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“Yep,” Drake popped, sipping from the container. “They blasted his head open like a watermelon.” He snapped the fingers on his free hand. “Just like that. We didn’t even see it coming.” He gestured down at his blood stained shirt.
Approaching Rayne, I peered down at the woman who had changed all our lives. “Why is Piper passed out then?”
Rayne’s nose wrinkled and shifted as if there were something he didn’t want to tell me. “It’s complicated. I’m not even sure I understand it.”
“What’s to understand?” Drake snorted, coming up beside us. He flicked a piece of Piper’s hair and said, “Piper has gotten us all into a weird bind again.”
“The council didn’t believe we could all be in love with the same woman,” Marcus explained with a gruff tone.
“So, how does that have anything to do with it?” Gretchen interjected, her anxiety beginning to rub off on me.
“The short of it is, we’re being used as their personal dolls.” Rayne sighed and pushed through us to get to the stairs. “Piper’s memories of all of us have been suppressed and it will be like she has just started her job here. Or at least…that’s what we think?”
“Darren,” Antoine called for me. “We need you to move all of Piper’s things back to her room. Make sure to check the other rooms for anything that may belong to her. We don’t want to make this any more hard than it has to be.”
“Of course,” I answered without thinking and then paused to add on, “What are the terms of this…experiment?”
Drake leaned against the stair railing and gestured up the stairs. “Piper has six months to fall in love with all of us again, proving that we love her by our own choice and not because of some weird twist of fate or whatever nonsense they were spouting.”
My mouth dropped open. How in the…what?
“Yep,” Rayne said from the top of the stairs. “That’s exactly what we were thinking.”
Forgetting propriety for the moment, I turned on Antoine. “Why would you allow this?”
Antoine rolled up his sleeves and let out a long breath. A lot of emotion came with that one single sigh. “We did not particularly have a choice in the matter. The council has to punish us and this is their way of doing so.”
“I don’t understand.” Gretchen clasped her hands together in front of her. “They’re making you fall in love again to punish you? How is that a punishment? I would love to fall in love with my husband again.”
“Yes, in retrospect it does seem like a good deal. However,” Antoine trailed off, tucking his hands into his pockets. “Some things may have moved faster with Piper because we were in danger. I’m not sure we can all woo her in the time limits they have given us.”
“And you can’t interfere,” Allister said from the doorway.
I glanced between them, my frown growing deeper. “What do you mean I can’t interfere?”
Antoine sighed again. “She has to fall in love with the six of us. You were not included in those conditions.”
“So, you’re saying that I have to pretend that Piper and I have no relationship whatsoever while watching the rest of you do everything with her?” I couldn’t hold back the anger in my voice. This was ridiculous. How could they possibly think this is a good idea? What if Piper gets her memories back? What if it doesn’t work? What if the hunters come searching for her before the end of the six months because fuck knows Vincent is not the patient type.
“Those are all good questions.” Rayne said coming down the stairs. “I changed Piper into her night clothes and cleaned the blood off as best I could. I didn’t think trying to shower her was a good idea. Especially since she might freak out if she wakes up naked in the shower with her boss.”
“Yeah, probably a good idea.” Drake bobbed his head. “And what’s a good question?”
Rayne stopped in the middle of us. “What do we do if the hunters show up for Piper? It’s not like they’re going to just wait around for six months?”
“We will deal with that when we come to it,” Antoine explained, placing a hand on my arm. The public touching showed me how concerned he actually was about the whole thing. “Right now we can only handle one crisis at a time. Let’s get Piper’s stuff settled and go to bed.” He ushered the others toward the basement.
When it was only Gretchen and me, Antoine gestured for us to follow him into the kitchen. “Just like the first day of Piper working here, I will expect you two to help her through this.”
I gritted my teeth. “Of course, master.”
Antoine shot me a look before continuing. “We should assume she doesn’t know any of us are vampires as before. So we will have to play it by ear as far as having her learn our true identity. I don’t expect this to be an easy time for any of us and we need to pull together and get through this.” Antoine said this to me with a meaningful look. “We have been through worse. This will not break us.”
As I tossed and turned in my bed later that night, unable to sleep without Piper by my side, I wondered how this would affect us. How would this change us for the future? And would we even survive it?
