Oh, that was clever. From the way Maddox’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, he realizes exactly how clever. If he insists on staying, he’s effectively undermining me and saying he doesn’t believe I’m capable of doing the job they assigned me after Lammas. It wouldn’t even hurt my feelings; I’m the first to admit that Monroe really needs two handlers—or half a dozen. But Maddox is too good at balancing our people to ever pull a stunt like that. “You get an hour.”

“You’re a peach.” She snuggles closer to me, her breasts pressing against my arm.

I honestly can’t tell if Monroe is just this touchy of a person or if she uses physical contact to set people on edge. It could be both, honestly. All I know is that she’s always touching me. “Drop us at the Goat, please.”

“Will do.”

We cross the bridge back into Raider territory, and a little of the tension bleeds out of my body. No matter what Sabine Valley says about handfasting and Brides, I can’t quite believe the tentative peace is anything but an opportunity for someone ruthless and ambitious enough to break the rules. Three weeks isn’t nearly enough time to weed out potential issues in the Raider faction, but at least we’re making progress there.

In the Amazon faction?

Enemy territory doesn’t begin to cover it. Every single person I encounter is aware of what we took from them. Their heir, their spare, their queen’s beloved younger brother. They would like nothing more than to stick a knife between my ribs and leave me bleeding out on the sidewalk. They’d even do it, if not for the carefully balanced juggling act that Abel and the rest of the Paines have put into place. I don’t have to know every detail to know their entire plan rests on the assumption that Monroe and Fallon are more loyal to their family than they are to their faction. That they don’t believe in acceptable losses.

At least, acceptable losses that include their family members.

But will it continue to be so?

I have no idea.

And that keeps me up at night.

Chapter 5

Monroe

I fall in love with the Goat the moment we walk through the door. It’s a tiny bar with sticky floors, one dirty window, and a bartender who looks approximately five hundred years old. I had expected something else, with it being only one block off Old Town. That little neighborhood within the Raider faction is polished to a shine, ruled with an iron fist by the three families who own the majority of businesses contained in that three-by-seven block area. They arguably hold as much power as the Paine brothers, though they don’t bother with ruling overtly.

That shit would never fly in the Amazon faction.