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"Three dead. The hub is gone." I walked away from Huxley, putting distance between myself and the cleanup crew. "They had inside intelligence on the layout. This wasn't reactive. They planned this before the council meeting."

In the background, I heard Addie's voice, low and urgent. Then the sound of a door closing as he moved away from her. "Newark?"

"Forty-eight hours, maybe less. We can't hold the northern corridor through conventional channels. Every transit point we operate through standard routes is already mapped. They're going to make us hemorrhage until we're too depleted to hold territory."

Another silence. Then Gunnar's voice came onto the call, which meant I was now on speaker in whatever room Vidar had walked into. "The traditional lines are finished. We need routes the Volki can't see."

"Working on it," I said.

"We don't have the timeline to work on it," Vidar said. "We need something operational now. Something shielded."

I already knew what was coming. I had known since I saw the first image Huxley showed me as he rushed me out of the garden. I had known then what the Volki offensive was going to require of me.

"The Lobos," Gunnar said.

There it was.

"Sorsha runs a network of refrigerated pharmaceutical couriers," Vidar said. "Medical-grade transit; temperature-controlled vehicles, licensed under federal pharmaceutical immunity statutes. They move biological materials, experimental treatments, and controlled substances with DEA clearance. The drivers are vetted, the vehicles are equipped with federal transponders, and every route is pre-cleared through a web of shell companies that look, on paper, like a legitimate cold-chain logistics operation."

"The Volki can't touch it," Gunnar said.

"They can't touch it without triggering a federal response that would bring heat down on every pack in the tri-state area, including themselves. The pharmaceutical immunity designation means any interference with those vehicles constitutes a federal crime with mandatory minimums. Even the Volki aren't stupid enough to blow up a truck with a DEA transponder."

My brothers had the right of it. Goes to show Mei Ling and Fenrir Blackwood didn't raise fools. They'd raised us to use our heads in times of crisis. Which is why I was able to divert the blood flow from my dick and back to my big brain and confirm the plan.

"Can we use it to move reinforcements?" Gunnar asked.

"Reinforcements, high-value data, anything we need to move without it being visible on a route the Volki are already watching." I looked at what was left of the Queens terminal. "It solves the immediate problem completely."

"So call Sorsha," Gunnar said, with the cheerful simplicity of a man who was not the one who would be making that call.

Vidar said nothing. He knew what the call would cost. He was the one who had signed his own life away under pack warfare. Lucky for him, he'd come out the other side of it in love with his wife. Sorsha had been keeping her daughter away from me — away from all packs — since her birth. As far as I knew, no one had laid eyes on Rosalind Lobo since the girl was a baby in her mother's arms.

Most thought it was for the girl's protection. I wasn't so sure.

"I'll handle Sorsha," I said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NELL

Ididn't dream of wolves last night. But I did wake up with the ghost of Magnus Blackwood on my lips. Along with the clinical awareness that I had almost made a very satisfying mistake.

The man had taken command of my mouth like a hostile takeover; swift, total, and structured so that by the time I understood what was happening, resistance was no longer a viable strategy. One hand at the small of my back, pulling me flush against him. The other buried in my hair — and here was the thing, the thing I was going to need a moment with — I had not protested that.

I did not tolerate strangers touching my hair. My locs were not some novelty or exotic thing. I'd had to slap many a curious hand away. Magnus, though. He had snared that big hand of his in my hair, palmed my scalp, tugged at my interlocked tresses, and I had not said a single word of protest.

Nope. I'd moaned. I'd angled my head to give him more access. More access to my crown. More access to my body. More access to my mouth.

He had mastered me with a kiss that was focused, unhurried, and hungry. I pressed my thighs together. Because if that was what he did with his mouth standing up in a garden, he would likely devastate me horizontal with his lips at my core.

He hadn't come back last night.

I had lain awake longer than I was going to admit, waiting for the sound of the door. It had not come, and at some point the waiting had become sleep, and the sleep had become morning, and Magnus Blackwood was still off running a pack war somewhere while I was in bed dreaming about his oral capabilities.

I sat up. The window showed early light. The window of opportunity was closing. Once we were back in the city, back in the building with both our names on it, back in the clean transactional territory of business partners and asset management, this became a different conversation entirely.

I was serious when I said I did not mix business and pleasure. I didn't shit where I slept. I didn't fuck where I filed my reports. If Magnus didn't hurry back and fuck me fast — and hard — the window of opportunity would be closed.