Page 39 of Wedlock

“You really are the penultimate game-player, Eleanor,” I snap. “Kudos to you. I mean, I guess you couldn’t have survived this long in this fucking Dragonspur nightmare if you were anything else. Still, you had me fooled for a while. I actually thought you cared about humanity. I actually thought you cared aboutme, once upon a time. But now I know you’ll do anything Falcon tells you, won’t you? You’ll do anything,sacrificeanyone, for his precious family reputation and title.”

She frowns and looks at me as though I’ve gone mad.

“What on earth are you talking about, Angelina?”

“I know you haven’tjustbeen working on stopping the Princess. You’re trying to cover up what Viper’s done.”

She stares at me.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Eleanor. Whatever Machiavellian plans you and Falcon have, you can forget them all. Viper’s dead.”

She continues to stare into my eyes as she digests my words.

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“Howdo you know?”

“You know how I know!” I hold up my arm and show her my scar, pointing to the two bite marks, barely visible to anyone unless they looked closely. “My mind was just freed.”

“And you couldn’t be….?”

“Pregnant?”Isnort.“Eleanor,itwouldhavetobeafucking immaculate conception. And may I remind you, I only had my son a matter of weeks ago.”

“Yes,yesofcourse,”shesaysquietly,hereyesmovingfrommyarm,where they’d been fixed, to meet my steady gaze.

As she looks at me I turn my head to the side and study,really studyher back.

“You aren’t surprised,” I whisper.

“I suspected,” she says gently, “when you said the baby wasn’t Falcon’s, but it was clear to me he was, I suspected then that you were either being blackmailed to say it or,” she takes a deep, shaky breath, “or you were under someone’s influence. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be Viper.”

I curl my fingers into fists and try to keep my tone civil as I ask through clenched teeth.

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“I raised my concerns with Falcon. He wouldn’t hear of it. He was too shocked, too hurt by everything that had happened. And of course,” she shrugs, “Jaguar didn’t deny that he’d slept with you.”

I shake my head and close my eyes momentarily at the mention of the man I’d wounded so badly. The man who had met my eyes over the distance of the castle stairs when I’d uttered my lies with such hurt, such dismay at my betrayal — the exact same look that my husband had in his eyes.

But it must have been Jag who’d freed me. He must have hunted Viper after he learned the truth from Adam.

‘Oh God. How will Falcon react? Will he believe I was under a thrall now? Will he forgive Jag?’

“Did anyone else know?” Eleanor asks, interrupting my thoughts.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say ‘yes, fucking Asumpta,’ but something, I don’t know what, a spidey sense or something, stops me. If push came to shove and she had to save one of us, her chips would fall in front of Asumpta, not me. And as for telling her that my family and Yin knew — No way.

I close my eyes momentarily as I answer her.

“No,” I whisper, “no one knew. I wrote you a letter when I was pregnant, when I ran away, but I couldn’t tell anyone. My throat would close up and I’d start to suffocate.”

She looks me dead in the eyes for a long,long second, before nodding.

“Yes, that’s the way of it,” she sighs. “If they don’t want you to say or do something they can make life very, very difficult for you.”

“Fucking understatement,’ I mutter.