Chapter 3

Dahlia Maxwell POV:

Standing inches from Kerr, I could clearly see the tiny muscle beside his left eye twitching uncontrollably. A cold thrill of vengeance coursed through my veins, warming my freezing fingertips.

"Your Cantrell Pack has already bribed Elder Knowles at the Werewolf Council to unilaterally revoke our capital residency sponsorship next Tuesday morning, haven't you?" I whispered, my voice smooth and conversational.

Kerr's breath hitched. His ice-gray pupils shrank to pinpricks, and he stared at me as if a corpse had just crawled out of its grave to speak to him.

I didn't give him a single second to catch his breath. "The moment our sponsorship is revoked, you'll have the Council issue an emergency Pack expulsion order, forcing my family to liquidate all our real estate and mineral shares within seventy-two hours at a tenth of their value."

Kerr sucked in a sharp, rattling breath, stumbling over his tongue. "What kind of lunatic ravings are these? Who fed you these lies?"

I took a step back, putting distance between myself and his nauseating cedar scent, and crossed my arms over my chest.

"That's not even the best part," I said, raising my voice so my mother standing by the armchair could hear every word clearly. "To make sure the Maxwell family can never appeal or demand our money back, your mother prepared a parting gift for our departure."

I stared dead into his panicked eyes and dropped the final hammer. "Ten crates of military-grade illicit silver dust, already sitting in your warehouse, ready to be stuffed into the false bottoms of the moving trucks you'll lend us."

The words hit the room like a thunderbolt. All color drained from Kerr's face, leaving his skin a sickly gray-white. His knees buckled, and he staggered backward, his calves slamming hard against the edge of the sofa.

My mother let out a horrified gasp, her hands flying to her mouth before she lunged forward. "You monsters! Planting military silver dust carries the mandatory penalty of whole-Pack execution! You weren't just trying to rob us—you wanted to slaughter my entire family!"

Exposed to the bone, Kerr completely lost his aristocratic composure. Terror morphed into feral rage as he braced himself against the sofa and roared like a cornered mutt.

"Shut your mouth, Dahlia! Stop spitting blood on my family's name!" he bellowed, his voice cracking at the end. "The Cantrell Pack is a founding noble house of this empire! Why would we ever stoop to framing a bunch of nobody merchants?"

Watching the thick veins throb on his forehead, I felt nothing but disgust. In my past life, I had cowered before this pathetic excuse of an Alpha.

"Whether I'm spitting blood or stating facts, your own racing heartbeat is answering for you," I said calmly, walking over to the mahogany bar cart and pouring myself two fingers of aged bourbon.

Swirling the amber liquid in the crystal glass, I looked at him over the rim. "You haven't paid your estate's lower-ranking patrol guards for three whole months, Kerr. The Cantrell treasury is drowning in so much debt that without slaughtering our fat sheep this week, your own warriors will mutiny before the next full moon."

That final truth shattered the last shred of his sanity. His eyes turned bloodshot, and with a guttural snarl, he lunged across the rug with his hand raised to choke me into silence. "Shut up! What does a lowly merchant bitch know about noble finances!"

Before his fingers could come within three feet of my collar, a dark blur shot out from behind the velvet pillar. My fiercely loyal Beta bodyguard and personal assistant, Cora Hayes, stepped directly between us, her left forearm knocking Kerr's arm aside while her right hand clamped onto the hilt of the tactical hunting knife strapped to her thigh.

"Mind your hands, Young Master Cantrell," Cora said, her voice like grinding gravel as her cold eyes locked onto his throat. "You are standing on Maxwell territory."

Kerr froze, his chest heaving as he glanced down at Cora's blade. Even as an Alpha, he knew that starting a physical brawl unannounced inside another Pack's heavily guarded main hall would leave him crippled before his men outside could react.

He yanked his arm back, panting heavily as sweat matted the hair on his forehead. "Dahlia, I don't care which traitor leaked false rumors to you, but if you reject my offer today, you are signing your own death warrant!"

I looked past Cora's shoulder and downed the burning bourbon in one swallow. The fiery liquor scorched down my esophagus, igniting the battle lust in my blood.

"My death warrant?" I sneered, raising my hand and hurling the empty crystal glass onto the marble floor. It shattered into a thousand glittering shards between his shoes. "Go back and tell your mother Assunta that if she wants a piece of the Maxwell fortune, she can crawl over here and beg for it in person. As for you? You don't even qualify to sit at my table."

Kerr trembled from head to toe, his fists clenched so tightly his nails drew blood from his palms. Then, all of a sudden, the tension in his shoulders dropped. He threw his head back and let out a shrill, neurotic laugh that echoed eerily off the high ceiling.

"Good. Very good, Dahlia. You really hid your claws well," he said, wiping a hand down his face as an ugly, malicious calm settled over him.

I narrowed my eyes. I knew this look; the cornered dog was about to play what he thought was his ultimate trump card to break my spirit.

He straightened his rumpled silk tie, smoothing down his suit jacket as he looked at me with cruel pity. "Since we're laying all our cards on the table, I won't bother sparing your feelings anymore. Do you really think I came here today just because I wanted your money?"

He leaned forward slightly, the corner of his mouth twisting into a vicious smirk. "Seraphina Schaefer, the biological younger sister of Gamma General Dario Schaefer of the Border Defense Force, accepted my marriage proposal last night."