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“I’m sure I already know,” she told me gently. “While you keep many secrets and I’m sure I don’t know it all, I know what I believe you outed—what you would out to blow up an archaic family pushing fraudulent mating contracts.”

“I’m a bastard,” I confirmed.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not the heir to the throne, love. No one gives a shit. No one ever should have even if your father was coven leader, just that he cheated on his mate.”

The sigh I let out probably was heard around the whole administrative wing. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Start at the beginning and know it won’t leave this room and we only care so we can help protect you now,” Renee said gently.

I let out a slow breath. “My father’s mate—my stepmother technically—was sold and hated my father. Hated her family, the Reeds—all of it. My father was obsessed with having a son because he pissed off a warlock—screwed him over or something and the guy cursed him to only have daughters. It was a huge scandal because some tried to use it to remove him as coven leader.

“It was part of the excuse theydideventually use to remove him but also his gambling and bankrupting the coven. But he treated her like a true and—by all accounts he was disgusting. She wasn’t the coven leader’s wife but the cow he had to impregnate always in her suite waiting for him to stud her. He didn’t cheat thinking it beneath a coven leader.

“When she learned of the curse being real and not crap, she was terrified what he would do with her daughter. How she would be sold and—my father is a monster. She drugged a maid and my father and tricked him into screwing her too. She got pregnant first, but we were like two months apart and it wasn’t—early and late births were all of the time back then.

“A paid-off doctor and her servants and all that mattered was my father had his heir on the way.” I let out a slow breath. “I was born first and the doctor said that there were such complications with my birth that my mother needed complete seclusion to recover. They had a wet nurse ready for me and…”

“That was the only time Ellie ever spent with her actual mother,” Alan finished for me, taking the seat next to me again and squeezing my knee in support. “Mrs. Reed came back months later recovered and took over. Ellie’s mother raised her half sister in a cabin with the best of everything from money Mrs. Reed had from…”

I shrugged when he looked at me. “Selling shit? Her family was wealthy as well. Gifts from Father showing off their wealth? I have no idea. But I was raised as the legitimate daughter and the disappointment he used against her that she didn’t give him a son.” I snorted and took Alan’s drink, tossing it back. “Forget biology, he has a fucking curse and it was still her fault.”

“And you have no idea who or where your mother is?” Gerald asked gently.

“No. Apparently, I did cross paths with her several times when I was younger. She demanded it to see I was being taken care of to keep the ploy going,” I mumbled.

“Your poor mother,” Mrs. Clark whispered, sniffling and wiping her eyes. Renee had the same reaction and I assumed it was something only those with children could understand.

Fair enough.

“Why do you think she’s dead?” Gerald asked, taking notes.

“Because the moment I found out there was no need to keep her alive and my father is sadistically pragmatic like that. Hell, he’s vengeful and probably killed her so my stepmother couldn’t do it again. I would put a lot of money on him slitting her throat whileallof Mrs. Reed’s servants and staff watched so they all knew the punishment for even thinking it.”

He opened his mouth and I waved him off, needing a minute. But I knew what he wanted.

“He found out first. I don’t know when or how, but it was years before I did. I do know his attitude changed with me. He was harsher and always worried about me leaving, and—clearly he thought someone would find out I was a bastard instead of his real daughter.”

“And his legitimate daughter?” Mrs. Clark asked.

“He couldn’t ever touch because my stepmother said she’d tell everyone the truth and how he couldn’t even keep his mate in line but also his shame that he was screwing lowly maids,” I answered. “No one would believe she set it all up. It’s crazy and she’s not wrong.”

“I’m going to need some basics on the other times he tried to sell you,” Gerald muttered, back to taking notes. “And if possible a way to contact your stepmother.”

“That seems overkill,” Ha-joon interjected. “You’re acting like she’s on the hook for something actually when—”

“It probably is, but there’s a clause in the contract that this is a replacement mating for the one she did sign off on,” Gerald interjected. “It’s not legally applicable and bullshit, but I still need to at least know what that’s about, and he will probably call her stepmother in to be the reference.”

I sighed but then snorted. “Yeah, except she signed it as my mother and wasn’t.” I pulled my hand from Ha-joon and scrubbed my hands over my face way too roughly. “Yes, I signed the first one, but we all know I didn’t need to. That was when I found out I wasn’t her actual daughter and I had a sister. And it was abetrothalcontract, not a mating contract. I was fourteen.”

“How did you find out?” Renee asked.

“I knew something was up for a while because of how Father changed,” I mumbled, rubbing my neck until Ha-joon made me stop and held my hands. “I walked up on Mrs. Reed’shandmaidens whispering about people believing whatever they wanted to save face. That all it would take was a quick check to her family that none of them have ever had golden eyes and—”

“You don’t have—right, someone said your eyes aren’t really brown,” Gerald muttered, studying me intently. “They’re truly not a pretty caramel?”

“No,” a few people said, Ha-joon continuing. “They’re the most gorgeous deep golden with caramel flecks. They brighten when she’s happy and laughing or darken when she’s pissed. They’re more stunning than all the ways the sun can be beautiful.”

I wasn’t the only one who stared at him completely stunned at what he’d said.