Page 23 of An Unending Claim

“Not exactly.”

Peyton cocked her head to the side and her brow knitted in confusion.

I ran a hand over my beard, then crossed my arms over my chest and met her steady gaze as I considered what to say next. We’d agreed on honesty, but there were aspects of my past that I’d chosen not to talk about. However, unlike Peyton’s secrets, they weren’t relevant to our life, so I experienced no guilt over burying them. I wouldn’t lie, though, and even dancing around the answer would make me a hypocrite.

“Do you really want to know? My past isn’t pretty, Peyton. I’ve done things that a lot of people would find despicable, unforgivable even. Are you sure you want to know? Because I will tell you, but I won’t let you go. So you need to decide right now if you can handle it. If not, it’s much better that you live in ignorance.”

Peyton was strong and understood the necessity of doing bad things in the name of the greater good, but everyone had limits to what they considered acceptable. I had pushed those limits many, many times.

I’d told her before that I wouldn’t ever tell her about the worst parts of me, but if that was what it took to finally break down those last walls, I’d tell her everything. And if she ran, I’d chase her to the ends of the earth and eventually, I’d catch her. She might not have fully come to terms with it, but she’d already sealed her fate. I was keeping her, no matter what.

Peyton’s emerald orbs swirled with indecision and she played with the ends of her hair. It occurred to me that this presented the perfect opportunity to demand tit for tat, and I wondered if she was weighing her curiosity against letting me have my secrets so she didn’t feel guilt holding onto her own.

“What do you want, Peyton?” It was a loaded question, but one thing at a time.

“A little mystery is good for a relationship,” she mused. “So maybe just tell me this one story.”

I narrowed my eyes, immediately picking up on her tactic. “And will you reciprocate?”

“You want to know the worst things I’ve ever done? Sure.” She shrugged, playing it cool.

“At the moment, I’m inclined to accept your deal, because I don’t want to fight. But I should clarify, this isn’t the most… questionable situation from my past.”

She nodded and tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Uncrossing my arms, I moved to the couch and picked up the file I’d thrown on it, then set it on the end table before taking a seat.

CHAPTERNINE

NATHAN

“Imet Adrienne in Paris, in the late eighteenth century.” My wolf rumbled menacingly, instantly recognizing the name. He’d always been agitated in her presence.

“Things were already heating up in France, so I went there to lend aid to any innocent parties being persecuted by those in power. I stayed with a close friend, Benoît Moreau, to be near the heart of the uprising, but also because he and I both saw the writing on the wall long before Queen Marie Antoinette fed the guillotine.

“Benoît was aristocracy, and he’d always been very vocal about his politics, which didn’t align with the radicals or the royalists. His lack of a clear party put him in danger with both factions. To make matters even more complicated, he was a shifter, and it would take only one whisper of it to put him and his family in danger.”

Peyton listened with rapt attention, pulled into the story, and I wondered how her expression would change as the story continued.

“Adrienne had been born to nobility, but a scandal as a teenager had relegated her to peasant life. However, she’d been secretly supported by her parents, and she’d stayed very close with her mother. They were staunch royalists, but her younger brother, Bernard, who’d refused to stay behind when she left, had fallen in with the radicals. He’d been rather young and impressionable, so by the time they took power, he’d grown into a devoted follower of Maximilien Robespierre, eventually becoming one of his bodyguards. Adrienne had no care for anything but herself and the only thing she truly wanted was respectability, which could only be achieved through an advantageous marriage.”

“Enter the eligible Russian aristocrat,” Peyton said, gesturing to me.

“Quite,” I agreed. “We needed inside intel and she was a perfect mark because of her access to Bernard, and anything we gleaned from her visits with her parents. So, I fed her a story about visiting a friend who’d been mistreated by nobility and told her I was sympathetic to the radical cause. I begged her to meet with me again before I had to leave, a date I told her was in a month. I moved into a hotel so I wouldn’t bring her attention to my association with Benoît. We met the next day, and the next, and I led her to think that I was building her a higher and higher pedestal in my mind, so that she believed me when I eventually confessed that I just couldn’t leave now that I’d met her.”

“Good grief, Nate. I didn’t think you had the ability to be that sappy.”

I ignored Peyton and continued, “Under normal circumstances, Adrienne’s vanity and vapid social climbing would have made her annoying. But with the volatile atmosphere in France, it turned her into something much worse—a traitor. The saddest part is that it all came about because the only person to whom she had any loyalty was Bernard. She brought him up in our very first conversation, and since I’d already assessed her character, I saw a golden opportunity. I took her out a few times a week and usually managed to extract something of interest about the radicals, then I praised her brother and she was almost as delighted as when I fed her ego. Eventually, I casually mentioned that I would love to thank her brother for protecting her until I found her.”

Peyton snickered and I raised an eyebrow. “So corny,” she chuckled.

I inclined my head in agreement. “I don’t disagree, but it played very well with Adrienne, and she promised to get us together for dinner in the near future. Meanwhile, she asked me to meet her parents.”

“Wait. She didn’t cut ties with them when her brother started climbing the ladder within the rebel faction?” Peyton asked.

My brow furrowed and my voice was gruff when I answered. “No. But not because she felt any true attachment to them. In fact, after one afternoon tea in their presence, I realized that though she hid it well, she actually harbored deep, angry bitterness toward them. And after a few leading questions from her, I became suspicious. Then she excused herself to order more tea from the kitchen, leaving me to talk with her parents. Her mother only wanted to grill me about my heritage and fortune, making it quite clear where Adrienne had learned her behaviors. She didn’t return right away and I wanted a breather from her mother, so I excused myself to help her. I came across her in the hallway talking with our server. The conversation ended abruptly when I approached. They both looked at me for a few beats, then she handed the server a slip of paper and he hurried off, giving me one last glance over his shoulder. I had no doubt that my suspicions had been proven correct—the doting daughter had turned into a spy for her brother.”

“No way,” Peyton breathed as if she were enthralled by a suspenseful movie. Then her eyes widened and she whispered, “Oops,” before relaxing back into her chair and miming zipping her lips and throwing away the key.

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