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“I made a spreadsheet.” Walden cleared his throat.

“Of-fucking-course you did.” Pan looked at the ceiling, but he said it with love.

Walden wandered to the table and opened his laptop, ignoring Pan’s reaction.

“It’s a checklist. For CJ—Chase. We want you to trust us to support you, but that requires honesty.”

Ajax shared a look with Walden.

“Can we add breaking his kneecaps to the list? He tried to mark you,” Pan hissed as Lloyd dragged his hand across my lower back.

My scent had sharpened, and Baylark Pack shifted, on edge as soon as it hit their nostrils. Pan landed in the chair and sat on his hands. Like he had to hold himself back from coming to me.

“If I wanted him physically hurt, I would have asked Thorn to do it. He knows people.”

Walden’s teeth ground together and a frown darkened his features. “You don’t need him. We’ll make him suffer a thousand times over for what he did to you.”

That shouldn’t have caused a flare of heat between my legs, but I couldn’t deny the thought of Walden tearing Chase apart did it for me. All his cool composure cracked and discarded. The only time I’d seen Walden truly lose his perfect cool was when he was deep inside me with Pan, during my heat. I realized he wasn’t wearing a suit again. The last time had been when Chase attacked me and I’d been too upset to mention it.

“You’re not wearing a—?” I motioned to his casual white T-shirt and dark shorts. Walden wore nothing to bed or a suit. Seeing him in anything else made him look alien.

“Suit? They make me itch lately.”

I tilted my head. “You can afford new ones, can’t you?”

“It’s not the suit, but what they represent, Tully. Can I show you what I made?”

Did Walden wear a suit because it was armor? Like I did with my wardrobe, coming back to life as I found myself?

“Tell me.” I slipped into the empty seat and Walden spun the laptop in front of me. His hot breath puffed over the back of my neck. They explained the illicit meeting they had with Chase, where they exposed him to Campion Pack in order to gain financial compensation and a stake in their company.

“You did this?” I wrapped my hand around my neck. It was red, raw with emotion.

“It had to be done, Tully. Now you have to decide whether you want to press charges for what he did to you.”

“Which time? The hospital or the photo leak?”

Legal action seemed the most unlikely. He was so convincing, and I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t be able to twist it.

Walden reached over my shoulders as I read the last line and added:Break his kneecaps and or/ snap off his penis.

“Just in case.” he nodded, gruff and entirely serious. “Proving he was the one who leaked the content will be harder. But I have someone looking into it as well. CJ targeted you when he thought you were all alone and vulnerable, but you’re not anymore.”

I was buffeted by four Designated who looked ready to go to war for me. One of them lived inside me with a magnetic frisson. How strange and beautiful the sensation was. I slid into the muck of this situation. The mess. All this time, I’d lived with CJ’s voice in my head. Believed him when he said I was nothing but a pretty face.

Pan stared at me, like he could see underneath my skin. I felt for the throbbing, tender length of our bond, and yanked on it.

“Tully,” he gasped. “Use us however you will. Just promise me you won’t be forgiving.”

I was a Hartlock, and for the first time, I felt it. My lungs couldn’t expand fully in this space, not when Baylark Pack infused every breath.

I wanted to be seen as something other than the pawn CJ had made me.

The only way to do that was to become a queen.

“Chase is about to find out I have sharp teeth of my own.”

“That’s my girl.” Pan thumped his chest with pride.