Chapter 4

Sylvia's POV

The hallway to the VIP lounge was carpeted thick. The sound of the auction died after the second corner. By the time I reached the door, I could hear only the slow tick of an antique clock and my own pulse in my ears.

The paddle was still in my hand. I set it on the small table by the door. None of that would matter if I didn't get the next ten minute right.

I took a breath. I knocked.

"Come in."

I went in.

Azrael Nightwhisper was sitting in a low leather chair with his ankle on his knee, one arm slung over the back. He had taken off his suit jacket. The shirt underneath was white and well cut, the cuffs unbuttoned at the wrist. The man was as comfortable in this room as he was on tabloid covers.

He let me close the door behind me before he spoke.

"Did Damian send you?"

The first volley. Insult disguised as a question.

"No."

"He's careful enough to send a wife when he wants something. You're not surprising me, Miss Moonriver."

"I am not Damian's wife yet. And I am not Damian's errand."

He smiled with no warmth at all. "Whatever game you think you're playing — if it benefits my brother's pack, I can make sure you walk out of here with nothing."

"I'll say it once more. The Ridgehaven bid is in my pack's name. Not Moonriver-Ironclaw. Moonriver. Damian doesn't know I'm here. He doesn't know I bought the lot."

He raised one eyebrow. He set his glass down on the side table and steepled two fingers against his knee, very slow.

"All right," he said. "Then what's your purpose, Miss Moonriver."

I had his attention but I didn't have his trust. He was waiting for the angle.

I had spent a lifetime giving men the angle they wanted to see. Tonight I was going to give him the one he didn't.

I crossed the carpet. I stopped at the arm of his chair. I bent down to his ear.

"I want to take Damian down, " I said. "With you."

His scent was the same close as it had been at the auction floor — cut pine, cold water, something warm underneath. I could feel my pulse climbing. I straightened before he could see it climb.

He laughed once. It was quieter than I expected.

"How charming. The little Luna and her little knife." He pushed off the arm of the chair and started to rise. "Miss Moonriver. I don't involve myself in lovers' quarrels. Whatever's happening between you and Damian — that's your business. Not mine."

His voice cooled. A dismissal. Clean and final.

The room flickered.

The memory hit me without warning. Damian's hand closing around my throat. The poison burning down my chest. My father's name on a forged treason document.

I blinked it away. Clenched my jaw until the tremor passed.

Whatever showed on my face stopped him mid-sentence.

He had been halfway out of the chair. He held there.

Whatever he had decided to do with me, he decided to do it later.

I made my face go calm. "This isn't a lovers' quarrel," I said. "I have a reason I will not put a name on today. But there is no version of this story where I marry Damian Ironclaw. There is no version where I let him have my pack. There is no version where I let him have your election."

He sat back down.

"Talk," he said.

I talked.

The numbers between Nightwhisper and Ironclaw were a knife's edge — I knew this from a life he had not lived yet. Whichever brother held the bigger territory by spring took the Council's swing vote.

"Right now, you and Damian are evenly matched. Territory, resources, political influence — it's close. But in 29 days, I marry him. Moonriver merges with Ironclaw. Overnight, his territory doubles. His resource base triples. He stops being your equal and starts being your problem."

“And here's what should concern you most,” I said. “You have no Luna. The papers paint you with a different woman every quarter. That's a disadvantage. But Damian? He's built a public image: devoted fiancé, wholesome. Meanwhile, he's been sleeping with my stepmother since before we were engaged.”

Azrael listened without moving.

"If you support me, I'll collect proof of Damian's affair and expose him at the wedding ceremony. In front of every Pack leader in attendance. His reputation won't just crack — it'll collapse. The engagement is void. The merger is canceled. His path to the throne gets cut off at the root."

I straightened my shoulders. "I cancel the wedding. I void the merger. You lose your biggest rival without lifting a finger, and I get my family back." I let the silence hold for a beat. "We both win. There is no reason to refuse this."

He didn't answer at once. He didn't look away. The silence in the room went long enough that I could hear the antique clock in the hall again. I had the strange sense of being weighed against a number I could not see.

He was quiet a long beat.

"You're not what I read in the papers." His mouth tilted at one corner. "The papers wrote a soft little Luna who let her fiancé carry her checkbook. The woman who bid four times the floor on Ridgehaven and then mouthed I'll have it at me from row twelve isn't her."

"She isn't."

Then Azrael laughed. Low, quiet. More air than sound.

"Interesting," he said.

He picked up his whiskey and turned the glass in his hand. The light caught the amber liquid.

"But what you're offering isn't enough."

My stomach tightened. "Name your terms."

He set the glass down. He crossed half the distance between us and stopped close enough that I felt the warm of him through my dress before I felt his hand on my elbow. His fingers settled there light. The pads of them caught against the silk and stayed.

He leaned down, close enough that the air between us turned warm. His lips hovered beside my ear, his breath whispered against my skin, and I forgot to breathe.

"After you leave him," he said. "Marry me."