Bonarata figured out what had happened pretty quickly, Adam thought. His intimidation tactic had been turned on its head. The minute Bonarata looked up, Adam had the upper hand.

Adam was fighting down amusement when the door next to the desk opened—and his wolf recoiled with horror and pity and revulsion as a dark-haired woman came in.

She could have been beautiful or ugly or anything in between, and Adam would not have noticed. Every hair on his body, every sense belonging to the werewolf and Alpha and pack understood that the werewolf who came into the room was wrong.

“Jacob,” she said in a perfectly unremarkable tone as she set a large envelope on the desk in front of Bonarata. “Annabelle gave me this for you. She says that the architect has redrawn the section in the house in Seattle.” She turned to look at Adam and stared blankly at him.

Her wolf was dead. And not dead. And so was the woman. Or not. Whatever she was confused his wolf and sent him into a frenzy of horror.

“Good,” Bonarata said. “I’ve been waiting for these.”

Adam thought that he was supposed to be nervous that the vampire was building a home in Seattle, but he had no emotion to spare for the vampire; his wolf was too focused on the damaged wolf. She wore a silver collar, though there was no marring of the skin where it rested—so it was not real silver. White gold, maybe. Her neck was covered with scars of bite marks and so was every bit of skin he could see that wasn’t on her face. Her clothing had been chosen to display as much of that scarred skin as possible without being tacky.

Adam wasn’t the only one reeling. On the far side of the room, Smith forgot himself far enough to utter a low growl.

“Lenka,” said Honey, in a low voice that held the same horror that Adam felt.

While Adam had been paying attention to the broken werewolf, Bonarata had come to his feet, effectively putting an end to the dominance issue he’d begun. Adam was very far from caring about whether he or Bonarata had the upper hand.

“Lenka,” said Honey again, taking a step toward the wolf, who looked at her without recognition.

Honey said something in a tongue that had a nodding acquaintance with German, her voice taut and frantic.

The broken wolf said something in reply in the same language, then turned to Bonarata. “I am sorry. You told me to speak only in English. You must punish me.”

She sounded . . . eager, though her scent carried bitter horror.

Bonarata smiled. “It is of no matter. You were accommodating our guest.” And then Bonarata made a mistake. He turned to say something to Honey.

Distracted by Marsilia, Bonarata had not paid much attention to Honey the day before, and he hadn’t paid any attention at all to her while indulging himself trying to get one up on Adam. Honey was worth looking at normally—dressed as she was to attract attention, she could stop traffic.