Page 55

I rubbed my eyes and refocused on the document. I had been working from screens for so long that the texture of the paper caught me off guard. The weight of a document that existed in the world rather than on a server somewhere. The slight grain of the page under my fingertips. The way the ink sat on the surface, the slight skip in one line where the ink had run thin. A ghost of a fingerprint in the upper corner from whoever had handled this before me.

Wait? I blinked again. But it was clearly visible: the ridges of a thumbprint pressed into the corner of the page. Not smudged in ink. Was that the natural oils of someone's skin, the whorls of it catching the light at exactly the right angle? I should not have been able to see that. I must be imagining things.

My nose twitched as the scent of cloves entered the building along with the cool night air. Faint at first; the ghost of a scent rather than the thing itself. I lifted my head from the paper. Sat very still. And breathed.

There. Warmer now. Closer. Moving through the building. The elevator. Stepping onto my floor. Measured steps. Not fast. Low voices. His, and then the enforcers, a brief exchange I couldn't make out through the door. Then footsteps moving away; likely the enforcers clearing the hallway, peeling off to their positions, the pack reorganizing itself around its center of gravity before their leader came into my den.

The doorknob turned.

I looked back down at the Omondi files.

I did not look up.

I had been working on the Omondi proposal for three hours, ever since I got off the phone with Elias and the burner phone had died. I'd needed something to distract myself from that conversation. The Omondi Group's export infrastructure was elegant — not optimized, exactly, but settled. I had been going through Kenyan trade frameworks and agricultural export law and the history of the highland estates, and I had found myself absorbed in it.

Magnus crossed the room. He came to stand behind my chair. His nose dipped to the curve of my neck. He inhaled deeply and made a satisfied sound.

"Pervert," I said.

"I'm going to do a great many perverted things to you."

"I'm no longer interested in collaborating with you outside of the office, Mr. Blackwood."

His hands came to the back of my chair, one on each side. Another cage. He peered over my shoulder. "I told you that you're not taking that client."

"I told you that you will not dictate who I do business with. Or who buys me drinks. Or who I fuck. Save all of that for your arranged marriage."

His hands tightened on the chair. He put his forehead against the top of my head. "I was coming here to tell you about that."

"Sure you were."

"I broke it off."

"How convenient that it happened just after I find out."

"How did you find out?"

I set the papers back in the folder. I turned in my chair and gave him the full, direct version of my attention. "Not from you."

I moved to stand. His hands found my waist. I pushed away. He held onto me. The tips of his claws pressed through the fabric of my top. The wolf was in his eyes, as if the animal was making sure I knew it was present.

"Do not run from me, Petronella."

"Let me go, Magnus."

"Never."

"So what? I'm supposed to just be your mistress?"

"You were supposed to be a one-night stand. The last one before I met my fiancée for the first time. My wolf decided you were its fated mate. So that wedding is off." His eyes held mine. "And ours is on."

He was serious. That was the thing about Magnus — he was always serious. He did not say things to hear how they sounded. He said them because they were the thing he had decided. In this matter, the deciding was already done.

"I don't want to be a wife. I'm not sure I want children. I do not want to be an alpha female outside a boardroom."

He was watching me with amber-edged attention. Not arguing. Receiving. Which was almost worse.

"Choose the other girl," I said.