TEN

Macalister’s aggressive hand jerked on Alice’s hair, forcing her mouth back around him. She only hesitated for a second. Then he didn’t need to give her as much guidance as he had before. She shifted on the floor, widening her knees a little, and made a moan of approval.

If anything, she looked fucking thrilled. As if she hadn’t lost him to me after all. Like there was still hope she could get him back.

Love had made her delusional, but I saw him with clear eyes. The Minotaur didn’t care about the people once they’d been consumed, and he’d used her all up.

I crossed my legs and ran a hand through my hair, affecting the demeanor of someone who didn’t care that they were sitting ten feet away from a man with his dick halfway down his wife’s throat. I was strong and unbreakable. The Minotaur couldn’t eat Medusa. She was just as much of a monster as he was, if not more.

“I’m not yours, I’m Royce’s.” I leveled the darkest gaze I possessed at him. “Are you almost finished? I have shit to do.”

It was the equivalent of entering the endgame, and he was pissed he didn’t get to do it on his terms. “I’m sure.” His blue eyes turned to storms, and electricity crackled in the clouds. “Will you use the vibrator I gave you while you do it? I still have the controls set on my phone.”

The perfect rhythm Alice had been keeping abruptly fell apart, but he gripped the hair at the top of her head with his other hand, so he could push and pull her with both. A single bead of sweat rolled down over his defined chest, coursing a jerky path over his flat stomach.

“And I still remember what you sound like,” his words were clipped, “when I brought you to orgasm with it.”

The shudder his memory forced on me was strategic. It kept my tongue still long enough for him to squeeze out another comment.

“Next time I make you come,” he said with a loud exhale, “I’ll be inside you.”

My mouth fell open. Not so much from what he’d said, but the way his body moved. Vibrations undulated through his arms as he fucked her mouth at breakneck speed, and darkness overwhelmed his expression. His chest was heaving with labored breath, mixed with groans that were soaked in pleasure, and it continued to build.

Oh, God. He was about to come, and I sat rooted to my chair, not wanting to watch but also dying to know what he looked like when he lost control.

Abruptly, he took one urgent step backward, and as soon as he was out of Alice’s mouth, his hand was there to replace it. He kept hold of the hair on the top of her head so she couldn’t go anywhere, but he issued the order anyway.

“Stay still.”

He ran his palm over the swollen length of himself, twisting his grip that was so tight, his cock lost some of its color. It was hypnotic how he jerked in shallow, furious strokes. The tip of him was only an inch from her face, and she must have figured out his intent, because her eyes slammed shut.

Blood roared loudly in my ears, and my breath cut off as Macalister’s shoulders tensed and he let out a loud, long grunt. As he came, he stared at me with his bottomless eyes and his face twisting with ecstasy.

She flinched with each streak of liquid that struck her, and he painted ribbons across her face while his body shook and shuddered. At last, his fist slowed and he issued a sigh, releasing his hold of her with a small backward shove. It made some of the semen drip down off her chin and onto her designer sweater.

It was such a shockingly vulgar and demeaning act, it was breathtaking.

He was almost done recovering when he spoke to her. “Now,” he said, “tell Marist you’re sorry.”

I gasped with horror as she turned to look at me with her face covered in his semen and her shame. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

His tone was plain. “That time, I believed you.”

He bent, grabbed the sides of his pants, and as he pulled them up, he assessed the result of his work across her cheeks and lips. His expression was cold and unfeeling as she peered up at her husband, desperate for him to say something. Anything.

“Go wash your face,” he ordered. “You look pathetic.”

There was no audible snap when she broke. She didn’t cry out or even say a thing as she cleaved down the middle. Alice climbed gingerly to her feet, her knees no doubt tender, and looked utterly dead inside as she carried herself from the room, her vacant eyes connecting with nothing. She moved as if she were hollow, and she was.

The Minotaur had eaten her soul.

I was at a complete loss for words as he finished doing up his zipper and began to button his shirt.

My voice was disembodied. I didn’t realize I was speaking until it was out. “You’re . . . you’re so fucked up.”

His hands ceased moving. There was the subtle, resigned nod of his head. “You told me you love fucked up things, though.” The uneven way he said it was disorienting. “It’s your favorite part of mythology.”

It was true. I wondered if something was wrong with me because I enjoyed such twisted stories, but I only liked them when they were trapped inside their medium and couldn’t touch me. My life as a tragic, fucked up myth didn’t have any appeal.

