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“At first, I truly thought I loved you. Unrequited love, but there was a way around that.” He shrugs and doesn’t even bother to look at me while he speaks. “Then you had the gall to do what you did, to reject me so publically. And I realized how much you owe me.”
“You’re a psychopath.”
“Maybe,” he concedes. “But I don’t have anything to prove to you, Bailey. I’m going to win. And you’re going to lose. That’s all that really matters to me.”
I push out of the banquette, heading straight for the door. Ashton calls after me, but he doesn’t get up and follow. If he does, I’m mad enough to physically fight him, so I hope he just stays in his seat and eats all the damn olives himself.
When I get into my car, I start the engine and take a minute to calm my racing pulse and jittering nerves. He’s not going to win. He’s not going to win. Nathan is fixing all of this, I remind myself. I wish I had a number I could call or text Nathan at, just to be reassured that he’s going to follow through on his promise.
He could be just as bad as Ashton, I remind myself.
But I know I’m wrong. Nothing could ever be as bad as being Ashton’s mate.
I just have to hope that Nathan will do something, anything to stop this, and soon.
CHAPTER 17
Nathan doesn’t contact me for a full week.
The preparations for my mating ceremony have hit crisis mode. Mother, Clare, and Tara fret over the morning-after celebration. Everything from the guest list to the centerpieces have to be perfectly correct to hopefully erase the stain of What I Did.
I try my best to participate, if only to keep up the pretense that I’ll be marrying Ashton.
His threats haunt me. Nightmares of desperately trying to run from him, only to be dragged back to the pack kicking and screaming have me waking up in a cold sweat nightly. I’m constantly exhausted and on-edge, and people are noticing.
“The bags under your eyes,” Mother says at dinner one night, making a quiet tutting noise in lieu of finishing the thought.
“I haven’t been sleeping well.” Because of you, because of what Father agreed to. Because of the pack and the fact that I’m a prisoner.
“Ma’am?” Hudson steps into the dining room, followed by two thrall soldiers with the royal seal sewn onto their Kevlar vests.
Father throws down his napkin and gets to his feet. “Since when do we interrupt dinner with unannounced guests, Hudson?”
The butler nods apologetically, but doesn’t make any excuses. What was he supposed to do? Deny entry to royal thralls?
Their presence in our home suddenly clicks in my mind, and all sound in the room is replaced by the rush of white noise in my spinning head. I know one of the thralls says, “His Majesty, King Nathaniel, commands your presence,” but I’m not sure how I hear it when I’m on the verge of fainting under the onslaught of relief and nerves and the terror that somehow, something will go wrong. It’s like I’m running toward my escape, just like in my dreams, and I’m so afraid I’ll be pulled back.
Father turns to Mother. “Don’t fret. I’m sure I’ll be back before too late.”
“All of you,” the thrall says, pointing to Mother and I.
Mother rises from her chair. “Hudson, it’s the driver’s night off. Could you—”
“That won’t be necessary, ma’am,” the other thrall says ominously. “We’ll provide transportation.”
They let us get our coats, then march us out to a black van with tinted windows. They place us in a single row of seats in the middle and slam the door, and Mother turns to Father with fear in her eyes. “You haven’t done anything…”
Father puts on his seatbelt, grunting with annoyance, but he doesn’t answer her.
The ride to Aconitum Hall is interminable. No one says anything. Mother and Father don’t bother with questions, either because they won’t deign to speak to the thralls or they know the thralls won’t give them any answers. But deep down, I know that this is it. It must be.
I’m not sure why Nathan chose to do it this way, with soldiers and after-dark van kidnapping, but this has to be the moment he frees me from the pact.
When we turn down a familiar street, I’m not so sure.
We pull up in front of Clare’s house and the two thralls get out of the vehicle, locking the doors behind them. Just as quickly as they collected us, they march Clare and Julien out to sit in the row of seats behind us.
“What’s happening?” Clare’s eyes are wide and frightened and I feel guilty that I’m not immediately offering up what I know.
When we stop again for Tara and Josh to get into the very back seats, I begin to doubt that I know anything, at all. I expected something more along the lines of a letter or a phone call. Not…whatever this is.
