Chapter 165

Kade

It was a test. I understood that before Sebastian Thorne’s cars had reached the bottom of the lane.

I sat in my office with the door shut and my shirt open, and Imogen on her knees in front of me with her fingers on my throat, and went over it again and again in my head while she worked. Every word he had said in that hall. Every step he had taken toward me across the stone.

He hadn’t come for Kaia. He had never come for Kaia. He had known what her answer would be before he left Greyhollow. He had come to stand in my hall in front of my pack and push, gently, one word at a time, until he found out whether there was anything left of me. The old law. The remedy. First to yield. He had offered me a fight he knew I couldn’t take, in front of a hundred witnesses, and then stood back and watched me refuse it.

And then he had leaned in, and said the one thing he knew would bring Knox up. And watched what came up with him.

He had seen my thro