I couldn’t stand to be in this room with him a moment longer, especially when what he’d done to her still lingered freshly in the air. I pushed to my feet and balled my hands into fists. “I hate you.”

His reaction was shocking. Why did he look so stricken? “I don’t care very much for myself right now either.”

What?

He tucked his shirt into his pants and bent to retrieve the sweater he’d cast off. “But I did what needed to be done. Do you hate her?”

His humiliation of her was so horrible, all my anger flipped on its side and I only felt sorry for her now. “No. Only you.”

“Good.” He pulled on the sweater, tugging it into place. It was amazing how quickly he composed himself. “I can’t control how you feel about other people’s actions, but I can control my own, so I’ve absorbed the anger you had for her.”

Meaning he’d purposefully been awful so I would see him as the villain of the story and not her.

His shoulders rolled back, and his posture straightened so he looked ten feet tall again. “You can believe you hate me, Marist, and that’s fine. But, given enough time, I will change that.”

“We’re done here,” I hissed.

“Yes, we are.”

There was a finality to his statement that would have given me pause if I weren’t so fucking eager to get away from him.

I had only made it down the hall before I collided with Alice as she stepped out of the guest bathroom. Her face was pale, as she’d scrubbed most of her makeup off, and her eyes were pink, but she wasn’t currently crying.

My heart hurt for her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She bristled. “But this is your fault.”

I froze. “Excuse me?”

“Hales only want what they can’t have. Once the chase is over and they’ve won, they’re on to the next thing.” Her eyes were as hard as the diamond earring she wore. “If you’d just given Macalister what he wanted, this would have been over months ago.”

She pushed past me like I was a spoiled child she didn’t want to deal with, and as she strode down the hall, I felt less sorry for her.

I treated the horrible afternoon in the lounge with Macalister and Alice the same way I treated the initiation. It was something to never be spoken or thought about, because nothing good could come of it. At least my guilt over not telling Royce lessened each day.

After the Thanksgiving weekend was over, we returned to Cape Hill, and I moved into Royce’s room. Or our room. Thankfully, Macalister continued to make himself scarce, or at least the impending offer for Ascension and the end-of-the-year reports kept him too busy.

Or perhaps he was avoiding me. Either way, I was glad.

The week before winter finals, I was in my Porsche, driving to Boston for my first wedding dress fitting with Donna Willow, when my phone rang. My mother’s number flashed on the center console, and I clicked the button on my steering wheel.

“Are you running late?” I asked. She was supposed to meet me at the salon.

“No. I’m taking Emily to the emergency room.” Her panicked voice cracked through the car speakers. “Baby isn’t moving.”

My sister had decided she didn’t want to know the sex of her baby until birth. She wanted it to be a happy surprise, she’d said, so we all used the term of endearment. Her child wasn’t a ‘the,’ they were Baby. I’d hated it at first, but it had grown on me, bringing a smile to my face. But now cold fingers slipped inside my body and squeezed my heart.

“Which hospital? Port Cove?” My hands trembled as I navigated onto the shoulder of the highway and put on my hazards. I’d turn around if her answer was yes.

“Mass General.”

Okay, that was good. I wanted my sister in the best possible hands. “Right. I’ll meet you there.” I checked traffic and was able to pull back onto the road. “How is she doing?”

“She’s scared, Marist. We all are.”

I did my best to sound calm and even. “It’s going to be okay.”

“How can you know that?”

My bottom lip quivered, but I held it together as I echoed what my fiancé had said to me before. “Because Royce has more money than God, and he’ll make it so.”

It was a tense, stressful drive to the hospital, and when I called to tell him what was going on, I was shocked to learn Royce already knew. My mother had called him first, before me. I was her sister and best friend, and he was her—what? Soon to be brother-in-law?

I took a page out of my mother’s passive aggressive playbook and got several digs in while we were placed in a room and waited for Emily’s doctor to arrive.

“I understand you’re hurt,” my mother said, “but I was panicking and didn’t know what to do. Emily’s doctor was out of town, and . . .” She sighed. “The Hales have a lot more power to throw around than we do. So, yes. I called Royce first, but I did it because I knew he’d help get my daughter what she needed.”

