Page 145 of Claiming Pretty

But the figure above me didn’t move. There was no grab, no violence. Just… stillness. It unnerved me even more.

What the fuck are you waiting for?

His sharp inhale cut through the suffocating silence, and then—whoosh—a rush of air swept over my face.

My lashes flickered.

No.

No, no, no.

The reflex was instantaneous and damning. I’d managed to stay silent, to stay still, through all of it. But a reflex I couldn’t control had betrayed me. This had been their final test and I failed.

My only choice now was to fight.

Before I could reach for the blade in my hair, a feminine sigh sent goosebumps down my spine.

“You can stop pretending, Ava, darling.”

AVA

My eyes opened in horror, locking on the shadowy face of the smaller guard standing over me.

A pale delicate hand emerged from the dark folds of the robe and threw back the hood, revealingherall-too-familiar face and pale eyes the color ofHydrangea macrophylla.

“Ebony?” My voice cracked, the word barely audible. “What are you doing here?”

The stone beneath me, which had moments before been warm and slick with my sweat, felt like ice again, stealing the heat from my body.

My muscles protested as I pushed myself up on trembling arms, but my mind raced faster than my body could keep up.

The heavy stone door that Ciaran must have disappeared behind had been shut tight, and the only sound now was my own rapid breathing.

The other guards and their guns were gone.

We were alone.

Was she here to help? My chest tightened. Was she investigating them too? Trying to infiltrate the Sochai to take them down from the inside?

“Why did you have to be such a stubborn girl, Ava?” Her voice cut through the silence like the edge of a blade, sharp and filled with something dark I couldn’t name.

I flinched. “What—what are you talking about?”

“I dideverythingI could to keep you away from this,” Ebony said, her pale eyes blazing. “From remembering. From meddling. From serving your goddamn head to them on a goddamn platter, Ava!”

Her words hit me like a slap, each one heavier than the last.

My heart pounded as I stared at her, the woman who had been the only mother I’d ever known. The woman who had taken me in, fed me, clothed me, loved me in her own way.

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head, trying to make sense of her words. “No, you can’t be part of the Sochai.”

I choked on the realization, my mind spinning in circles, desperate to find a reason—any reason—that explained why she was here.

They got to her. Of course, they did. The Sochai had found her and broken her. Tortured her. Manipulated her. She’d been brainwashed, coerced into this.

She tried to help me as much as she could, in her own way, but she was being controlled by them somehow…

As I stared into her face, a flicker of something from my darkest memories took hold. It clawed at the edges of my mind, dragging me back to that room, that sterile, white hell of my forced abortion.

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