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“Look after them,” he said, his voice fractured.
“What’s happening?” I panicked as Caelan handed me the baby but didn’t really look at me.
He said with a fierceness that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “It’s time to hunt. They’ll be here. Somewhere.”
Sherry’s men, this time. I thought that’s what he meant. Of course, she’d no doubt have heard by now he was back. The castle would be one of the first places she’d have searched for any sign of him.
In front of the hallway mirror, Caelan plastered on some black face paint around his eyes. He had a knife hanging from his belt. There was also a holster wrapped around his arms and he had a pistol.
“Don’t you need more weapons?” I trembled with fear… real fear.
“I’ve seen Caelan at work. He needs only his bare hands,” said Eric, and Caelan hissed in his direction.
Caelan pulled on a black balaclava to complete the ensemble and as I stared at him, I saw he’d gotten thicker these past few weeks. More lethal, if that were at all possible. He’d been wrecking himself out there, then. Working for them. Fighting alongside them, as any good soldier would when faced with a barbaric enemy. An injustice.
That’s how I knew if Eric truly had done bad things, he wouldn’t get let off. Oh, no. Caelan would work on him until he squawked and revealed everything.
And I’d be left to deal with the fallout, whatever that ended up being, because that’s what I deserved.
“Bring the truck at dawn,” said Caelan to Eric. “We’ll take them into the woods and you can bury them.”
So sure of himself. So much the commander. It made me petrified for the future. What awaited us now that a man of Caelan’s breeding, intelligence and fury knew his wife and one of his last surviving friends had betrayed him? Who knew.
When Caelan had gone out into the night and I’d put the baby down to sleep, I slid into bed and shook not with cold or fear. With sadness.
Old routines and tricks. Wickedness and lies.
Eric tried to comfort me in bed but eventually gave up as all I was doing was facing the fire, unresponsive to words, touch or his warmth.
He moved back downstairs and I heard the jangle of metal as he no doubt prepared some things—just in case.
For who knew what the night might contain.
I fell deep into a pit of warped dreams: ghoulish monsters, contorted, nearly invisible enemies, and every time I broke out in a sweat, I saw my mother’s face. Her look of shame, revulsion and the shaking of her head—nearly stopped my heart, every time.
I knew it, then.
I was more like him than I was ever like her.
But a fragment of her remained.
I was a Rathbone, through and through.
Which meant by the natural order of things, I would always be the enemy of a Cameron, the man I’d married being the last one standing.
Chapter Twenty
~ Caelan ~
Flora wasn’t the only one who could have some fun. Caelan had provoked this on purpose. Drawn them here to make a point. He needed to kill. It was like a vile serpent under his skin, and until he killed, he wouldn’t get it out. This raging demon inside him, this violent requirement to purge and vacate.
His blood hadn’t just boiled at the sight of them in bed together, it had evaporated right out of his pores and nearly blinded him with the rage of a thousand men all at once.
They’d looked like ridiculous teenagers lying in one of their parent’s beds, trying to get caught just so they could be treated like children instead of the adults they were nightly pretending to be.
Eric didn’t know the first thing about loving a woman like Flora. He had no clue about the things Flora had done in the past. Caelan did, all right. He’d hacked the gossipy, bitchy one who was jealous of Flora—Arabella. She still had emails from years ago where she wrote to a gossip columnist about a woman she knew who was playing paramours off against one another… left, right and centre.
He knew the reason behind everything she’d ever done as an adult—it was the thing that’d happened with Jimmy. Even though he could reason it out, all of it still cut him to the quick. He saw through the situation, her brokenness and her battered heart—and he could, in some way, understand—yet his shredded soul hurt, too. Hurt for her, for himself…