Her face softened as she stared at my sister, who looked uncomfortable and frightened as she lay in her hospital bed. They’d strapped a monitor to her belly, and she was fixated on the screen of the machine, even as we had no idea what it meant. Once it had started running, it was like everything else in the room ceased to exist.

My mother’s hand was cold with fear when she grabbed mine and squeezed. “He’s been so good to Emily.” Her voice dropped low, only for me. “Has he been good to you?”

She peered at me and, with everything happening, it must have given her focus on what was truly important because she actually saw me. Her thoughtful eyes begged for my honesty.

“Because if he hasn’t, you leave him. I’m serious, Marist. I know you worry about us, but you shouldn’t. We’ll be fine.” Her grip tightened, like she wanted to put extra emphasis on what she was saying. “I’m sorry if I made you think otherwise, but I want you to know the only thing that’s ever mattered to me is you girls and your happiness.”

I already knew it was true, but it was good to hear it again and reinforce it. My parents had given my sister and me the best of everything, including their love. The most important thing had been free; I just wished they hadn’t gone underwater to give us everything else.

But it was done. The only pathway was forward now.

“Yes, he’s good to me.” I squeezed her back. “I love him. Like, really. Somehow, it worked out.”

Her smile was full of relief. “Good, thank God. I’m happy for you both.” Her gaze left mine and drifted to her other daughter. “It makes things . . . easier.”

“It does,” I said.

My marriage would bring enormous privilege to my family, but she’d never know that falling in love with Royce or becoming a Hale had been anything but easy.

It wasn’t long after that when Emily jolted in her bed and new concern streaked across her face. “I think my water just broke.”

Everyone was up out of their chairs. She wasn’t due for another three weeks.

It had been chilly in the hospital room like they always were, and so after Emily had changed into a gown and gotten into bed, the nurse had put a heavy blanket over her. Now, my sister cast it off and peered down at the soaked bed.

Crimson stained the sheets and blotted her legs. She was sitting in a puddle of blood, making my mother scream and dash toward Emily’s bedside. I reached behind me, trying to find the chair I’d been sitting in, but the horrifying feeling was overwhelming.

I couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

It made my limbs go weak. My stomach flipped, over and over in a dizzying sensation, speeding up until everything abruptly went black.

Emily nearly died.

The doctor didn’t say it in those specific words, but his grave tone and somber expression as he delivered the post-op summary did. When he used phrases like detached placenta and extreme hemorrhaging, I focused more on the way he was saying it than what he was saying, because I worried I’d pass out again. There’d been so much blood, I didn’t know how she or her daughter had survived.

I wasn’t a religious person, but after I’d come to and Emily had been taken away for an emergency C-section, I prayed. I’d held on to my mother with one hand and an ice pack to my side with the other, begging for my sister and Baby to be okay.

When I’d fainted, I’d collided with the chair, catching it right in my ribs, and it ached with each deep breath I took. Nothing was broken, thankfully. Just an ugly red line that would likely turn blue-purple tomorrow. I was upset with myself. When I’d passed out, it caused even more chaos in the room and unnecessary stress for my mother.

But we Northcott women made it through.

And now my mother was a grandmother. Selene Marist Northcott was seven pounds, one ounce, with a full head of brown hair . . . and perfectly healthy. Once Emily had been moved to her suite, we spent hours fawning over the newest member of the Northcott family. We’d called my dad at the office and told him she was going in for a C-section, and by the time he’d rushed over, Selene had been born. The doctors had moved fast.

It was late when the nurse came by to take Selene to the nursery so my sister could get some much-needed rest. She hadn’t been able to hold her baby much, and I knew that was hard for her.

“Em,” I said, my voice filled with awe, “you made another person, and she’s so amazing.”

My sister was exhausted, but a smile lit up her face. “I do good work.”

I laughed, and it felt so good after the day we’d had. “You do.”

Our parents weren’t here—my dad had taken my mother down to get some dinner, and it was nice being just the two of us. I tried to savor it. It’d likely be one of the last quiet times between us for a while.

But I didn’t get to enjoy it. There was a knock on the door at the front of the suite, and Emily and I exchanged a look. I got up, walked through the small sitting area, and opened the door, only for my jaw to hit the ground.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“It’s Brandon,” Dr. Galliat answered back.

He stood in the hallway, wearing an expression of hesitation and carrying a large bouquet of flowers in a vase. I narrowed my gaze at him. I’d had him as a professor my sophomore year for Intro to Psychology, and he hadn’t changed much since. He was still young and handsome, probably with the same dimples when he smiled that made all the girls take a second glance.

