Drake
Marcus was not stupid.
He was soft and constantly scrambling for approval he already technically had by birthright. But underneath that, he was calculating. He had grown up watching our father play long games and he had learned every move.
If he was feeding information to Thornwood, he was not doing it out of ideology. He was doing it because someone had offered him something worth the risk. And the only thing worth that kind of risk, for Marcus, was leverage over me.
My eyes found him across the fire.
He stood with his chin lifted and his hands clasped behind his back. Alpha heir posture. Practiced since childhood. He had been watching me since I arrived, and now he was deliberately not watching me, which meant he knew I was tracking him.
I counted forward in my head. Three da
