Total pages in book: 266
Estimated words: 250787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1254(@200wpm)___ 1003(@250wpm)___ 836(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 250787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1254(@200wpm)___ 1003(@250wpm)___ 836(@300wpm)
“I’m in here, darling,” she answers faintly down the hall. I enter Bill’s office to see her going through some papers on his desk. Her best friend is standing next to her, but I ignore Anne. I came here for a reason. “I’d love to chat, dear, but me and Bill have plans with friends.” She pauses and looks up at me frowning. “When did you get back from your vacation?”
“Why am I not married yet?” I get to the point, ignoring her question.
I forgot I’m supposed to still be away. Which also reminds me that I need to touch base with Wesley. He has a key to my house. Wouldn’t that be humiliating if he walked in, and I was on all fours while Haidyn fucked my ass?
She drops the papers and stands to her full height. “Anna—”
“I want to know.” I interrupt her. I’m not a child anymore. I deserve to know where my life is going that she is planning for me.
Anne clears her throat, and my mom looks at her. It’s as if they’ve had this conversation and her friend warned her, I’d one day have questions.
My mother sighs. “It’s not black and white. It never is with the Lords. When I feel you’re ready, I’ll let you know.”
Her answer pisses me off. I’ve proven to her over the past few years that I can make it in our world. Why keep my future a secret from me? “I had sex,” I tell her. She’s going to find out eventually when I’m handed to my Lord, and he expects me to be a virgin.
“What do you mean you had sex?” she asks slowly.
“Haidyn fucked me—”
She slaps me across the face, cutting me off. My head whips to the side, and I gasp at the sting on my cheek. She’s never hit me before. “Do you understand what you’ve done?” she screeches.
“The Lords told me to do whatever he wants,” I rush out, the tears stinging my eyes from the lingering pain.
“They did?” she asks skeptically.
“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth, rubbing my cheek.
“Interesting. I’ll call Dr. Lennon and have you put on birth control immediately. In the meantime, I’ll have Sally get you the morning after pill.” She picks up my stepfather’s phone on his desk and begins to dial when I speak.
“I’m already on it.”
She eyes me up and down with her hand paused on the phone. “How?”
“He had Gavin put me on the shot.”
“Well…that’s good at least.” She hangs up the phone and runs a hand over her perfectly curled hair. Not really touching it, more of a nervous habit. “I mean it’s not really a concern I guess since he wouldn’t want to knock you up.”
The way she says it makes me want to ask why not, but I don’t want her to think I’m trying to get pregnant, so I word it carefully. “Lords need to reproduce.” I mean, the Spade brothers are out of Barrington. They should have already settled down and had two or three kids by now. But the email the Lords sent me didn’t show him having a Lady. It had said denied. Do they know something that I don’t? If he did kill their fathers, is that his punishment? Not to get to have children?
“They were all going to breed with Ashtyn.” Anne is the one who speaks.
I don’t like the way she says the word breed. “She’s dead,” I challenge. “One of them was her twin brother.” That I just found out at lunch. “So…not all of them. Plus, even if she didn’t have one with her twin, that would end up making them incest down the line. If she had a girl with one and a boy with another, and those two got together when they were supposed to take over,” I blabber, trying to do the math in my head.
Anne laughs. “There are ways to control the sex of the children. If the three Spade brothers each knocked her up with girls, then they would be given to high-ranking Lords after graduation. A new line of Spade brothers would be brought into Carnage to take over.” She waves her hand in the air.
“But none of them have kids now.” I dig.
“Of course not. Things changed for them when Ash and her brother, Adam, disappeared on them. Their fathers were killed, and their rules…were bent,” Anne states.
I frown, not knowing what she means by that but not asking any further. I’ve heard enough for one day, and my face now throbs. I want a bottle of wine and bed. I look at my mother who stands silently next to her friend. “You still haven’t answered my question on who I’m supposed to marry.” I circle back around to that. I’m not leaving until I get an answer.