Page 1 of Wedlock

1

The slap is so hard and so loud that the crack of the hand against my skin sounds like a gunshot.

My head whips to the side from its force, my arms instinctively tightening around my baby as my heel slips off the back of the step, and my knees buckle.

I can hardly believe it. It’s so unlike her.

Falcon catches me before I fall to the hard stone. His arms are like iron bands as he brushes past his mother before she can strike me again.

“How dare you?” She hisses as we pass.

I say nothing. What more is there to say? I’ve done as commanded and now I’ll suffer the consequences.

I press my stinging cheek into Falcon’s white shirt. I imagine he wants to be inside before he dispenses with me. I guess he’ll need to shut the great timber and wrought iron doors in case Jag tries to rush in and save me, although given his expression when I’d said what Viper had forced me to say, I don’t think that’ll be on the cards.

This time he won’t save me from my husband. No one can. On a sliding scale of anger, with annoyance being he kills the person responsible, furious being he kills everyone in the room, I’d say Falcon’s rage right now is probably nuclear — no one in the world is safe.

Yet there’s someone right now who I must save. Someone I’d do anything for, say anything for,beanything for. And he’s lying asleep in my arms.

“Falcon,” I whisper, my trembling fingers fluttering over the precious bundle I hold against my chest, just as my husband is holding me against his.

“Don’t,” he says through clenched teeth.

Despite his warning, I go on. I guess it can’t get any worse if I disobey him now.

“Please don’t hurt my baby.”

His strides don’t falter as he carries me down long corridors I’ve never been before, past rows of oil paintings and marble busts of dangerous and regal-looking vampires.

As to his expression, I don’t know what it is, and I don’t want to. He hasn’t acknowledged my plea, but his arms have loosened slightly and don’t feel so violent around me as I press my face to his hard chest and try to control the tremors running through my body. Struggling is futile. Even if I didn’t have a newborn inmy arms, I’ve just been through hours and hours of labour, and terror over what was to come for my babies. I feel wrecked. Even at my best I couldn’t outrun or outfight him. But while physically and emotionally I’m helpless, my mind is still skittering around like a mouse in a bucket trying to figure out how to get my son and I out of this mess.

So far, my only plan is to beg for mercy, since I can’t tell him the truth, my mouth sealed shut by Viper.

But I don’t have time for begging. After several more flights of stairs and corridors, he kicks open a door, deposits my baby and I onto a vast and richly decorated bed, and leaves without a word. He doesn’t need to say anything; the glimpse I get of his face as he turns from me is worse than anything I could have imagined.

He’d said he loved me.Loved. Me.And then I’d ripped his heart out as easily as he’d done to the contestants on the first night of The Games, and just as thoroughly.

Rolling to my side I place my swaddled son beside me as the shock of the events take hold. Eleanor’s slap has turned one side of my face hot, and the taste of blood tells me my teeth must have cut the inside of my cheek when her palm impacted upon my skin. For a slight woman, she’d certainly packed a punch; her slap had literally knocked me over. In addition to my aching face, my stomach and lower regions still throb from the birth, and my bleeding hasn’t slowed down, although Marianna assured me it would within a few days. But the physical pain I’m in is nothing compared to the pain in my heart over what Viper has made me do, and my fear over what’s to come.

He hasn’t killed me yet, but knowing Falcon, my punishment will fit mycrime.

And what a crime. Because what could I possibly have done to him that could have been any worse than sleeping with his best friend, telling him his long-awaited heir was not his, hiding another child from him, and worst of all, breaking his heart?

Yet for all I know, therecouldbe worse to come if Viper has his way.

‘And where is that bastard? What plans does he have for me now?’

2

“I don’t know why she said it, but it isn’t true,” Mother says, her voice low, but firm, as she holds the infant up and shows me his hair and face. “Thisis a Dragonspur baby. I’d know one anywhere.”

I shake my head and text my pilot as I answer her. I need to keep busy, keep on the move, because every atom in my body right now wants to killeveryone. It’s by sheer bloody willpower that I can even be in the same room as my mother and the little bastard she holds, and that willpower is holding on by a thread.

“Are you so desperate for a grandchild that you’d cuckold me too, Mother?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sighs, her eyes soft as she looks up at me before gazing down once more at the sleeping infant. “I don’t doubt she had an affair. Jaguar has admitted his role in it. But this is your child. I’m sure of it.”

“Then why LIE?” I snarl.