Page 32 of Violet

And with that, Alicia giggles and they move off.

The world wavers. My family is here, but to reach them I’d have to go back inside and cross the ballroom that now seems as big as an ocean and so bright I might melt and burn.

My heart hammers dangerously, and my chest is tight. Every breath is growing harder and harder to take.

I need to get away, farther from the noise and the judgmental stares. Now.

I can barely see or hear past the great thud of my heart. But knowing I can’t step foot back into that crowded room, I do the only other thing I can think of at the moment.

I kick off my heels and run.

CHAPTER

TEN

Stephan

Iremember this fucking estate.

The four floors, the countless rooms, the attic and basement where secrets sit in trunks and boxes, none of which are mine. I spent some winters here growing up, when I was too young to understand society decorum and thought the place a maze to be explored.

Now, it’s just the epitome of everything the Council stands for. And I hate it.

I follow Frederick up to the room that really should hold a throne, one so large and empty yet crammed full of invisible things.

History, honor, rules, suffocating demands.

When the golden doors open, I step in.

There’s a big cream-colored leather chair, silver-edged,curved and high-backed, in the center toward the back, situated on a black rug.

On the floor next to the chair are her discarded high heels, and an open bottle of bourbon—the fucking one I like that comes from the depths of the South—rests on a small white round side table.

There’s no other furniture, just cleverly hidden lamps that bathe her starkly white hair in soft golden light. The huge picture window behind her acts like the dramatic backdrop to the evening, light that bleeds to sparkles, to black, and then the glitter of stars.

In Sophine’s elegant hand is a tablet, and I’m betting she’s watching the ball from her many hidden security cameras.

Was she watching me?

Must have been.

And the pretty vixen whose hand I held, the girl from the boathouse. I recognized her the moment I walked in. I could smell her, even though she had on a full blocker. I could sense the strange void tinged around the edges of her natural floral scent. For some reason, her violets slither through the blocker. At least to me.

Violet.

Heath had been hanging with his family near the refreshment table, with his mother and two other young Gardener Omegas, one of them being the youngest, Rue. Heath looked stressed beyond belief, so talking to him at that moment wasn’t going to happen.

But I was drawn to Violet, the vivacious woman dressed in bronze with a sleek feline mask.

Her touch still zinged beneath my skin, the coldnessthat turned hot under my hand. The way her pulse pounded in her neck, the swell of small and perfect breasts. Her smell was sweet, floral, and… Shit. I can still smell it here, as if it has branded itself inside my nostrils.

I want to get back to her. But instead, I’m here, facing down the Monarch and her Omega manservant who’s hovering by her side.

Sophine doesn’t look up as I approach, and I’m getting more annoyed by the second. Why summon me up here just to have me wait around? I should be downstairs with?—

“You’ve always been impatient, Stephan,” she says, her crystal-blue eyes lifting finally. “Too quick to jump without thinking about the consequences.”

Knowing that she’s talking about CeeCee, about how I fled Sabine to be with her, despite the Monarch’s rules, I grind my teeth.

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