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“But youaresociopathic.”
“That doesn’t make me a sociopath. I feel empathy. Love. Remorse. I have a conscience.”
Delilah arched up a brow. “The same conscience that saw no reason why you shouldn’t kill any of your husbands?”
“They were crimes of passion.”
“They were incidences of premediated murder.”
“Theirbetrayalswere premeditated. They had full-blown affairs, every one of them.” Hattie put a hand to her chest. “Broke my heart, they did.”
“You know, most women in that situation just get divorced.”
“I don’t believe in divorce, it’s a sin.”
Delilah shook her head and mouthed, “Wow.” She pushed to her feet. “And on that note, we’d better moving. We have a shop to open.”
The day was both as busy and as normal as any other day. So it took Wynter by surprise when Cain strolled into her bedroom that evening while she was packing her duffel for yet another night at his Keep. He’d only ever turned up at the cottage once before, and that had been to find out why she was late. A quick look at her quirky wall-clock told her she wasn’t running late tonight.
“Oh, hey.”
“Such a gushing reception,” he teased as he crossed to her, calm and predatory and far too sexy for her damn liking.
She snorted. “I’m not one to gush.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed.” He planted a soft kiss on her mouth and swept his hands up her arms. “I was passing your street. I decided to stop by.”
She narrowed her eyes, skeptical.He never simplystopped by. And, considering how busy he was, she wouldn’t have expected him to ever take the time to do so.
A sneaking suspicion slithered through her mind. “You came here to check that I wasn’t packing all my stuff to hightail it out of Devil’s Cradle, didn’t you?”
After a brief moment, he inclined his head. “It occurred to me that you might prefer to leave now that your secret has been exposed to myself and the other Ancients.” He twirled a strand of her hair around his finger. “Of course, I would have had to stop you.”
Wynter fought a smile. He wouldn’t find it so easy to detain her, but she’d let him think otherwise. “If I snuck off like that, I would have been leaving partial rights to my soul behind.”
“You wouldn’t be the first. People have done such a thing before. Mostly if they broke a rule and didn’t wish to be held responsible for it. In fact, Bowen and Annette left without notice only recently—Azazel and I suspect they might have committed some crime. You’ve not noticed their absence?” Whatever he saw on her face made him squint. “What is it?” he asked.
Damn, this news probably wouldn’t wash down well. “They didn’t actually leave willingly.” Far from it. “See, Annette killed me,” she blurted out.
His brows snapped together. “Excuse me?”
“She came to the shed where I work and skewered me from behind with a sword.”
His eyes flared, and his mouth set into a hard line. “Did she now? When?”
“Not long after you killed her father. Bowen rushed in, saw what happened, and talked of covering for her and … well, I didn’t like it much. So when I woke up, I dealt with them.”
“I can still feel her soul; she’s not dead.”
“No, I, uh …” Wynter rubbed at her earlobe. “I kind of stuck them in the netherworld.”
Taking a moment to digest those words, Cain did a slow blink. His creature stilled, surprised. “The … the netherworld?”
“I didn’t know where else to put them,” she burst out in her defense. “I couldn’t kill them for obvious reasons. But they’d seen me rise from the dead, and I couldn’t risk that they’d go blabbing about it. They’re not exactly trustworthy people, and they wouldn’t have done me any favors.”
For long moments, Cain could only stare at her. His woman never failed to take him off-guard. Never. “How, exactly, did you put them in the netherworld?”
“I’ve been able to open a portal to it ever since I first became a revenant. I don’t know if it comes with the revenant package or it’s simply because my soul is undead and so I therefore have a connection to it.”
