His hand closed around my wrist before I made it three steps off the dock.
"Let go of me." I didn't turn around. I couldn't, not with half the pack still watching Ethan walk away from the woman he'd just called *unnecessary* in front of his own Alpha table.
"You're shaking." Cassian's voice was low, close enough that I felt it more than heard it, right against my ear. "That's not the rain, Sloane."
"Don't say my name like you know me."
"I know your lease." He turned me around by the wrist, easy, like I weighed nothing, and backed me into the cold brick of the harbor wall. "Hart Clinic. Three months behind on the lot rent. You want to guess who's been buying up every note on this waterfront since March?"
My stomach dropped. "You're lying."
"Check the filing tomorrow." His free hand came up, not touching, just hovering an inch from my jaw, close enough that the rain running off his knuckles dripped onto my collarbone. "I own the building your clinic sits in. As of Friday."
"Then congratulations. You bought yourself a very leaky basement."
Something moved behind his eyes, gold cutting through the brown, and I felt it — that pull, low and stupid, the thing my body did around him that had nothing to do with sense. His wolf, close to the surface. Mine answering before I told it not to.
"Say it again," he said. "The clinic."
"Why?"
"Because you say it like it's yours. Not his." He tipped his head toward the tent where Ethan's rejection was still ringing in my ears — *she's a medic, not my mate, she was never supposed to be more than that* — and my face went hot all over again.
"It is mine."
"Then keep it." His hand finally landed, not on my jaw, on the side of my throat, thumb resting right over the place a bite would go. Warm. Way too warm for a man who'd walked through rain for ten minutes to catch me. "I'll tear up the note."
"For what?"
"You know for what."
I shoved his chest with both hands. He didn't move, not even a little, and that made it worse, the way my palms stayed flat against him, feeling his heart slam under my hands like he'd run a mile instead of walked one.
"I'm not a consolation prize, Vale."
"No." His mouth dropped to my ear again, and this time his lips brushed the shell of it, and I hated how my breath caught, hated that he heard it. "You're the thing he threw away in front of a hundred people. That's different. That's better."
"Get off me."
"You haven't moved your hands."
He was right. My fingers were still curled in his soaked shirt, and I made myself notice that, made myself hate it, and I still didn't let go.
"This is a business deal to you," I said. "A hostile takeover with teeth."
"It's a takeover." His nose dragged along my jaw, down to the pulse under my ear, and the growl that came out of him wasn't human at all, wasn't even trying to be. "But it's got nothing to do with business right now."
"Cassian—"
"Say it like that again."
"Don't."
His mouth found the corner of mine, not a kiss, just close enough that I felt the shape of the word he didn't say, and his hand at my throat tightened, not hurting, just claiming space, the way a man marks territory he hasn't earned yet.
"Tell me to stop," he said against my skin. "Actually mean it."
I opened my mouth to say it. What came out instead was his name, wrecked, and I felt him smile against my jaw like that was the only answer he needed.
"That's what I thought."
His teeth grazed my throat, right over the thumb print he'd left there, testing, not biting, and my whole body went tight and stupid and hungry in a way that scared me more than Ethan's rejection had. Rain ran down the back of my collar. Somewhere behind us the pack tent lights flickered, someone laughing too loud, the whole world still turning like my life hadn't just cracked open twice in one hour.
"If you mark me," I said, barely a whisper, "I will end you."
"Duly noted." His mouth pressed flush against my pulse, lips parting, and for one full second I felt the edge of his teeth against my skin, felt him decide, felt myself not stop him —
His phone went off in his jacket pocket, sharp and loud against the quiet, and he cursed against my throat without pulling back.
"Ignore it," I said, and hated myself for saying it.
"Can't." He straightened, just enough to look at the screen, and whatever he read there made every line of him go rigid, made his hand drop off my throat like it burned. "It's my broker. About the harbor lot."
"What about it?"
He didn't answer right away. He looked at me instead, rain in his lashes, jaw locked so tight I could see the muscle jump, and when he finally spoke his voice had gone somewhere flat and careful, somewhere I didn't like at all.
"Someone else just put in a bid on the whole harbor block. Including your clinic." He turned the phone so I could see the name lighting up the screen, and my mouth went dry. "They're not buying the building, Sloane. They're buying you off it."