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“The Wentworth party,” I say, speaking slowly. “Did you notice how homogeneous they are? They all circulate the same orbit. Their daughters are friends with each other. They go to the same boarding schools. They attend the same parties. All have likely known each other since childhood.”
“So they all like the same things and went to the same schools. Your point is?” Kylian frowns.
“My point is, several times at that party I heard someone asking where Everleigh Wentworth came from. She wasn’t a Haven Academy girl, they said, but something about her seemed familiar. How could something about her be familiar if Anna Jackson raised her in a home she rarely left?”
No one responds.
I get up, walking over to grab my laptop from a drawer. As I place it on the desk and flip open the lid, I feel more than see Rune, Kylian, and Della crowd around me.
“What are you looking for?” Rune asks.
As the laptop powers up, I think about the biggest events over the last several years. Not weddings, funerals, or even birthday parties. The sort of events no one would want to miss. I bring up the search engine because I know exactly what that event is.
“What if Everleigh looked familiar because it wasn’t her they’d seen before but someone else? Someone just like them.” I type a name into the search bar and press enter.
“Dexter Pieter?” Kylian sounds like he’s frowning. “Do you think he’s involved in this?”
“Not in the way you think.”I hope.If the leader of the Council, arguably the most powerful man in the city, is involved in this mess, it doesn’t bode well for Everleigh, us, or the other omegas.
It takes seconds to find the picture I was looking for.
Ten years ago, Dexter Pieter was elected as the youngest ever leader of the Council at twenty one. The afterparty was one of the most popular events in the city. Everyone wanted a ticket, but not everyone could get one. Only the city’s most powerful, influential, and wealthy did.
Days later, a photograph taken after of those attendees—mostly the alpha CEOs—was splashed across the front page of almost every newspaper.
Scanning each person one by one takes longer than finding the photograph did.
Then I see it, and I wonder how I could have missed something so obvious.
I point at the dark-haired man in a black suit and bowtie standing on the fringes of the huddle of alphas, a man who later sold his newspaper company and turned recluse. No one knows why.
The man with dark, graying hair and mint-green eyes.
“Alpha Sloane Eddiswood is Everleigh’s father,” I say. “That’swhy Everleigh looked familiar to the people at the party. They hadn’t seenherbefore. But they had seen Sloane.”
Chapter45
Everleigh
My cheeks are flushed. More sweat drips from my brow and collects on the back of my neck, making me shiver. The scent of my vanilla-coconut omega pheromones fills my cell.
And worst of all… an ache starts between my thighs. An insistent, needy, gnawing thing that grows harder to ignore. Pressing my thighs together doesn’t help. Talking to Resa doesn’t quieten the need. Soon, only one thing will. An alpha’s knot.
Until then, second by second, minute by minute, I burn.
“You should try to rest,” Resa suggests, saying nothing about my inability to sit still, focus on her words, or when I lose my train of thought mid-sentence.
“I’m not tired,” I mutter as I pace my cell, my arms wrapped around my middle as my body cooks from the inside out. My heat is coming, and it’s coming faster than it ever has before. The drug—whatever it was—is doing its job.
Soon, I’m going to be begging an alpha for his knot. I won’t care who it is.
“They’ll come soon.” Resa’s gaze tracks me back and forth across my cage. “They’ll want you to look pretty.”
“So Lawrence can get the best price?” My voice is bitter.
As my core clenches with pulsing need, a soft voice in my head whispers.He wasn’t all that bad in bed, was he? And he made you feel good.
And I…hatemyself. Hate that this is what I am. Hate that in hours from now, I won’t care about anything but fucking.
