Page 12 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

Aaron blinked once, twice, disbelief all over his face. Joan realized her own mouth was still open, and closed it with a snap.

Aaron was the head of the Oliver family in this timeline?

The security guys glanced at each other; one was already frowning. Aaron clearly wasn’t acting like their Aaron, and any second now, they’d start to question why.

Joan felt Nick shift closer to her. She could almost read his mind. They were going to have to fight more than a dozen people

to get out of here. Joan braced herself.

But then Aaron shook himself slightly, his back stiffening and his beautiful face chilling into an icy facade. In a blink,

he’d transformed into a different person, the tilt of his head authoritative and casually dangerous. “Now, what’s all this

fuss about?” he said, his voice silk.

Joan suppressed a gasp. He’d sounded exactly like his father. Her own heart was too loud in the silence. Could anyone else hear it? Could they hear her unsteady breaths?

She glanced behind her, and realized she was still half expecting Edmund to shoulder his way forward and claim his rightful place. But there was no one behind them except uniformed

security. The lawn and landscaped woodland sprawled into the distance.

Joan met Nick’s gaze. His mouth twisted: Are we out of danger or not? Joan shook her head slightly. She didn’t know.

Aaron smoothed down his suit jacket. It wasn’t necessary. His clothes were neat, even the shirt that Joan had bunched in her

fists back at the inn. She bit her lip. Right now, Aaron seemed nothing like the guy who’d held her so gently in that bedroom.

One of the men stepped forward. “I—I apologize. I ordered the search, and I take full responsibility for intruding on your—”

“You thought that there were trespassers,” Aaron interrupted.

“Yes, my lord,” the man said. He had gray eyes like Aaron’s, and his uniform was black wool with polished silver buttons.

Mermaids were etched into the silver.

“Then the search was necessary,” Aaron said. The man closed his eyes for a moment, his relief evident. “You did well to detect

us so quickly.”

“Yes, my lord,” the man breathed. “Thank you, my lord.”

It’s very likely that we have counterparts here , Aaron had said earlier. Joan hadn’t imagined this , though—Aaron in charge of the formidable Oliver family. In the previous timeline, he’d been despised by his family and disinherited

by his father.

“If there’s nothing else... ,” the head of the security team said. He waited for Aaron’s slight nod. “We’ll leave you with

Geoffrey, my lord.”

The uniformed officers dispersed as quickly as they’d appeared. Within moments, Joan, Aaron, and Nick were alone with a man in a beautiful gray suit, a mermaid embroidered on the pocket—the only sign that he was in uniform too. Joan guessed he was Aaron’s valet.

Behind the man’s back, Nick rolled his shoulders, and Aaron grimaced slightly, letting his own tension show. Joan was weirdly

relieved to see her Aaron for a moment, like a glint of sunshine through a curtain crack.

Then the glint was gone, and Aaron’s face was the ruthless prince again. He was emulating his father, Joan knew, but the cruelty

in his expression was uncanny. He looked exactly like the icy aristocrat she’d assumed he was when they’d first met.

The valet stepped closer. Geoffrey , the security officer had called him. Joan recognized him then. He’d once been Edmund’s heir—the boy who’d replaced Aaron

after Aaron had been stripped of his inheritance. This Geoffrey was older, a pallid man of about twenty with near-white hair.

“You have guests?” he said to Aaron. He aimed a beam of light at Nick’s face, at Joan’s. Joan blinked in the sudden glare,

barely registering that Geoffrey’s eyes had widened. “A human and a half-human?”

“Is that a problem?” Aaron asked.

“You may do as you wish, of course.” Geoffrey’s posture was respectful, but he didn’t seem quite as afraid as the security

team had been. “But where are their pendants?”

Joan touched the bare hollow of her throat unthinkingly. That answered one question she’d had—how people in this timeline

treated people who were part monster and part human.

Aaron’s jaw tightened. “They lost them.” His tone suppressed questions.

Geoffrey opened his mouth and closed it. It was clear that humans didn’t just lose pendants in this world. “I shall arrange replacements.”

For a second, Joan couldn’t remove her hand from her throat—the urge to protect herself was too strong. Aaron’s attention

flicked to her, laser-like, and his real self glinted through again. Joan realized with a start that he was calculating the

risk of insisting that these humans be allowed to stay pendant-free. Joan shook her head slightly. Aaron had to be careful. They were still learning how

this world worked. He couldn’t break character over this.

