LOGIN(Rene)"He'll be here by morning,” Cole says to my back."Then there's nothing left to settle tonight. Keep the boy busy and away from Angelique’s room for the next hour."I keep walking toward the east wing.Not away from it like I should be, which tells me how the night's going to go before I've decided a thing.By morning a man who reads intent will be standing in my house.And tonight I can't keep my own feet from carrying me to the one thing in it I have every reason to stay away from.I don't summon her up to my quarters.I want to take her by surprise, without giving her the walk to my bedroom to gather her emotions and school her expression.She's sitting on her bed, body rigid like she was expecting me.She felt my approach. Couldn’t have been sure I was headed to her, but if the bond is as alive in her chest as it is in mine, she felt at least some of my intent."Up."She comes to me immediately.She's learned the steps well, obeying without question.I fist a hand in her ha
(Angelique)"Where's the boy?"Brynn's already inside.None of them knock."Asleep.""Keep him that way."She sets a paper packet on the table. More herbs, doled out like she's feeding a stray.I’ve been using a bit extra while Maliyah is here, a fact Brynn is aware of and not arguing against.The packet's thinner than last time.I’m sure she’s doing that on purpose.Letting the pile shrink without a word, so I'm always counting days instead of sleeping.I know she doesn’t want her mother or Rene to know about Zack, so this is pure posturing, just to prove she has power over me.But I still don’t dare call her bluff.I have too much to lose."Count yourself lucky. My witch nearly didn't come through this time."I don't thank her.We're past the part where either of us pretends the gratitude's real.She wrinkles her nose then, the exact way her mother does."His scent is all over you."I say nothing.Rene calls me to his room at least once a day to pleasure him.He touches me, brings m
(Rene)"Bring her up. Just her."Cole's quiet on the line a second too long."The Myr are going to be furious if you do this in private. Maliyah wants witnesses and a public spectacle. She wants everyone to bear witness to you choosing her daughter and rejecting Angelique.""Maliyah can want whatever she wants, I’m under no obligation to dance to her tune. I'm not standing in that hall again until it's already done."I hang up before he can keep arguing.Cole is the best Beta I could ever ask for.Calm under pressure, a great advisor, and he always has my back.But I’m not attempting this in front of a crowd again, and while I trust him more than anyone else, I’m not telling him why.The pack will be able to feel the mate-bond severing, that will be enough proof that it’s been done.Once was enough.I stood in front of my whole pack with the words held prisoner by my wolf.Parker walked in, and everyone agreed to call it an interruption, because the other story is that their Alpha cou
(Angelique)I’m expecting a servant with a tray when there’s a knock at the door, Brynn and Rene don’t knock.I crack the door and it gets shoved the rest of the way open."Move."She's inside before I can do a thing about it, and the floor drops out from under all the years at once.Tova.Eyes narrowed angrily. Jaw set like she came up here looking for a fight."Tova, I-""Don't."She holds a flat hand, up between us. "Don't say my name like we get to be fine after what you did."She circles me, checking I'm solid. Doesn't touch me."I spoke at your funeral. Got up in front of the whole pack and eulogized my best friend while crying so hard I could barely speak.""I know, I’m sorry, I-""You don't know. You weren't there. That's the whole point of it."Her eyes are wet and furious, and she'd bite me before she let a single tear fall."You were off somewhere breathing and living your best life while I learned how to carry on without you."Nothing I say is going to appease her, except
(Rene)"He's still not eating."Cole's been on the spare-room door for two days and it's wearing on him."Doesn't pace. Doesn't ask for anything. Just sits there like he's already won the part he came for.""He has."I don't look up from the documents I'm not reading."He stopped the rejection ceremony and told everyone Angelique and the brat are his. I’m not sure what else he wants, but he succeeded at sowing those seeds.""So we make him talk.""You want to torture a consecrated Alpha under my roof?"I let that sit. Because god knows, I want that too, but I know the consequences."Tell me how that goes, Cole. Walk me through the morning after."He doesn't. He knows the shape of it as well as I do."Then what?" he says, frustration plain in his voice.“He can’t stay down there forever. I’m sick of waiting outside his door, and the Myr are circling him like he’s a stain they haven’t decided how to scrub out.”“They are. Maliyah’s a houseguest who behaves like she owns the walls.”“So
(Brynn)"I had to learn about the boy’s parentage from a stranger's mouth. In a hall full of people. While I sat there like a fool who doesn't know what’s happening around her."My mother doesn't knock. She never has. The door just opens and the temperature drops.I don't turn from the mirror. Turning is losing. She taught me that before I could read."I told you there was a child.""You told me there was a bastard."She crosses the room, and in the glass she's still beautiful.Beautiful and cold all the way through.I notice again that we have exactly the same mouth.I've hated it my whole life."You told me the father was some random human, not that a fugitive Alpha would walk into Rene's hall and lay claim to Angelique and the brat.""Because I didn't know he would. I would have stopped him from interrupting if I’d been expecting him."True, for once."I'm not responsible for every stray Angelique left behind in whatever truck stop she was rotting in.""Parker Frey."My mother says
(Angelique)I want to die.Not only from the shame of being seen, though there is that with my half-sister standing in the doorway, watching me presented like meat on his bed.From the other thing.The thing that dropped through me when his shirt hit the floor and the door opened and the animal par
(Rene)The boy falls asleep in the car before we clear the gate, and I'm glad, because it means she has nothing to hide behind when we get to the house.I have Cole take the kid to a room on the far side of the residence.Angelique watches him carried away down a corridor she doesn't know, in a hou
(Angelique)Twenty minutes to dismantle a life.It's not as hard as it should be.That's the part that hollows me out, how little there is.Zack's clothes.The shoebox of his drawings.One good blanket.My documents, the fake ones and the realer ones, taped inside a vent I pried open with a butter
(Rene)I told my men one hour.I told myself I'd wait it out at the hotel like an Alpha with a shred of self-control.Instead I'm leaning on the door of a trailer that smells like mildew, cheap soap, and her, and self-control can go to hell.Her scent is everywhere out here.Worn into the doorframe







