“Why?” he interprets correctly. “That’s easy. The Offering that Desmond was at St. Catherine’s to marry was Avalon Dougherty.”
Avalon Dougherty.
Loni.
For a second there, I stop breathing. It catches in my throat, and I’m too stunned for my brain to even give the order to inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale…
Loni. My childhood best friend. The girl who was like a sister to me for the first eighteen years of my life, and who disappeared so easily from it as though our friendship meant nothing to her.Logically, I know she had to do it. She’d never break free from the hold the Order had on her if we stayed in contact.
Then again, if she ended up Claimed byDesmond St. Jamesten years after the first Claiming ceremony she missed, it looks like she didn’t quite break free after all, did she?
Connor says something to me. I don’t hear it. I look down at him, barely seeing. My mind is spinning. Desmond Claimed Loni? She was going to marry him? Adrian killed his old friend to stop him from making Loni his bride?
Why would he do that? AdrianruinedLoni. He destroyed her reputation and stole her future from her… and now what? He killed her groom while also taking her last chance to exist in the Order without the dreaded Used brand on her neck?
I climb off my husband so fast that the mattressbounces.
Connor sits up right away, reaching out for me as though just realizing I’m going. "Haven?—"
Nope. Peering around, I look for my weapon. I hum in satisfaction when I see it, and hurriedly swoop up the knife.
Connor swings his feet out of the bed. “Haven? Haven, sweetheart… where are you going with that?”
I’m halfway to the door. “To kill Adrian.”
“I don’t think Loni would appreciate you killing her husband.”
I stop short. Glancing over my shoulder, I raise my eyebrows at mine.
He nods.
Does he mean… shit. Adrian didn’t just kill Desmond for shits and giggles, did he? After his old friend was dead, he must’ve married Loni.
I’m sorry, butwhat?
“Besides, you don’t have a blood oath so you can get away with murdering the King’s nephew, sweetheart. Adrian… hedid.” At my look of disbelief, Connor adds: “Yeah. Bas told methat Adrian admitted that he had Jack notarize a blood oath back when he was eighteen, right before Loni took off. He’s held onto it all this time, proving that he Claimed her before our first August Ceremony. Jack might’ve ignored it then and in all the years that followed, but Adrian took matters into his own hands. He had an oath, and he made Des pay in blood for trying to take Loni from him.”
Hang on. Putting my murderous impulses to the side, I try to make sense of what Connor just said.
I’m still struggling to understand this. If Adrian signed a blood oath—a promise signed in blood that says he will give his life to protect and honor the one he’s Claiming as his—then he wasn’t just fucking Loni. To pledge himself to her in that way is an even stronger bond than the Order’s usual arranged marriages.
It gives true meaning to the phrase ‘til death do you part, and they’re not very common because, while it gives the one signing it the power to kill for their Claim, it also means they could die for it, too.
I cock my head.
“Do I have a blood oath?” Connor asks. At my nod, he tells me, “Don’t need it. You know the ‘H’ carved into my arm? That tells all of Harmony Heights you’re mine. Fuck what any King says. If anyone ever tries to take you from me, I’ll do whatever I must to get you back, and I don’t need a piece of paper to say I have the right. You gave it to me, Haven, when you marked me as yours.”
That’s how Connor sees it. Me? In the beginning, I thought he was full of shit. Now I know better. Just like how I know when he’s hiding something from me, I know when he’s been open and honest.
And everything he’s said to me so far? He’s one hundred percent being honest with me.
Desmond is dead. Adrian killed him. Adrian married Loni.
But that’s not all that means. The bigger reveal is that Loni… she’s back in Harmony Heights at last.
She’s back, and I had no idea.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “When?”
