affect Axel's role in all this?"
Sterling looked over at the balcony again before turning back to her in confusion. "I'm sorry? I don't know what you mean."
"If it is Axel's, which I'm quite sure it is--a mother just has a sense about these things," she said knowingly. "Wouldn't that make him Bishop’s superior?"
Sterling raised an eyebrow. So that's what she was getting at. "You really are an audacious woman, aren't you?"
Her face went blank, and she blinked at him a few times, as if she couldn't believe he'd actually said that to her. Like most people, she seemed to mistake politeness for beating around the bush, but he wasn't interested in catering to the trivial jealousies of people who had too much time on their hands.
"Excuse me," he said, extricating himself while she was still in shock. He headed for the balcony, telling himself he was going to feel ridiculous when they caught him, but it didn't matter. He had to put his mind at rest.
When he stepped out onto the balcony and found it empty, he frowned in confusion. They had left? But he would've seen them coming back in through the ballroom. He'd been watching like a hawk; there was no way he would have missed it.
Something crunched beneath his shoe. His chest tightened as he looked down and saw the fallen wine glass.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
He rushed down the stairs that led into the garden, but turned around when he heard someone behind him.
"Hey," Axel called from the top of the stairs. "Is Ella down there with you?"
Sterling's heart sank. He'd been hoping she was just with Axel. "No. She was with Bishop. I think they left this way."
Axel's face betrayed the same horror he felt, as if they both knew something was horribly wrong, even though nothing but their instincts was evidence of it. "Where did they go?"
As Sterling looked around the empty yard, the first idea that came into his mind filled him with even more dread. "I don't know for sure, but I think he took her to the Felidae House, and I don't think she went of her own free will."
Axel was already down the stairs, horror and rage flashing in his eyes. “Why?"
"I don't know," Sterling repeated. "But we're going to find out."
Chapter 9
Ella
For a while, Ella merely drifted in some state that wasn’t quite sleep, but was too gripping for her to escape nonetheless. She could hear voices around her, though the few bits she was able to make out didn’t make any sense.
When she finally opened her eyes, they fluttered with the effort. The bright light overhead made it impossible to see much of anything. The voices came into more focus, though, and her heart sank when she realized one of them was Bishop’s. She thought she recognized the other as his brother, but she wasn’t sure. They hadn’t interacted enough times for her to know his voice for certain.
When Ella tried to move, she realized she’d been restrained with thick straps around her chest and legs. They weren’t so tight that she couldn’t breathe, but she couldn’t move much, either.
“We don’t have much time,” the one she assumed to be Bishop’s brother said, his tone sharp. “Are you sure no one followed you?”
“Of course,” said Bishop. He sounded so calm, as if nothing was wrong. For a moment, Ella questioned her own reality.
This had to be a dream. A nightmare. Her mind was fuzzy, but she could remember being out on the balcony with Bishop, taking a drink of the sparkling juice he’d brought her, and then…
He had drugged her? The journey back to Felidae was coming back in bits and pieces, as her consciousness had drifted in and out. Her heart began to pound. Her first thought was fear for the baby. What if whatever he had given Ella hurt her?
Her second thought was to realize she was wrong to think she knew the depths of betrayal. Her confusion and desperation to believe Bishop wouldn’t actually hurt her made her mind conjure up a myriad of alternative explanations, but she couldn’t settle on one that made any sense.
“If you had just done your job in the first place and brought her in when we told you to, this wouldn’t have happened,” Bishop’s brother scolded. “But no, you had to go and get attached to her, and now we have to do this on the night her absence will most likely be noticed.”
Rage welled up within Ella, but