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Because he did it. He figured it out. He knew that I refused to tell Loni that shehasto Claim me at the end of August or else he’ll have our marriage annulled.

I never did. Icouldn’t.If she knew she had an out, the Loni I first married would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.

Is she taking it now?

No.

“Adrian? Adrian… what’s wrong? What did Dal say?”

I shake my head, trembling fingers pulling up Loni’s number. I’ve had it in my phone for the last two years, ever since I convinced Todd Dimmity that I needed it for my records. If he thought that it was weird that someone in Harmony Heights requested she be hired only to then ask for her number, he’s paid enough to not ask questions.

Sometimes, when I couldn’t help myself, I would use a burner number to call Loni for the two seconds she would say ‘hello… hello?’ before she’d inevitably hang up. I made a display of getting her to give it to me—relief flooding through me when the numbers she spat out were the same as the ones I already had—but the truth is that I’ve had it long memorized.

I can’t dial. I’m too busy losing my shit to punch in nine numbers. I select her contact instead, stomach dropping when I see the candid photo I snapped of my wife sleeping in our bed, and wait for her to answer.

When she doesn’t, I call again.

And again.

“She’s not answering.” My mind goes blank, my voice icy cold. “Loni… she’s not answering.”

And my fucking uncle has her.

TWENTY-SIX

JACK COLLINS

LONI

When the blond-haired brute walked into my house, telling me that Adrian needed me at his office downtown, that my husband sent him to retrieve me, I panicked.

Worse, I believed him.

I only had enough time to gather Peaches up in my arm and return her to my private bedroom—since we haven’t had the chance to move her to a room closer to Adrian’s and mine—and grab a pair of sneakers before he was snapping his fingers at me, telling me that it’s urgent, that we have to go.

I was frazzled. I admit it. Since I returned to Harmony Heights, doing everything the Order expected of me, I forgot about the danger a secret society like ours can pose. Not everyone is honest, and while I figured my dad was safe as long as I played my part, I never thought the Order would come after me.

So, yes, I believed this man when he said that Adrian needed me. After all, he knew where my husband lived, and he even flashed the Order’s brand on his palm. I had no reason todistrust him—which was my mistake because, in the rush of everything, I left my phone behind.

He put me in a car similar to the matte black coupe that Dallas Collins drove in Bridgewater. I asked his name, he grunted out ‘Luke’, and that was all he said despite me asking what was going on.

What happened to Adrian?

No wonder he didn’t answer me. Because now that I’m sitting in a heavy leather chair, swallowing my nerves as I face off against Jack Collins himself, I finally understand.

It wasn’t Adrian who wanted me to come to the downtown office.

It was the King.

The last time I ever was in the same room with this man, I was seventeen, he was standing with my dad, and the two of them were grilling me about that graduation party. As the King, Jack was the only one I could prove my innocence, too. He had the ability to keep me as an Offering or make me one of the Used.

I wasn’t innocent. I couldn’t lie, either, and in front of my father and the leader of the Order of the Owed, I admitted that I had been seeing someone. I didn’t think it mattered. Really, the Order’s laws and rules were so ridiculously outdated, I secretly hoped that I wouldn’t get in trouble for sleeping with Adrian.

But I did. And if I’d admitted that Adrian was the one in the room that night, so would he.

I confessed to my own sins, but even when I felt betrayed… even when I hated him… I refused to throw him under the bus. He had a bright future ahead of him, the kingmaker who would rule Harmony Heights when the crown was on Dallas’s head, and I…

I would be one of the Used. That’s what Jack decided the last time I saw him. And, yet, sometime over the last ten years,he changed his mind. He gave me to Desmond. I became an Offering again, and I can believe what he’s telling me now…