Page 74 of Wedlock (Vampire Bachelor Games #3)

I return to my castle emboldened and more light-hearted than I’ve been in years.

If truth be told, I’d spoken to Wolf about my plan to call Angelina not just to seek his blessing, but to see what he thought the outcome might be.

Naturally, I’d returned to my estate without having received any deep insight.

Wolf doesn’t know Angie, and he doesn’t know our relationship.

All he’s really seen is our dysfunctional marriage from woe to go.

I can’t disagree with his assumption that she hates my guts.

But I also can’t get out of my head the way she’d looked when she visited the castle to see Tiger.

She was strong now, confident. She’s taken Mother head-on, rather than bowing to her deferentially as the matriarch.

She’d really come into her own, and she was the matriarch now.

It’s clear she’s hardened, matured in some indefinable way.

Her sass is back, her quick wit and her refusal to accept what doesn’t fit with her values.

And the sacrifice she’d made, leaving a son with me so that I could have an heir and continue my line…

she’s everything I ever wanted in a wife, and I don’t know how I could have pictured anyone else being Lady Dragonspur.

Seeing her again has made me realise that this place is no home without her. Just knowing she was back under my roof for the briefest of visits had lifted my heart from its long melancholy.

‘And she was still wearing he necklace I gave her in The Games. Surely this must mean something? Some small sentimental attachment?’

Either way, she and our children belong in her castle, with me. And if Wolf’s right and she does loathe me to my very core, then so be it, I’m in this for the long game. I’ll win his wager. Whether it takes me one hundred years, I’ll win it.

I’ll win her heart.