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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 they did eventually 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 while all of 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 a betrothal contract, 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’s handmaidens 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.

“You need to take lessons from him on how to be,” Carla told Alan. “ Wow .”

“I second that,” Renee mumbled.

I squeezed his hands but focused on Gerald. “Yes, they’re golden. They were apparent when I was younger, but then I hit some level of power and they changed. Only people with a high enough power level can see them. I don’t exactly understand it since clearly it’s a quirk of my mother’s bloodline.”

He nodded that he should let it go, but I could see the questions swirling in his eyes.

Yeah, he could fucking get in line. Way, way behind me.

“I spied on them and my stepmother until I got proof and confronted her.” I pulled my hand away from Ha-joon again to wipe tears.

“I’m not sure anything ever hurt that much because I had truly loved her.

She was the light that kept me going in that hellish coven with my monstrous father leading them all. ”

“She was good to you?” Mrs. Clark pushed when I went quiet.

“Yes,” I rasped. “She was a doting mother.

Diligent with my schooling. Some thought it was because it seemed I would be the only child—everyone remembering the problems with my birth and being early.

While Father tried to blame her, even the most sexist of the coven elders would bring up his curse and that he should be grateful he had such a smart, talented child.

“She was—I got the best of everything. She sat in on classes to make sure no one was sexist or demeaning to me. All of it. I was—she—” I broke down crying for the girl I’d been.

I’d only told a few people of this, one being Amanda Hope who had saved me after I’d run and been on my own for too long.

The world had almost eaten me and would have without her.

It was Mrs. Clark of all people who was hugging and comforting me. She’d taken Alan’s spot and was mothering me.

“You are such a good lass and she saw that. She realized she couldn’t stay detached and being a mother wasn’t about blood but love. You are worthy of love, my girl,” she comforted, whispering more and more kind words as I got myself together.

I nodded my head and focused on getting the rest out so I could just go home and rest. I wasn’t going to get any work done and it was better to let them handle the cleanup.

I wasn’t going to be of any use in it. It was better to admit that instead of making a mess for someone else.

“I was already having doubts because the guy was stupid. Like a fucking idiot and the deal was for him to take over the coven because there was no chance of a female coven leader hundreds of years ago. There are a handful even now and they’re from ridiculously powerful families. Most think it’s just a stunt.”

“But I heard you were to be the first,” Mrs. Clark pushed.

“That was later,” I sighed, scrubbing my neck again.

“Long story short, I guilted my stepmother to help me blow it up and get me more time to settle with things after being lied to for so long.

She owed me at least that, especially when I was thinking of what was best for the coven.

She realized I was serious and we staged something with the elders to show the guy was truly a fucking moron.

“The whole thing fell apart fast, and unfortunately they used it to humiliate Father. He went ballistic later and then called me a useless bastard. That was how we both found out he knew. He would threaten to switch us out if I didn’t behave and marry whoever he quickly found next to clean up the mess—yeah, it was all a mess.

“But she got him to see that it was a small mess now instead of a huge mess later that he would have been trapped into.

And if he ever fucking listened to us about anything, we could have gone to him instead of the elders who were the ones who embarrassed him.

A miracle happened and he actually listened to reason.

“He was consumed with finding a better match for me and putting in more time, even publicly accepting the elders’ chastising.

He said he was short-sighted to prioritize thinking of the glory for the coven instead of the true benefits the match would bring.

He came out looking like a better leader and…

At least it only got me one real beating. He’d never hit me before and then…”

I shook my head, comforted when Ha-joon kissed my hair.

“I’m so sorry, my sweet kimchi,” he murmured in my ear.

“She nursed me the whole time I healed,” I rasped.

“She apologized again and again for me being hurt but not what else she did. I think in her mind she still saw being raised a coven leader’s daughter instead of a maid’s a blessing and didn’t understand what she’d really done.

To her, maids were raped all of the time and at least this was useful and my mother protected after. ”

“She was twisted by her own fears and how you’ve seen so many vampires be brainwashed,” Renee muttered. “You can’t forgive it—it’s unforgivable. But you better than most understand it.”

“Now. It’s taken a long time to get here.

” I sighed. “She also was too selfish with it all. She could act like it helped me too, but it was all for her real daughter. She might have loved me who she raised and knew better, but when it came down to it, she picked that fucking cunt. Again and again. She always will.”

“Yes, well, not to excuse her, but a mother can only—” Mrs. Clark started to say.

I said the words that I knew would shut her up and maybe pour some salt she deserved in her current wounds. It was mean because she’d been comforting me and was there to help.

But I did it for Ha-joon.

“Even after my sister tried to kill me.”