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“Well. Bless your heart.”
I winced. When a Southern woman says, “Bless your heart,” she’s really saying something like,Are you fucking kidding me?
“Sorry,” I said again. “It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me, too.”
“Does Victorine know?”
“Not yet. We’re working on that. She’s my true mate, Mom.”
Mom took a deep breath, then said, “Then I’m happy for both of you. Congratulations, cher. Tell the princess I can’t wait to meet her.”
“I will.” I nuzzled Zoe’s neck. “And give my congrats to Gabriel and Mila, too. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
My dad came on the phone.
“You heard what I told Mom?” I asked. “That I’ve mated with Princess Zoe?”
“Yes,” he said, and then fell silent for so long I thought the connection had been broken.
“Father? You still there?”
“Yes. Would you care to explain?” He sounded calm enough. I couldn’t tell if he was pissed off, or calculating how to use my mating to his advantage, but knowing him, my money was on the second.
“Zoe’s right here,” I added. “In the room with me.”
“Ah. Please extend my felicitations.”
Zoe hadn’t moved—or even taken a breath—since Father had spoken.
“Breathe,” I mouthed at her, and her lungs heaved.
I gave her an encouraging smile.
“Thanks,” I told my father. “I will. When we get back to New York, I’ll explain how everything went down, but right now you need to know a few things. First, Tomas Mraz was behind Zaq’s kidnapping. He’s working with Prima Tremblay.”
“You have proof?” He didn’t sound surprised. Just resigned.
“He told me himself.”
A heavy exhale. “I see. You have a safe connection?”
“Yeah. I’m on a burner phone with a new SIM card.”
“Good. Tell me everything you’ve learned.”
I brought my father up to date on everything that had happened in Paris: Tomas’s visit to my cell, Victorine and Philippe’s complicity, the phone call Zoe had made to Zaq.
It turned out that he already knew some of this, including that Tomas was likely our mole. And of course, he’d suspected Victorine and Philippe as soon as he’d realized that Zaq had been kidnapped in Paris; that was why he’d sent me to Montreal in the first place. He even knew that Zaq had escaped—or been released from—Philippe’s lair, and he had people searching for him.
What he didn’t know was that Zaq had been brainwashed into believing that he—my father—was behind the kidnapping.
“They told him that you’d embedded a slayer in Gabriel’s staff, and that I’d be next if Zaq didn’t stake you first. And they sent a slayer with him to make sure it happens.”
“So this is why he is hiding from me,” my father said. Still very calm, but I knew that had to hurt.
