way she begs for him.
“Enough,” Elijah comes in from the hidden part of the room that my vision can’t see. “This child will be raised as an Edgington child. He will know honor, loyalty, and to be strong, unlike his excuse of a mother. Luckily, before she betrayed the cause, she brought life. If not, you’d be dissolved.” He makes a disgusted noise at the back of his throat. “Your entire lineage is tainted by fallacies, and he won’t be a part of that.”
The woman breaks down into a heap of sobs, and I see both men offer her nothing but indifference.
As I’m about to turn, my mouth is covered. A scream is lodged in my throat from the surprise and fear mixed together.
Whoever is holding my mouth hostage knew I’d scream, and as they drag me away, I don’t fight because if I did, I’d be caught, and they could kill me. All the new information coming out is too shocking for me to really make sense of it.
Someone in the Emeralds was a mother.
How can that be? I thought women weren’t allowed. Isn’t that what the boys said?
Baby Solomon is now an orphan.
Whoever this baby is, my need to help him escape becomes an oath of blood, the one in my veins, the need to break a patriarchal burden he never signed up for.
How is this real life?
When I’m dragged into a nearby room, I finally see who grabbed me. “Jordan?”
He doesn’t smile at me, doesn’t waver his discontent, but sadness dwells there. It’s nearly hidden, but his eyes are honest in a way he never has been with me.
“You shouldn’t wander,” he whispers. There’s a grit to his voice. It’s desperate but emotional. Why did he come for me in the assembly? Why did he try to stop me?
“You shouldn’t marry her,” I deflect, not wanting him to know I heard a lot more than I bargained for.
He lets out a humorless laugh, the exasperation as present as the disdain. Jordan isn’t a good guy. I wouldn’t wish him on anyone, but Melissa doesn’t want to be married.
Or does she?
“Do you think I want that, Vamp?”
“Back to Vamp, are we?”
Shaking his head, he leans against the desk in the center of the room we’re in. Taking a moment to look around, it seems we’re in a study of some sort. It isn’t modernized like the majority of Arcadia rooms, instead rather stuck in the past, where mahogany was popular and warm tones expressed every wall.
“Do you hate me, Colton?”
I stare at him, shocked, not because I think for a second he wants me to like but because he seems to actually care.
“You’re an absolute dick,” I explain.
He chuckles softly, his face softening. “That I am.”
He pushes off the desk, coming toward me. Like Lux only an hour before, he glides his palms up to my jaw. Why do they always have to touch me?
“Are you unhappy about the turn of events?” he asks.
Shaking from his grip, I turn, needing to settle my erratic thoughts. I don’t care that he’s marrying her. I don’t care.
But somewhere, in the back of my head, however small, I want to rip Melissa’s throat from her body. Why is she not only getting Bridger but now Jordan?
I don’t want that.
I hate it, actually, not only the thought of her with Jordan but the thought of if, like Lux, he would share her. Heat rises to my chest and flares up to my cheeks, making me madder.
“I’m taking that as a yes,” he taunts, but it’s softer. Kind. He isn’t being his hostile dickish self. At this moment, he's the same guy in the assembly who reached out for me, who tried to stop me from reaching that podium and signing my death sentence.
“I don’t like you,” I answer honestly. Whether there’s attraction here or an appeal that triggers this baser part of me, it doesn’t negate that I don’t like him.
Hate is a strong word, one that festers from emotions, but it’s too much. He doesn’t get the attachment of that word.
“For once, Corpse, I actually believe you.”
It’s true.
“You’re a dick,” I add, letting out a long breath. “You’re unnecessarily crude and standoffish.”
“You like when I’m crude,” he argues, his tone feathering on something not cautious or soft. “Especially since it makes you wet.”
“Fuck off,” I grumble, wanting to slap him. The last time I let him near me, inside me, he said unforgivable things about Cass. He’s on my shit list.
“I’m