“Fine,” Aaron ground out.

“My lord...” Geoffrey sighed. “You’ve slept your way through half the Court, and now you’re picking up humans off the street?”

He lowered his voice. “People will talk. They are talking.”

Joan’s mouth fell open again. She could hardly process what Geoffrey had just said. He thought Aaron had brought Joan and

Nick here to sleep with them? Both of them?

She thought Aaron would deny it, but Aaron looked like a deer in headlights—as surprised as Joan.

Geoffrey played the beam of light from Nick’s square jaw to his muscled chest, and then on to Joan, lingering on her eyes,

her mouth. Joan’s face heated. Beside her, Nick glared at Geoffrey in a way humans probably never did in this timeline. Geoffrey

didn’t seem to notice. “I can see why you picked them,” he said to Aaron. “ He’s a little low-class for your taste, but she’s—”

“That’s enough,” Aaron said.

“I only meant to say that she’s quite—”

“I said that’s enough .” The sudden dangerous undertone in Aaron’s voice made Geoffrey blanch.

They walked in silence up the path. Joan seemed to be processing everything in slow motion.

Aaron was the head of the family in this timeline.

And he maybe liked guys as well as girls.

She lifted her gaze to the back of Aaron’s gray suit.

His shoulders were tight. Joan could tell that he’d felt exposed by Geoffrey’s words.

Joan had never really been sure who Aaron’s type was—he’d always been so private, so self-contained. Everyone was attracted to Aaron. His looks made strangers on the street do double takes and stare.In return, though, Joan sometimes

wondered if Aaron was into anyone at all. His gaze never seemed to linger on anyone.

Except that lately... Joan had noticed the way he looked at her, his eyes soft. I’ve only just found you , he’d said back at the inn.

She took a breath, trying to clear her head. This wasn’t the time to delve into how Aaron felt about her; how she felt about

him. They were about to walk into a lion’s den.

The Oliver mansion towered over the landscape, a glowing castle on a hill, four stories high, capped with turrets. From this

angle, it had the quality of something ancient: a cliff at the edge of the ocean.

As they approached the front door, it opened, and a sleek brown dog came out, trotting up to Aaron. It snuffled his hand,

tail wagging, and Aaron’s new persona slipped for a moment as he bent to stroke its head. A tag around its neck said Chaucer . Joan didn’t recognize the breed, but the dog’s fox-like ears and little muscled body reminded her of ancient Roman mosaics.

“Was that you barking earlier?” Aaron asked the dog, his voice gentling.

“He didn’t like the Court Guards,” Geoffrey said.

The dog barked now, as if in agreement. Joan whispered to Nick under the whuff s: “No wonder the dogs didn’t sniff us out in the garden.” They’d known Aaron. They hadn’t sensed a threat.

“My lord!” A tall man came out to greet Aaron. His uniform screamed butler . And— God —Aaron had a butler here. He had staff . A valet. A security team.

“You have messages,” the butler said. “I’ve placed them in your office.”

Aaron straightened, and the dog pattered inside, wandering out of sight. “Very good.”

The butler’s gaze felt like a heavy weight on Joan’s shoulders. He knew that she and Nick were human. And from his disapproving

expression, he’d made the same assumption as Geoffrey about why they were here.

Joan folded her arms around herself. Nick was hunched and uncomfortable too, but—as his gaze darted around—Joan realized he was more disconcerted by the posh house

than the assumptions of the staff.

They followed the butler into a foyer that rose the full height of the house. Nick stared up. A skirt of windows flared under

a painted ceiling. High above, mermaids swam underwater, their blonde hair billowing around them. Underfoot, the floor was

tiled in gray marble, swirled with white like a sky before a storm.

Joan couldn’t have pinpointed why, but the layout of the space, the painting, the floor, felt like Aaron. It was his taste.

And, from Aaron’s wary recognition, he saw it too, and he was disturbed by it.

Joan was so lost in their surroundings that she almost missed Geoffrey’s expression change as Aaron turned toward a small door at the back of the foyer.

