Ch. I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 7 I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 7

Chapter 7 

Chapter 7 

+49 Conne 

The Blackwood Foundation’s pre-vote reception was a glittering circus-two hundred shareholders, a string quartet, 

and enough champagne to float a yacht. I walked in scanning for threats and found the biggest one immediately my 

mother, in red, telling a senator’s wife about my wedding. 

“There you are!” She seized my arm. “Why didn’t you arrive with Damian? He’s been here half an hour looking like a 

man whose wife is missing. It’s wonderful for the photos.” 

Across the ballroom, Damian stood surrounded by sycophants, nodding at intervals. The moment I entered, his head turned-before he could have seen me, before anyone could have-and his thoughts brushed against mine like a hand 

at the small of my back. 

“Vanilla. There she is. Now I can breathe.” 

I was not going to survive this marriage. The divorce wouldn’t kill me; staying would. 

“Mom, I need to-” 

“Black stockings,” she said. 

“What?” 

“You heard me. Two years, no grandchildren-I did the math, sweetheart, the problem is strategy. Your grandmother always said: a man is a fortress, and a fortress falls to patience, siege, or black stockings. She sipped her champagne. “We don’t have time for patience.” 

“He’s not a fortress, Mom, he’s-” a werewolf with a tragic backstory and a homicidal cousin’-shy” 

“Shy” She looked across the room at my husband, six-foot-three of bespoke menace, who chose that exact moment to glare at a waiter standing too close to me. “Yes. A timid little lamb. Stockings, Sienna.” She drifted off toward the 

senator. 

I made it three steps toward the dessert table before someone barreled into me 

“Mrs. Blackwood.” Lacey, in catering staff disguise, eyes wild. “Scene one is triggering NOW I can feel it-it’s like a sneeze, I can’t hold it-the contract picked TONIGHT, the garden, five minutes, please- 

“Here?! He’s HERE. His sense of smell is HERE. Do you know what a wolf’s hearing range-” 

“It’s the garden or the lightning, and I am NOT getting struck twice in one week, I have a perm!” 

Which is how I ended up in the hotel’s back garden, under a trellis of fairy lights, preparing to impersonate my own husband while his actual voice drifted from the ballroom, giving a toast about integrity and family legacy. 

Chapter 7 

+45 Coins 

Lacey shook out her arms like a boxer “Okay The contract will feed me lines. Just respond as him. Be cold Be 

devastating You’ve lived with him two years, channel it.” 

“Cold Devastating Got it” 

Her posture changed; the script took her She swayed toward me, voice honeyed. “Mr. Blackwood we shouldn’t keep meeting like this. If your wife finds out…” 

“My wife,” I said, in my deepest register, “is the most beautiful woman in Manhattan, and you smell like a coffee 

crime 

“Stay on script,” Lacey hissed through her teeth, then melted back into character, clutching my lapel “I know you feel it too. Leave her. Tell me you’ll leave her.” 

Every cell in my body objected. The contract apparently required audible dialogue, so I gritted out. Sure Whatever 

you say.” 

“Say you like me!” 

“I… like you,” I said, with the warmth of a tax notice. 

“Was that so hard?” Lacey whispered, off-script, eyes shining. “One down! Two to go. You’re a natural, you sounded 

just like- 

The garden lights flickered. Every bird went silent at once. 

And from the ballroom doors behind me, a voice-his real one, velvet over steel: 

“Sienna.” 

I turned. Damian stood at the top of the garden steps, champagne flute in hand, face perfectly calm. 

His eyes were gold.