Chapter 4

FREYA

I sat in my car outside the main house and stared at the cut on my hand until the bleeding slowed.

Then I started the engine and drove.

There was a moment, somewhere between the main area and the edge of the pack territory, where the anger finally hit me. Real anger, not the composed, controlled kind I'd been carrying around all morning, but the hot, tight kind that made my hands shake on the wheel and my vision blur a little around the edges.

I pulled over and sat with it for a minute, letting it run its course. Because she wasn't wrong, that was the thing. That was what made it so unbearable.

She wasn't wrong.

When my father died, I was sixteen and our pack was already starting to fracture. He’d built the mining company and secured the territory, but without his Alpha authority holding everything together, it all started slipping.

Then Brian's family stepped in. They were organized, ambitious, and very clear about what they were doing even though they tried to cover it up with kindness.

And Brian had been kind. I kept coming back to that. He'd held my hand at the funeral. He'd shown up every day for months when I could barely get out of bed. Somewhere in all of that, I'd stopped being able to tell the difference between being loved and being managed.

His pack was now the largest on the East Coast. Because of my father's territory and my family's company. Because of me.

And now my money had bought Lena the jewelry that I'd seen in the photos from the beach.

I drove to the edge of the pack where the old administrative office was. It was a low, timber building that my father's Beta, Orin, still ran. He was in his sixties now. He'd been loyal to my father for thirty years and, as far as I could tell, had transferred that loyalty to me by default when there was no one else left to give it to.

He opened the door before I finished knocking.

"I heard," he said simply.

"Already?"

"Word travels really fast in the pack," he said, and stepped aside to let me in.

I sat across from him at the old wooden desk and laid it out. All of it. The photo Annie had sent. The main house. Jane's glass, even the cut on my hand that I'd wrapped in a napkin from my glove compartment. Orin listened to all of it without interrupting. When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.

"I want to sell my shares in the mining company," I said. "Whatever I still legally hold, I want to liquidate them and start over. I want to cut every financial tie I have to Brian's pack."

Orin nodded slowly. "It can be done though it'll take some time. There are some shares your father put in a trust that are yours outright, so they were never actually transferred." He folded his hands on the desk. "There's something else you should know."

I looked at him.

"I've had an inquiry from a corporation from the North,” he began. “They've been watching the mining territory for a while, apparently, and they reached out yesterday about a potential acquisition negotiation. They're offering a significant amount."

"The North?" I straightened a little. "Which pack?"

"They came through a business intermediary. I don't have a name yet, just the offer."

I thought for a moment. "Set up a meeting."

He raised an eyebrow. "They're competitors to Brian's pack. He won't be happy."

"He's in Ibiza," I said. "And I'm done caring about what makes him happy."

BRIAN

The water was the kind of blue that looked fake in photos.

Lena was stretched out on a lounger nearby in a red bikini that she'd "accidentally" packed in Freya's favorite color, and I knew this just the way I knew a lot of things I found easier not to think about directly.

"I feel terrible," Lena said, in a voice that suggested she did not feel terrible at all. She tipped her sunglasses down and looked at me over the rims. "I've basically taken your wife's honeymoon. She must be so sad."

"Freya's fine," I said.

"You think?"

"She's practical," I added. "She understands these things."

Lena hummed. "Shall I give you a massage? You look tense."

She moved toward me and something about her scent, which was warm and deliberately soft, made me close my eyes. But what floated up instead was the image of Freya at the door last night, her expression very still. The way she smelled, like cedar and winter rain.

I opened my eyes. Lena's hand was on my shoulder.

My wolf was saying something I didn't want to hear, something about Freya, the birthday dinner, and the way she’d sounded on the phone last night. Too calm. She hadn't even yelled. Freya never yelled when she was really angry. She went quiet, and I'd been married to her long enough to know that, but I told myself she was just being dramatic anyway.

I was going to go back and fix it like I always did. Freya loved me. She'd been in love with me since they were kids, and she would get over this the way she got over everything; quietly, without making a big deal out of it.

Just then, my phone buzzed with a message from my mother.

Mom: Your wife came to the main house today. She wants a divorce and is asking about the territory and the company. Get home, Brian. This is not a small thing.

I read it twice. Then I read it a third time.

Lena was saying something about sunscreen, but I wasn't even listening. Freya didn't make empty threats. That was another thing I knew about her. She never said anything she didn't mean.

I stared at my mother's message, and somewhere in the back of my chest, something that had been very comfortable for a very long time started to feel, for the first time ever, genuinely uncertain.