Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 140412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
It’s late. My head is pounding. My body is trembling from renewed adrenaline, and I decide that maybe sometimes, like now, for instance, violence actually is the answer. I run at him.
He doesn’t move. He stands there and lets me collide with him, actually stops me from falling even as I punch wildly at him. I’m not as tough as I assumed I was; I’m not strong enough to actually hurt him or affect him in any way. But I try, abandoning my ineffectual punches for somewhat effectual slaps. He takes every one of them, even the hard blows to his face that make my palms sting.
“I hate you!” I scream at him, looking for any flicker of emotion on his face. But there isn’t any, and a disappointment I couldn’t have anticipated sucks all the strength out of me. I fall to the floor like a marionette with cut strings, and I finally let myself cry.
After a long moment, Nathan speaks. “Your father, your brother-in-laws, they plotted against me. Not just to remove me from power, but to do it permanently. To kill me.”
“That’s not true.” I shake my head. My father isn’t capable of plotting anyone’s murder.
But Ashton might be.
I think about how cold Ashton was at dinner, how entitled. But is that an indication of murderous tendencies? If so, the man standing in front of me right now, watching me sob on the floor is probably also capable of it. But if he is, why didn’t he sentence all those traitors to death? It was his right, by the law of the pack. They broke their oaths, and that’s a worse crime than treason.
“We have ample evidence of the conspiracy,” Nathan says. “And considering your father’s part in it, I’ve been extremely lenient with him.”
“But not with my sisters.” I look up at Nathan, who’ll be my mate in less than a week. “How can you do this to me and think I would ever want to be with you?”
That seems to move something in him because he can’t answer me.
“Leave,” I whisper. “Please.”
He hesitates.
“Go!” I scream it at him with the last of my strength, and it dies out on angry, wracking sobs that feel like they’ll break my ribs.
He makes no attempt to comfort me or even help me up. “If that’s your wish.”
I lay down, exhausted, and press my cheek to the cool wood floor. I watch his shoes as he goes to the door, and somehow rally myself to croak, “Don’t take my sisters away. Please. Please. I’m begging you.”
His steps slow, and he turns back. A flicker of hope sparks in me, and I can’t let it go out, if he’s actually going to listen. I push myself up on arms as limp as spaghetti and entreat again, “Please. Don’t take them away from me.”
I must be the most pathetic thing on the planet, because he actually comes back. He stands over me, and I can’t look up because the perspective makes him seem so impossibly giant, and I hate feeling small.
“I can’t reverse the banishment.”
I inhale sharply, my lungs shuddering.
“But I can limit its parameters. I can allow them to return to the pack. But they would have to choose to leave their mates.” He pauses. “And their mates would have to agree.”
“You can’t order them? By royal decree or something?” What’s the use of being king if he can’t make the rules he wants to make? A part of me thinks I should point that out; challenge him with an accusation of weakness. At the same time, I know it won’t put him on the defensive the way it might another man.
Another maddening silence instead of an answer. All he does is offer his hand to me.
Sniffling, I take it, and he pulls me to my feet, then off them, lifting me up to cradle me against his chest. I let him carry me up the stairs and hate, hate, hate that unexplained pull between us. After what he’s done to my family, to me…
My anger comes back as he sits me on the edge of the bed, and I glare up at him. “You lied to me.”
He tilts his head in question and turns on the bedside lamp. “I said I would nullify your mating pact. I have.”
“You said you thought I would be a good queen for you. That I would be a good mate.” I can’t believe I fell for that. How could he possibly have known? “You knew all along that I was going to be an insurance policy.”
Wordlessly, he goes to my bathroom. I hear water run in the sink and he returns with the sleeves of his crisp white shirt rolled up his thick forearms, holding a washcloth. He hands it to me. “For your face.”