“Marist,” he said, recognizing me. “Can I see her?”

“I don’t know.” I asked it louder, so she’d hear. “Can he see you, or do you want me to tell him to come back another time?”

Emily didn’t get a chance to answer. Dr. Galliat’s expression shifted to panic and went over my shoulder to the woman in the bed who’d just given birth to his daughter—the one he’d wanted nothing to do with.

“Please.” He was desperate. “Emily, please. I left her, okay? Can we just—?”

“Fine,” she said.

As soon as I was out of his way, he strode toward her bed, dumping off the flowers on a side table. “How are you?”

She ignored his question and surveyed him from top to bottom. Maybe she checked to see if he was still wearing his wedding ring, but he wasn’t. Like me, her eyes were also narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

“Your mother called me.” A strange look filled his face. Guilt? Embarrassment? He closed his eyes and ran his finger over an eyebrow. “She was upset and had some choice words for me.”

The corner of my mouth wanted to tug up into a smile at the idea of my mother going all tiger mom on him. If she blamed Dr. Galliat for nearly killing my sister, I understood. I felt that way a little too.

He sighed. “You don’t owe me anything after the way I treated you, but, Emily, I made a mistake. I was scared, but I’m not anymore.”

My sister had such a big heart, I could already see his words thawing the ice he’d put around it. It wasn’t my business, but I couldn’t help myself. My tone was pure condescension. “Good for you.”

He wasn’t fazed, and his focus remained locked on my sister. “I’m sure you’re tired and you’ve been through hell, so I’ll get right to the point. I want a second chance. Maybe you can grant that to me, and maybe you can’t, but at least let me be a part of our daughter’s life.”

She pressed her lips together, but her chin began to quiver, and tears flooded her eyes. “I’m not going to keep her from you, but I don’t know about anything else right now.”

It wasn’t a solid ‘no,’ and Dr. Galliat seemed to take it as a win. He let out a breath like some of the tension in his chest had eased. “You didn’t answer me before. Are you okay?”

She lifted a shoulder in a shrug, but then winced when her body reminded her not to move. “I’m tired and—”

There was no knock on the door, because he’d unfortunately been in this hospital’s suites before and understood how they afforded privacy. Royce came in, the tail of his tie hanging out of the pocket of his long overcoat, and an even bigger bouquet than the one Dr. Galliat had shown up with. My fiancé scanned the room, found me, and flashed a smile before moving deeper into the suite and depositing the flowers beside the other arrangement.

“Congratulations,” he said to my sister. “Your mom pointed her out to me in the nursery. She’s as beautiful as her mother.”

Dr. Galliat’s shoulders lifted and his chest broadened. It was a territorial posture, and he gazed at the younger man like he was a threat.

“Thank you,” Emily said. She turned her gaze up to her former—and I suspected soon to be current—lover. “Brandon. This is my sister’s fiancé, Royce.”

Dr. Galliat went rigid, and his voice was strained. “Royce Hale?”

“That’s right. You are?”

Emily wasn’t sure what label to use but decided to go with the truth. “This is Selene’s father, Dr. Brandon Galliat.”

Something flickered in Royce, like the name was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He held out his hand for a handshake. “Nice to meet you.”

Dr. Galliat stared at the offered hand like it might bite him, and the mood in the room quickly became awkward when he didn’t move. But finally, he broke and accepted a quick shake.

“Congrats,” Royce said.

Dr. Galliat’s eyes widened. “For what?”

Royce’s head ticked to the side. “Your daughter?”

“Right. Thanks.” He turned to Emily. “I should go and let you get some sleep.”

She blinked, stunned. He’d just gotten here, dropped a bombshell, and now he was leaving? “Oh. Okay.”

He was already moving toward the door. “I’ll text you tomorrow and see how you’re both doing, if that’s all right.”

“Sure,” she said, sounding anything but.

“Okay, good.” He paused at the doorway as if there was something else he wanted to say, but he didn’t. He went out the door without another word. Like he couldn’t get out of this room fast enough.

“That was weird,” I said.

Royce looked indifferent. “Sometimes it happens.”

“What happens?”

“The Hale name makes people uncomfortable.” He stared at me with his enigmatic eyes. “You’ll get used to it.”

Would I? I doubted it.