“Fine.” Malone scowled, leafing through his papers until he found whatever he was looking for. His eyes settled on me again, and I didn’t like the eager look in them. “Is it true that you’ve turned down multiple proposals of marriage over the past six years?”

What? My face blazed in anger. “What the f—” I paused for a quick rephrase, because cursing at a panel of Alphas was a very, very bad idea. “What does that have to do with anything? Andrew never asked me to marry him.”

“Answer the question please, Miss Sanders,” Blackwell ordered, clearly irritated by my near slip.

Michael didn’t look any happier than I was about this new line of questioning, but he nodded for me to answer.

“Yes.”

“How many proposals have you turned down, total?” Malone continued.

I closed my eyes, pretending to think, though I was actually trying to get a grip on my temper before my mouth dug a hole too big for the rest of me to crawl out of. “That’s hard to quantify,” I said finally, opening my eyes to meet Malone’s gleeful stare.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Because I received multiple proposals from the same person.” Marc, of course.

“I see.” Malone nodded, as if he understood. And he probably did. Rumor had it he’d been after his wife for years and years before she finally agreed to marry him. My private theory was that he wore away at her defenses. But I knew better than to say that to his face.

“How many toms proposed to you, then? Surely that can’t be hard to quantify.” Malone said as my uncle scratched something I couldn’t read on the notebook in front of him.

I sighed. “Four.”

“And you weren’t tempted by any of these proposals?”

Sudden understanding clicked into place in my head, but instead of calming me, it made me angrier. One of the marriage offers had come several years earlier from a young man two years my junior, whom I’d barely known. Brett Malone. Calvin Malone’s firstborn son. The petty son of a bitch was mad because I’d opted not to give birth to his descendants. That wasn’t the reason for the hearing, of course. But it was surely the source of his malicious, twitching smile.

“Of course I was tempted.” It took most of my remaining self-control not to roll my eyes over such a petty grudge. “But I had reasons for turning them down.”

“What were those reas—”

“Calvin, I think you’ve gotten your answer.” Uncle Rick cut Malone off in midword, having obviously come to the same conclusion I had.

Malone frowned. “Fine.” He consulted his notes again. “I understand that you are no longer involved in a relationship of any kind. Is this also true?”

Fuming, I glanced at Michael, but he only nodded, telling me to answer.

“Yes.”