Page 8 of Hupotasso
I tense, the hairs on the back of my neck rising even now at the thought of anything being done to her by anyone other than me.
“What?”
“I had an inkling you’d feel obliged to stay married to Angie, unhappy for years, so I thought I’d bite her in the car after the wedding and consequences be damned. But after talking to her enough doubt was raised in my mind to stay my hand. Although now I’m thinking I might have done her a favour by putting an end to her life before your diabolical genetic plans are implemented.”
I clench my teeth and squeeze the bridge of my nose to try and reign in my temper.
“Don’t look so pissed,” Wolf chuckles, “you would have thanked him, after a time.”
“You knew about this?”
He shrugs.
“No,” I growl, my fangs extending of their own accord. “She’s mine! Mine to do with as I see fit. No one touches her but me. Do you both understand?”
“Calm down,” Wolf snorts.
“Don’t tell me to calm down. You both know me well enough to know I wouldn’t tolerate you going behind my back.”
“Relax,” Jag sighs. “I thought better of it. She’s alive and imprisoned in the dungeon you call the West Wing, just as you ordered. You can torture her for as long as you like.
“I’m not going to torture her,” I snort, the muscles in my shoulders slowly relaxing, “I’m going to teach her what it is to be a Dragonspurwife. She’ll obey until her last breath.”
“Well,” Jag drains the last of his whisky and rises, placing his glass down firmly on the small table near his chair. “It seems you have it all worked out — your father would be proud.”
“If you weren’t my friend,” I snarl, “I’d knock you out for that.”
“Yes,” he murmurs as he turns to leave, “very proud.”
My glass hits the door frame and shatters into a billion sharp fragments, but he’s already long gone.
7
I sit on my bed in my puffy gown and stare at the bare walls.
Jag escorted me here and left me with a perfunctory nod about two hours ago.
I don’t have a watch, but I estimate it’s probably one or two in the morning by now. It’s still dark out and the weather is still raging, as am I.
A maid had come in not long ago and stoked up the fire, but when I’d asked to use a phone she’d told me to “ring the bell” if I needed anything and bustled out as though the hounds of hell were on her tail.
If she hadn’t literally run out, I would have asked her to unlace me from the tightly corseted gown I’m still trapped in and tellme where the hell my suitcase is, but the phone question had obviously rattled her.
My own phone, surrendered when I’d entered The Games, has still not been returned. I can’t think why, unless I truly am being held prisoner and Falcon intends to isolate me completely. But I’m trying, desperately, not to think this is the case.
Jag had promised he’d speak to him and sort things out, but in the meantime I dearly want to ring my parents and tell them I’m OK. Despite trying to look happy at the wedding I hadn’t fooled my mother. Her face was white and strained throughout the ceremony, and each time I looked at her she gave me that worried ‘what’s wrong?’ look.
But I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her, or anyone for that matter. The early evening televised ceremony attended by humans, including my family, had been quick. The second vampire-only ritual had been long, decidedly creepy and tedious; more like a business deal than a ceremony. Unlike human weddings, there was no reception. No sooner had the vampire ceremony finished than I’d been ushered into the limo.
And now here I am, alone in a bare, rock-walled room with a window the size of a postage stamp, a rug, a four-poster bed swathed in dark-blue velvet curtains, a fireplace, a changing screen, and a bathtub. Apart from the bed my room has none of the luxury or creature comforts I’d glimpsed when I’d visited Falcon’s family as part of The Games.
I know I’m being punished — and I’m mad as hell and heartsick.
The man I love doesn’t trust me, doesn’t trust my feelings for him, and certainly doesn’t appear to have any of the feelings he once indicated he had for me.
My brain returns to the inevitable worry loop it’s been on for months, suppressed but not forgotten.
‘He’d never said he loved me. He’d been honest that there could never be vampire and human love. I just hoped I could change him. I wanted him to love me so badly that I believed he would. I thought if I won The Games he must have feelings for me. I’m an idiot.’