“Aaron,” Joan whispered warningly to stop him—he was heading the wrong way. In the previous timeline, his bedroom had been

in the servants’ wing. His father had banished him to a punitive closet-like space, far from the other Olivers. She caught

Geoffrey frowning at her. “My—My lord!” she corrected herself quickly. “My lord Oliver.” The title stuck in her mouth.

“What is it?” Concern and questions filled Aaron’s face. And that was wrong too—she could see it in Geoffrey’s deepening frown.

Aaron needed to be colder toward her.

“You—You mentioned you were hungry, my lord,” Joan said, willing him to understand. “That you wanted something from the kitchens....”

“Shall I have the chef put together a light supper?” Geoffrey asked Aaron hesitantly. “I can have someone take it up to you....”

Aaron’s mouth opened as he realized his own error. Joan saw the wheels in his head turn as he tried to figure out where his

room actually was in this timeline. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Have some supper prepared. And—” A solution lit his face. “And you can take

my bags up for me.”

Bags? Joan thought. Geoffrey asked the question aloud at the same moment: “What bags, my lord?”

Without blinking, Aaron drew a slender wallet from an inner pocket. He handed it to Geoffrey, who accepted it with slightly

widened eyes. “Please.” Aaron gestured for him to lead the way.

Cradling the wallet carefully, Geoffrey took them up an imperial staircase, the treads padded with an elaborate embroidered carpet with a recurring mermaid motif.

He turned left and guided them through a corridor with arched windows that looked out onto dark gardens.

Each arch was deeply recessed into a private alcove, with a bookshelf and cushioned seat.

Joan was surprised to see not the usual leather-bound books of stately homes but well-worn paperbacks with creased spines.

Someone had actually read these books—and more than once.

She was tempted to look closer, to examine the titles, but Geoffrey was already opening the door at the end of the passage, into the west wing of the house.

Joan suppressed a gasp. They’d entered another foyer, draped in silk-embroidered hangings, elaborate scenes of mermaids thrusting

tridents at other fanciful sea creatures: fish with human faces, skeletal serpents, krakens. Joan turned a slow circle. The

images, followed around the walls, seemed to illustrate a war.

There were huge wooden doors to the north and south. Was this whole wing of the house considered Aaron’s private space?

Nick’s eyebrows had been rising higher and higher as they’d walked, and he seemed almost amused as Geoffrey led them farther

in, through a beautiful library with a domed ceiling, then an office with a leather-covered desk, then a private dining room

with sparkling crystal in glass cabinets. Joan guessed there had to be a hundred rooms or more across the four floors of this

building. Aaron’s wing of the house alone was a palace.

Geoffrey opened yet another door, and Joan could only stare as she took in the bedchamber. It was enormous, a house in itself.

Everything was oversize—from the windows to the lit hearth to the cloudlike bed, which stood in the middle of the room under

a shimmering blue-and-gold canopy, drawn back with tasseled cords.

More doors led to a palatial en suite with a claw-footed bath and a dressing room with framed mirrors and wardrobes. And that more than anything convinced Joan that this did belong to a version of Aaron—a whole room just for his clothes.

Geoffrey presented Aaron’s wallet back to him with a small flourish. Aaron pocketed it again, and turned, somewhat absently,

to the view. Huge arched windows showed gently rolling hills and clusters of trees. In the distance, moonlight glinted off

the Thames. It was a serene outlook; so still that it could have been a painting.

“I left some bags on the bus,” Aaron said, his back to Geoffrey.

“I’ll have them fetched,” Geoffrey said.

Aaron’s gaze on the view was unfocused, as if he were looking out at something far into the distance that no one else could

see. “Where is my father?” he said softly, almost to himself.

What had happened to Edmund in this timeline? Joan had been wondering that too. Edmund wouldn’t have relinquished power voluntarily.

Geoffrey seemed puzzled—as he had when Aaron had turned the wrong way, toward the servants’ wing. “Your orders were clear,

my lord. He hasn’t been allowed within a century of this time—not since you exiled him.”

Aaron’s expression didn’t change. “Of course.”

“Shall I have some supper sent to your rooms?”

“In half an hour. I’d like some privacy now.”

“Yes, my lord.” Geoffrey glanced from Joan to Nick. “Excuse me.” He stepped out of Aaron’s bedchamber, closing the door behind

him.