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How was my wife able to hide so well from me? How had she escaped with Hugo and been able to lie low for this long?

And how was she doing? How was our son doing?

I was desperate to not miss any more time with them.

The thought of it was unendurable. She was 39 weeks pregnant now. She could go into labor at any time.

Was she out hiding in the woods somewhere?

And right now I wouldn’t be there to hold her hand, guide her breathing, make sure the doctors took good care of her. I wouldn’t be the first one to see our baby boy.

Shithell

I was running on cigarettes and energy drinks and no sleep, my eyes raw and red from searching, always searching.

Where was she? It was the only thought in my head.

Now that we were in open warfare with the Pinoteaux, they were encroaching on our territory, openly flaunting the boundaries between our lands but I didn’t fucking care about anything else until I found my wife.

Somehow, she was hiding from me. Every patrol that came back in, I dreaded them finding her body.

I needed something to draw Léonie out. Something to barter or bargain with.

But what?

She was hiding somewhere. But where?

I’d sent feelers out to contacts far and wide, but no one had seen her. Had she fallen into a river? Been kidnapped? The not knowing was torture.

I had an idea, but it was only a shriveled, desperate, idiotic idea. Because surely. . .surely they were half-legend at this point, hidden away from the rest of the mountain families. . .

But it was all I had.

“Come on, asshole,” I told Mano one morning after we’d spent the last 14 hours searching for them.

“Where are we going?”

“To find Léonie. I have an idea.

“Not Faustine? I thought you wanted to fuck her.”

I snorted.

“Maybe your desperate prick should get on that. I’ve never been so desperate. I’m in love with my wife.”

“Have you figured out yet that your wife doesn’t want to be found? Has it penetrated through your arrogant head that she isn’t going to forgive you with a snap of your fingers?”

“No,” I said, turning away with stone-cold fear in my throat. “She’ll forgive me.”

CHAPTER 12

Léonie

Mano’s words seemed to punch through my chest cavity and drag my heart out, leaving it a messy spill of blood and gutted muscle on the basement floor.

I knew Étienne didn’t love me, but until this moment I didn’t realize how much he hated me.

My husband was the one responsible for all the degradation, pain, and humiliation I had suffered?