Page 196 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

"We were fools once." August says it evenly, buttoning his jacket as he stops beside me. "We're not going to be fools twice."

It's the flattest I've ever heard him say anything, and from August, flat is a war cry. He spent five years apologizing to a woman with nothing but his silence. He's done apologizing. So am I, though I've got nothing to be sorry for — I'm only here to make certain the other two never have to grovel on a church lawn again.

"Contacted everyone who matters for tomorrow." Beckett's voice is that low bedrock rumble. "Vendors confirmed, timeline locked, security briefed. All plans go." He rolls one broad shoulder inside the fine wool like it doesn't quite fit his temperament. "Tell me again why we're spending the night before the biggest wedding of Amber's career in this man's office instead of at home with her."

"Because," I say, "some knots you cut before the ceremony, not after. A man who lets a wolf circle his wedding is a man who spends the whole reception watching the doors instead of the bride. I'd rather deal with the wolf tonight, on my terms, in his own den, than let him choose the moment himself tomorrow, while Amber's walking toward us in white." I glance betweenthem. "You both got the newest texts? The ones promising to burn the contract to the ground?"

Beckett's jaw ticks. August's scent goes a half-shade sharper. That's a yes.

They've been coming since the ink dried on our little temporary pack — ugly anonymous things, all threat and no follow-through, arriving with an uncanny sense of timing. We've kept them close, the four of us, no sense frightening Amber over shadows. But I've been watching. I've been watching since the night Cade muttered that it would all go downhill if we kept "associating ourselves" with her, like that was a warning and not a confession. As if a man rattling off doom is going to shoo me off the woman I've decided is mine.

Here's the thing about underestimating a wedding planner. People do it constantly. They see the mood boards and the ribbon and the seating charts and they file me underharmless.What they miss is that you do not run four-hundred-guest events for the obscenely wealthy without collecting friends in every corner of a room. My contacts run high and they run low. Some of them do security. One of them wears a badge. One of them, an old college roommate I still owe a fishing trip, does very quiet work for the federal government and answers when I call.

I haven't called a single one of them yet. That's the part people never grasp about leverage — the second you use it, it's spent. A favor cashed is a favor gone. The real trick is to gather every card quietly, learn the exact weight of what you're holding, and let the other man's imagination do the heavy lifting. He doesn't need to know which strings I can pull. He only needs to lie awake wondering how many there are.

Amber doesn't know we're here. That was the one hard call. She'd have insisted on coming, chin up, ready to stare the old man down herself, because she has never once in her life letsomebody else carry her fight. But this fight was never hers to carry. It's the bill for a thing that was done to her, and the three of us are the ones who'll pay it down tonight, quietly, so that tomorrow she wakes and thinks of nothing but the color of the light and the taste of the cake. She has spent five and a half years bracing for the next blow. Tomorrow she braces for nothing. We'll have seen to it.

You never lay your whole hand down at once. You let the other man believe you know nothing, that you're a soft thing in a nice suit, a bystander who wandered in. Then, when he's comfortable, you let him hear the rattle. I'm a snake in a burgundy tie, and I have been shaking my tail politely at this man for two weeks. Tonight I strike.

My phone buzzes against my ribs. I pull it out, read the single line from the assistant upstairs, and let a slow smile spread.

He'll see us now.

"Gentlemen." I pocket the phone. "Our client will see us. You ready? Because I want to be clear — we walk through that door, there's no turning back. No flinching. No going home to lick a wound. This ends tonight, one way or the other."

They look at me. Neither one blinks. Beckett gives a single grim nod. August's calm doesn't so much as ripple, and it occurs to me — not for the first time — that the gentlest man in our pack might also be the least breakable.

"Good. Then here's how it goes." I flick an invisible speck off Beckett's lapel, because I can, because they let me. "I lead. Start to finish. The second we cross that threshold I'm not your packmate, I'm the planner, and this is the hardest client I've ever pitched. You follow my rhythm. You let me take the reins. I know exactly what that costs the pair of you. You're both Alphas built to stand at the front of a fight, not behind a wedding planner in a nicer suit. Beckett wants to lead, because leading is how he protects. August wants to smooth, because smoothing is how heloves. Tonight I need you to want neither. I need you to trust that the softest-looking man in this pack is also the one with a knife up his sleeve, and let me do the cutting." I hold Beckett's gaze, then August's. "He is going to say things designed to gut you. About the past. About her. He'll aim straight for the softest part of you and twist. You will not react. Not a word, not a fist, not a growl he can use. If it bruises your ego — and it will — we bleed about it in the truck afterward, in private, like grown men. Not in front of the audience. We clear?"

"Clear," August murmurs.

"Clear," Beckett grinds out, and I can hear exactly how much it costs him to promise it.

"Beautiful." I turn to the tall double doors and square my shoulders. "Let's go plan a wedding."

That's the trick I've never bothered to explain to them. This isn't so different from the job. A hostile client, an impossible timeline, a room full of people convinced they hold every card — I've been walking into versions of this exact room my whole career, smiling, holding a folder, making the impossible look inevitable. The stakes have never once been a woman I'd lie down in traffic for. But the muscles are the same. You breathe. You smile. You make them believe the outcome was their own idea all along.

I open the door.

The office beyond is the kind of room built to make a person feel small — a cathedral of dark wood and cold glass, a wall of windows throwing the city's lights across a desk you could land a plane on. Alistair Whitlock sits behind it with a phone to his ear, silver hair swept back, a suit that costs more than my truck, the whole predatory stillness of a man who has never once in his life been the one waiting. Aged leather and cold bergamot and cigar smoke roll off him, expensive and joyless, a scent with a blade folded inside it.

He glances up. One brow lifts at the sight of the three of us filling his doorway, and something flickers across his face — surprise, quickly leashed.

"I'll have to call you back," he says smoothly into the phone, eyes never leaving us. "It seems I've a meeting I didn't schedule."

He sets the phone in its cradle. We step inside, and the doors swing shut behind us with a heavy, final click. At the edges of the room, two silent butlers stand like furniture, hands folded, waiting on a man who collects people the way other men collect watches.

The air in here is climate-controlled to the exact degree, cold enough that our breath should fog. His scent sits under rigid control — that aged leather and cold bergamot and cigar smoke leashed so tight it barely stirs, the discipline of a man who learned long ago that a scent can be read, and that being read is a thing he refuses to permit. It's a fine trick. It also tells me more than he'd like. A person only armors the parts of himself he already knows can be turned into a weapon.

Alistair leans back. Then he begins, slowly, to clap. The sound cracks across the enormous room.

"Well," he drawls, a smile spreading that never reaches his eyes. "I'll be. My daughter's finally gone and found herself an Alpha with a bit of spine and a bit of brain in the same skull." His gaze rakes over August and Beckett, dismissive, then lands on me. "How refreshing."

August says nothing. Beckett says nothing. I feel their silence beside me like two drawn bows.

I shrug, loose and easy. "I do try to use my brain from time to time. It's a novelty. Keeps things interesting."

We cross the acreage of his carpet and stop at the far edge of the desk. He watches us come with the mild interest of a man watching ants approach a boot. He does not offer us the chairs.