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This is how you sit, Everleigh, with your knees together and back straight.
No, you do not stand like that. Like this.
A lady never clears her plate. Ten chews. No more. You’ll soon learn to ignore a grumbling belly.
And then all the lessons stop. Because my heat is coming. It’s a relief. At first. Until I learn to hate begging Lawrence for his knot, learn to hate how much he loves to control me. Enough that I miss running on the treadmill until I throw up yellow bile that burns the lining of my throat.
Each day, I get a little closer to being the perfect omega Lawrence wants me to be. And each day, another part of me dies.
Then it’s the night I run out of the birth control pills I stole out of a beta servant’s bag. The night I know I have to run.
I’m fighting to climb up the boxwood hedge again. This time I get farther than I have before. Almost halfway, and then I’m falling again.
Hands catch me, crushing me to a chest that doesn’t feel like Cian, Kylian, or Rune.
Tart cherry, rum, and black pepper envelop me.
“And you’re sure you weren’t followed?” Lawrence asks.
My eyes fly open.
Lawrence has me in his arms. His grip is absolute, and his expression is cold. My head hurts, my temples throbbing.
I followed Della into the herb garden and things turned… murky. Now Lawrence has me. What happened?
I take in my surroundings. I’m not in Pack Ashe’s mansion or even their garden, but on a pretty mansion-lined street, and Lawrence is striding toward a black limo with the back doors open.
“No, sir. I left the scrap you said. They’ll think it was the sister,” a female voice responds.
I snap my head over Lawrence’s shoulder to find a woman trailing us.
She has long red hair, donning the Wentworth blue uniform, the sleeve on one arm torn as she steps around Lawrence and me.
I recognize her. The servant in the antechamber I sent to get me water before I ran from Lawrence. The only difference between then and now is her hair is a copper red and not the dark auburn it was before.
Her brown eyes briefly meet mine before they slide away to focus on Lawrence. “Did you have any other orders, sir?”
I stare at her as Lawrence responds. But I’m not listening.
Shewas the woman in the herb garden. The reason Della was moving away from me was because it wasn’t Della at all. It was her, and she was luring me into a trap. And her hair. She must have dyed it to Della’s same copper shade so I would think it was my sister.
Did she knock me unconscious? Or was it the limo driver who slides out to stand at the open back, waiting to close it?
It doesn’t matter who was responsible for my throbbing temples; the result is the same. We’re still close enough to Pack Ashe’s mansion for me to get away if I make enough sound.
I part my lips, preparing to scream.
A palm crashes over my mouth, muffling the sound.
Over Lawrence’s hand, I meet his tight-lipped glare.
“You have inconvenienced me in every way possible, Everleigh.” Lawrence slides into the limo and the beta servant slips in beside him, the driver slamming the door shut behind us.
The driver returns to his seat, slams the door shut, and the limo pulls away.
Only then does Lawrence remove his hand from my mouth.
“You want them to think Della was responsible.” I tell myself not to panic until I know how bad things are. Now that my one small window of escape has closed, all I can think about is the mess behind me.
