Ch. I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 5 I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 5

Chapter 5 

Chapter 5 

+45 Coins 

Here is what they don’t tell you about discovering your husband is a werewolf: the paperwork doesn’t cover it. There’s no clause. I checked our prenup later. Nothing. 

The wolf-Damian-backed away from me until he hit the bookshelf, knocking down a framed photo of our wedding day. He was enormous, shoulders level with my ribs, fur so black it ate the light. A creature built to be feared. 

He was trying to make himself smaller. 

“Don’t scream. Please don’t scream.” His thoughts still came through, rougher now, simpler, like a voice through deep 

water. “Window. I’ll go through the window. Forty floors. I’ll survive it. Probably. Worth it.” 

“If you jump out that window,” I said, “I am divorcing you.” 

The wolf froze mid-slink. 

“That’s right.” I pointed at him with all the authority of a woman who had completely lost control of her life. “I know 

about the papers. You know about the papers. And I am telling you the only thing that gets signed today is your 

apology for hiding”-I gestured at all of him-“two hundred pounds of this from your own wife for two years.” 

“She’s scolding me. I’m a nine-hundred-year-old bloodline apex predator and she’s scolding me.” A pause. “Why do I 

like it?” 

I sat down on the ruined carpet, right in the middle of the wreckage, and patted the floor next to me. 

He didn’t move for a long moment. Then, slowly-one massive paw at a time, with the dignity of a CEO and the guilt of 

a dog who ate the couch-my husband crossed the office and lay down beside me, leaving six careful inches between 

I closed the gap. I buried my hand in the fur of his neck, and the sound he made-a low, broken rumble-vibrated 

through my whole body. 

“Two years,” came the thought, almost too quiet to catch. “Two years I dreamed about her hands.” 

“Okay,” I said, my throat suddenly tight. “Talk. Well-think. Loudly. Start with who drugged you.” 

And in the strange grammar of a wolf’s mind-images, scents, flashes-he showed me. The bitter coffee. His cousin Marcus’s smile at last month’s board dinner, too wide. An old law of their world: a shifter exposed before humans forfeits everything-his seat, his territory, his pack’s protection. Marcus didn’t need to beat Damian in a vote. He just needed him to turn into a monster on camera, three days from now, at the shareholder meeting under the full moon. 

“And the condition?” I asked. “You keep thinking about a condition.” 

Chapter 5 

+45 Comma 

The wolf’s ears flattened. The images that came next were older. A girl, years ago-before me. Gold eyes glimpsed in 

the dark. A scream. The word monster echoing down a marble hallway, and a boy of seventeen learning to build walls 

no one would ever climb again. 

“They always run,” he thought. 

“I’m sitting in the splash zone of a literal werewolf,” I said, “in a skirt that cost more than William’s salary. Do I look like 

I’m running?” 

Gray wolf-eyes studied me sidelong. 

“No,” he admitted. “You look adequate.” 

“I knew that was a compliment!” 

A sound came out of the wolf that I realized, with wonder, was laughter. And there, on the floor of a destroyed corner office, leaning against my husband’s heartbeat, I made a decision that was probably insane: I wasn’t signing anything. Not until I’d dealt with Marcus, the tabloids, the intern with the convenient coffee, and the small matter of falling for my 

own husband two years late. 

My phone buzzed. Then again. Then six more times. 

Kane Foster, the boundary-immune analyst: 

[Mrs. Blackwood! You left the gala early. Everything ok?] 

[I have something SPECIAL for you. Trust me. You’ll love it. It’ll fix your marriage problem ;)] 

The wolf read it over my shoulder. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. 

“Antarctica,” my husband thought, with terrifying calm. “We open the office Monday.”