He shook his head. “He doesn’t have any. Unless you count the alpha strain. A chunk of his DNA is in all of us.”

Sean glanced at the female werewolf.

“You really don’t like her,” I told him.

“She barged into the inn and then put you in danger.”

“We’ve discussed this before. There will be times I will be in danger.”

“I would like those times to be less frequent. This was avoidable.”

“I stand by my decision. I’ve met the woman in the shawl. There was no way she would ever set foot in the inn or let me change the location of the meeting. You should have seen her eyes, Sean.”

“I don’t care about her eyes.”

The line of his jaw hardened. He stepped closer and kissed me. I tasted Sean, and the forest inside him swallowed me whole. The trees closed in, sheltering me, and the scarred wolf who lived in there wrapped himself around me to keep me safe.

The kiss ended, and I looked up at him. He hugged me to him, his strong arms warm. There was no place safer.

“Were you worried?” I asked softly.

“A little.”

I leaned my head against his chest. “I was worried too.”

In Sean’s perfect world, we would live happily ever after in complete safety and nothing bad would injure us. But even he knew that a future like that wasn’t just unrealistic, it would be boring. Even before we were together, he was a werewolf soldier looking for adventure, and I was an innkeeper who took it upon herself to police the neighborhood. We’d had multiple chances to get out and settle into a more peaceful life, and we’d rolled right past them. We didn’t look for trouble, but we didn’t back down when it found us.

“I’m okay,” I told him.

He kissed me again.

“If you keep doing this, we’re going to miss the Sovereign’s date,” I murmured.

“It would be worth it.”

“We can’t. He might get murdered.”

He sighed. “Do you believe your informant?”

“Yes. And I know how we can quickly verify it.”

He frowned. “Cookie?”

I nodded. Clan Nuan’s information network was one of the best in the galaxy. Cookie wanted Lady Wexyn to win. If the pirate candidate got eliminated as a result of this, Lady Wexyn would face less competition.

“If he can confirm this, I would do something right.”

Sean bared his teeth. “You did everything right. You kicked ass. You beat a corrupted ad-hal outside of the inn. That’s fucking amazing.”

It was kind of amazing. And I shouldn’t have been able to do it.