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"Stand down, Katya."

Katya stopped barely an inch from him. "He killed my brother, I want his bitch."

"The Volki operation has changed leadership in the last four minutes. The terms of our agreement do not change with the leadership."

"I'll kill her. And then I'll kill you. How's that for an agreement?"

"Inadvisable."

"Look around you, Omondi. Count the wolves on this deck."

"Cats may be solitary creatures, but we are never outnumbered."

Omondi did not raise his voice. He did not look away from Katya. But something changed on the deck.

I was loathed to take my eyes off Nell and the immediate threat to her, but the hairs on the back of my neck demanded I seek out the danger behind me. The shifted wolves held the alert posture of animals that had detected something they could not yet see.

Another boat had docked alongside ours. Shadowy figures came over the railing without a sound.

Spotted leopards, black panthers moved with the liquid silence of animals that had evolved specifically to be unseen until the moment they chose to be seen. Four of them, then six, then eight, materialized on the deck of the third. Among them, on the deck of the second boat, stood Sorsha Lobo.

She was in a dark coat, her hair up. Her Second was beside her. Behind them both, Lobo wolves in human form ranged along the adjacent vessel's railing, matching the number of felines poised to pounce. Sorsha looked across the water at our deck. At the Volki's shifted wolves frozen between instinct and the new geometry. At Katya, with her claws still out. At me standing over Viktor's body with the chain in my hands. At Nell in the doorway. Her eyes stayed on Nell for a moment longer than the tactical assessment required.

"Seems I'm here to rescue my future son-in-law. Again."

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

NELL

The deck was very quiet for a boat with so many predators on it. I stood in the cabin doorway with Darius's hand light on my shoulder and counted the variables.

The Volki wolves, leaderless, were doing the calculations on whether to hold or break. Katya was doing grief converted to rage. The panthers on the adjacent vessel were still and watchful. The Lobo wolves ranged along the railing, looking eager to attack either side of the looming battle. They were looking to the woman in the designer coat who'd called Magnus her future son-in-law.

I should be focused on her, but my gaze stayed attached to Magnus. He looked like a brute, a disheveled, hardened warrior. He looked magnificent. He was looking back at me, gaze roaming over my body. Nostrils flared when they rested on the bruise on my cheek. Hands clenched as though he wanted to do more damage. My gladiator in a suit.

"Alpha Lobo," Darius stepped forward. "The Omondi clan thanks you for your presence here tonight as witness to the reclaiming of our heir." He inclined his head towards me.

Magnus's eyes flared, his gaze landing on the hand Darius had at my elbow.

"The Volki took what was not theirs to take. Your willingness to stand witness to the resolution of this matter will be remembered. The Omondi do not forget courtesy."

The Lobo alpha smiled, looking like a goddess receiving worship due her. "The Lobo are always pleased to support the resolution of misunderstandings."

Darius took my hand. He moved around Katya, who still had her claws out and was glaring at me, but she did not attack. Darius guided me toward the railing, toward the adjacent vessel, toward whatever came next in a plan I had not been fully briefed on and was apparently a major player.

The sound that came from Magnus was not a word. It was low. It was a warning. It was the wolf bypassing the man as though it had run out of patience.

Katya's head turned, a cruel grin on her face as she looked up at Sorsha Lobo. "There. You see it. He's here for the woman."

"That can't be right." The pleasantness of the female alpha's voice had not changed. The temperature underneath it had. "Magnus is marrying my daughter. The Blackwood and Lobo alliance has been ten years in the making." She looked at Magnus directly. "The Lobos are here tonight to keep the peace. To witness. To ensure that this conflict between the Volki and the Blackwoods finds a resolution that doesn't destabilize the entire council. We are here as allies. As family."

Magnus hadn't taken his eyes from where Darius’s fingers gently cupped my elbow.

"My brother is dead!" Katya cried. "And he—" her finger moved to Magnus, "killed an Alpha over a human woman. Look at him. Look at where he's looking." She was breathing hard now, the grief and the fury tangled past separating. "There's a mark on her neck. A claiming mark. I saw it with my own eyes.” She looked at Sorsha. "Ask him. Ask the Blackwood heir if he has claimed that woman."

The river moved beneath both boats, dark and cold and carrying the city's ambient light on its surface in broken pieces. The reflections of bridge lights and building lights shattered and reassembled with every small wave. The current pushed. The boats shifted against it, their hulls groaning faintly at the lines that held them together.

"Magnus, is this true?"