Page 36 of Wedlock (Vampire Bachelor Games #3)

I stride the length of my study back and forth as I await her, my skin prickling at the remembrance of my discussion with Angie.

I no longer doubt the baby is mine. Her earnest words and gaze hadn’t been the deciding factor; it was that the timeline made sense, and his resemblance to me was uncanny.

Deep down, I think I already knew this. I’d calculated the months myself, but my anger over her affair with Jag had blinded me to the obvious.

‘And she remembered my words that night as clearly as I did. How I’d told her I’d loathed her as she lay still slick with sweat from our passion.

The guilt I’d felt over those words and the pain they’d caused her was clearly justified.

And to have conceived a child on such an occasion?

What a welcome into this world for the future Lord Dragonspur. ’

But what she’d said about Viper…

Either the woman was lying to me because she hated me so deeply, so thoroughly, that she’d say anything to hurt me, or my mother had been lying to me my whole life.

Without knowing why, I think the latter is true.

Angie had looked contrite, aghast, when she’d realised what she’d said, but the cat was out of the bag.

When I pressed her she’d told me what Mother had revealed.

Viper was my father’s bastard, kept, as the twins Asumpta and Attracta had been, on a whim after my father realised Mother would never have another child.

Only, if that was the case, why had the twins been relegated to the kitchens and never acknowledged, while another baby had been placed in my nursery and raised as my sibling?

As the door opens and she enters I don’t know what she sees in my face, but her steps falter.

“Why, Mother?”

“Falcon?”

“Why did you hide that Viper wasn’t my true brother?”

“Oh, darling,” she whispers, tears springing to her eyes.