Page 33 of Consume Me

“They’ll take care of the baby.” She shifted on her heels, eyeing the door. I half expected her to dart for it. It was clear she didn’t like being in here without anyone watching.

“They’re lying to you, Rachel. You need to know the truth. You can’t trust them.” How could I make her see? Anything I said would be treated with suspicion. She believed I was the crazy one.

And what could I do? Tell her the truth? That ten years had passed since she was brought here? That I had no idea why they’d done this to her? Why she’d been targeted? It sounded insane, because it was. Everything about this was crazy.

No, I couldn’t tell her that. She was too fragile not like glass but rather like a bomb. I had to take a different approach.

“Please. My husband and daughter need me,” I begged her.

“You have another child?” This got her attention.

“A little girl. Elizabeth.” I nodded, my heart aching to hold her.

“She must miss you,” Rachel said softly.

Finally, I was getting somewhere. Still, what I was about to say next was a big risk. “You met my husband. Just for a moment. The day you woke up in the strange place. I was there and he was there. He came and spoke to you, remember? You asked him about your family, and he told you I was his wife.”

The confusion clouding her dark eyes stormed. She remembered. The trouble was that it seemed like she didn’t want to.

“Why would he let them put you in here?” she asked.

“He doesn’t know where I am,” I said frantically. In the hall, I heard a heavy door slam shut and footsteps on the cement. Time was up and I hadn’t convinced her. “Please. If you know anyway to get out. I have to find him.”

Rachel glanced between me and the door, then she lifted one finger to her lips and nodded.

“Thank you.” I wanted to cry. Instead, I turned to wash my hands. I needed to be able to sell a lie to whoever was on the way to check on us.

Rachel opened the door a crack and peeked out. When she pulled her head back in, her wide smile made the hairs on my arm stand on end. “He came!”

“Who?” My heart stuttered as I asked.

“The nice one. The one they call your highness. I told you about him,” she reminded me.

She waited, obviously wanting a cue for me. But I didn’t know what to do? On the other side of the door was someone I didn’t want to see for who they really were. I had no doubt this was the friend June said would come. I’d thought I would have longer, but it seemed the clock was winding down.

I recalled something that Norris said to me once: love doesn’t run on clocks.

I supposed that was true. When I was gone, Alexander and I’s love would remain. But only he would feel it. Our daughter would hear about how I loved her but never know it.

Right now, I—my heart, my body, my lief—was on a clock and I suspected the person on the other side of the door knew when that clock would stop.

It took everything in me to open that door to face the person who’d betrayed me. I wasn’t certain what to expect, and when I finally opened the door, I met the wolf in friend’s clothing that had betrayed us all.

Chapter 13

ALEXANDER

I stared at my uncle waiting for an explanation. He didn’t belong here among my self-appointed conscience. Not here with these men who’d served in Parliament for decades. He wasn’t one of them, and now I knew: he wasn’t one of us either.

When no one spoke, I finally lost control. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m happy to explain that if you’ll sit down,” he said serenely, his saintly demeanor not quite matching the all black suit he’d worn.

He was in mourning.

I didn’t care.

My uncle, Henry, had been a thorn in my side since he’d returned with my grandmother to reinstate the sodding Sovereign Games. Everything had been a mess since then. I’d been unable to contain the truth about Anderson Stone. Clara had taken too much interest in the games. And then, mysteriously, my wife had found herself at the bedside of my long assumed dead sister. All these problems could be traced back to Henry’s arrival.