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Odette shrugged, her face oddly blank.
“Odette!”
“Yes, Miss Maren?” Her tone was oddly calm, which did not reassure me in the least.
“You have to do something!”
She stared at me, baffled. “Dosomething?” she repeated. “Like what? I wasn’t even here when King Lucius reigned.”
I shrugged. “Nyx made me promise not to go down there, but you have stealth powers. You could get into the office and listen to what’s happening.”
Understanding flooded her face, followed by dread.
“Oh, no,” Odette protested. “No way. If the king catches me…” She ran her finger across her throat in a killing motion and shook her head again. “No way.”
I stared at her with begging eyes. “I need to know what’s going on. For the sake of the baby. You have a responsibility to my baby to do this. I need to know what Lucius’ intentions are. Is he coming back here to rule? Can he do that?”
Odette shrugged almost nonchalantly, and I wanted to yell at her.
“Please, Odette! Do something!”
She sighed deeply, and a smidgen of guilt shot through me.
“If I get caught—” she started to say.
“I’ll take complete blame for it,” I swore. “You won’t be punished, I promise. Please, go find out what’s going on down there. This is killing me, and I swore to Nyx that I would stay here. But if you won’t go…”
She gave me a weak smile. “Okay. Only because it’s you,” she agreed. “But don’t go anywhere, okay? This is probably the safest place for you.”
“I won’t.”
I exhaled as she again disappeared into a vapor of silvery fog, and I was once more left on my own in the bedroom, fretting about my future. Our future. Assuming that me and my baby still had one in the castle at all. I had no idea, and that was the problem. I was counting on Odette to find out for me.
Chapter 15
Nyx
Dread clung to me like a pungent cloud of smoke. Every step I took toward my office made my legs feel like heavy, leaden weights.
I should have taken those rumors more seriously. I should have had them investigated more thoroughly. I should have…
Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve. Hindsight was always twenty/twenty when catastrophe came knocking.
But every year, a different “sighting” of dear old Dad would surface, and it was getting harder and harder to take them seriously when it was clear my father had run off and abandoned his son and kingdom.
Would he really have come back after all this time? Not the proud, overbearing tyrant I knew. He wouldn’t show his face around here after bailing like he had. Not unless he’d come equipped with a clever story. And he’d had seven years to concoct one.
Inhaling sharply, I stopped at the heavy wooden doors of my office and closed my eyes as the guards waited behind me.
“Alpha,” one of them called gently. My eyes popped open, and I turned to look at him. “Would you like us to come inside with you?”
The question was meant to be supportive, but it irritated me. Did he think I couldn’t handle myself? I was the Alpha King of Steelshire, no matter who sat on the other side of the door.
“Of course not,” I snapped, grabbing the handles and marching into my office.
His back was to me as he sat in one of the deep pocket chairs, facing the mahogany desk, but I recognized the salt and pepper strands of his thick hair. Slowly, he turned to face me, and my gut flipped three times.
Glittery honey eyes, identical to mine, shone at me like gold beacons on an ebony sea. He stood, beaming at me, the shine of his ivory smile almost blinding in contrast to the darkness of the rest of him. He looked leaner, slightly older, but he was the same bastard who had picked up and left me to fend for myself all those years ago.
