ladder of the corporate world of Manhattan, clawing my way through entry-level hell until I found Nell. Under her, I’d finally seen the growth I knew I was capable of. I’d built a life out of glass and steel and logic. A world where being Adolpha Vane didn't matter, and being Addie O'Shea was hard but worth every misogynistic poke.
I did not want to be dragged back down into the dirt. But someone had yanked my baby brother off the throne. The guilt I’d been harboring since I left him ten years ago rose like bile in my throat, ready to choke me.
I scanned the lobby, my eyes narrowing. All that was left of the Vane soldiers were the dregs—beta males with sagging shoulders and eyes that wouldn't meet mine. I had forgotten their names, but I recognized their scars. I had a few of my own, gifted to me by a man who held his liquor as closely as he held his power. The Vane soldiers looked like they were waiting for someone to tell them what to do, but there was no one left to lead them.
The clientele had gone down in quality, too. This wasn't a place for the elite anymore. It looked like a haunt for mid-level businessmen bringing their mistresses over for a quick lunch "date" in the middle of the day. The hotel was a tomb for a pack that didn't know it was already dead.
"Adolpha."
The voice came from the shadows near the back bar. My father stepped into the dim light. Adolphus Vane looked older, his hair thinner, but the presence was still there; the oppressive, suffocating weight of an Alpha who had lost everything but his pride.
He had let me go at eighteen because I was a "difficult" pup, but he was never going to let go of his only son. He’d fought too hard to bring Elias into this world, even at the cost of mymother’s life. Elisia O’Shea had died for the boy, and my father treated Elias like a living relic of his lost power.
"Where is he? What do they want?"
The questions were out of my mouth before I could check them. It was a mistake. In the corporate world, questions were tools. Here, they were a challenge. I had questioned an Alpha in front of his remaining minions.
Adolphus didn’t answer with words. He lunged, his hand clamping around my upper arm with the force of a vice. His fingers dug deep into the muscle, a reminder of the raw, tectonic power he still held.
I stiffened, the wolf in my belly instantly baring her teeth, ready to rip his throat out. I forced her down. I quieted that part of me, making myself go still, almost limp. I knew better than to fight him here. Resistance was fuel to a man like him; it would only make the grip tighter, the lesson bloodier.
My father might be a weakened king, his empire crumbling into a den of illicit "lunch dates" and tarnished brass, but he wasn't a weak man. He could still crush my bones with a single squeeze of his paw.
"You’ve been gone too long, Adolpha," he hissed, his breath smelling of stale whiskey and age. He leaned in close, his eyes searchlight-yellow. "You forget your place, bitch."
There had been times when I was a little girl that I was certain that I'd been adopted. I looked nothing like my father. Neither Elias nor I had inherited a single drop of his German blood. We both favored the O'Sheas with our red hair and pale skin. But though our mother's genes were stronger, her pack had been weakened. So when the Vane pack had come sniffing around the O'Shea pack, a marriage bargain was struck. It was how most wolves solved territorial issues and power struggles — just sell off a daughter.
My father's insult barely registered. He'd called me worse, bruised me more than any man in a silk suit ever could, but the marks he left on my skin were nothing compared to the scars he’d etched into my soul. Why had I even come here? I should have bypassed this rotting tomb and gone straight to the Blackwoods myself.
