Page 62 of Wedlock
I shake my head and rub my temples. It’s been a long twenty-four hours, a long, harrowing, twenty-four hours. I’d found my dead brother, supposedly dispatched by an unknown woman, discovered my dying former mistress and learned that I had another child. Then to top it off, I’d been falsely accused, arrested, and jailed.
‘Who could clear my name? Nobody. I went alone, uninvited, to the estate of my known enemy, and I was caught surrounded by his dead guards, my hands red with the blood of his wife.’
“I’m up shit creek without a paddle, Wolf.”
“Lucky you’re a strong swimmer,” he smirks.
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“But, Yin, whose baby is this?” I gasp.
“Do you really want to know?” She meets my gaze steadily as I raise my eyesfrom the baby in her arms, so like my own, to hers.
“Yes.”
“It’s Sophie’s.”
I stand stock-still and digest this information. For the infant to be exactly the same age as my own, more or less, and the spitting image of his father, as was my son, Falcon would have had to have slept with us both around the same time.
Imagining them together in bed makes me sick with jealousy and rage.
“And where is Sophie?” I hiss, my eyes once more falling to the boy in Yin’s arms.
“Dead.”
I frown and flick my eyes up to hers. If she hadn’t introduced herself earlier I would have had no idea just who the old, grey-haired, dumpy woman was that now stood before me. Her disguises really are next level. It makes her next statement sound almost comical, given her current persona.
“I didn’t do it,” she shrugs. “My guess is Spider did — or he ordered her to do it herself. All I know is that I went with The Free Men to his estate to find Viper after a tip-off about where he had his meals delivered. The plan was to take out ViperandSpider. The Free Men are still pissed that he killed Isabel and her parents, and they’d been planning this raid for a while, so everything fitted in well.”
I nod for her to go on, hoping she tells me Spider’s dead too, but doubting that’s going to be the case.
“We successfully killed all Spider’s guards, but Viper was already dead by the time I found him. When I got back to the castle to help look for Spider I found Sophie impaled against the castle walls, barely alive. The others wanted me to leave her, and I agreed, but she begged me to take her baby to Falcon. It was lying on the stone at her feet, covered in blood and unmoving. To tell you the truth I thought he was dead, but when I picked him up I felt a faint pulse — I guess vampire babies are harder to kill than human babies.”
I shake my head, now feeling contrite at my earlier thoughts of retribution against the woman.
“It seems strange that someone of Spider’s reputation would leave the baby alive, I mean, assuming he realised it wasn’t his and that’s why he killed her.”
“Like I said,” she frowns, “I thought hewasdead. I don’t think Spider handled him gently. I took him to Marianna and she spent the better part of two days and nights saving his life. He was covered in bruises and had a big dent on onesideofhishead.”
“But he looks about the same age as my boy, Yin. Why wait until now to kill Sophie?”
“I have no idea. But whatever prompted it, myguessis that Spiderswung him against the wall withthe intention of dashing his brains out, but didn’t finish the job because The Free Men arrived at the same time.”
“Oh my fucking god,” I lean closer to study his face, pushing back his little cap to run my hands through his thick hair. “No dent now.”
“No,” she says quietly. “Which is a good thing for what we have planned. Did you get rid of the wetnurse and nanny?”
“Yes,” I nod. “I fired them and got new ones. They start tonight.”
“Loose ends,” she shakes her head, frowning.
“They weren’t eggs, Yin,” I scowl at her, “and if we go around killing innocent people we’re no better than the vampires I’m trying to run from. You must have thought the same to save this poor baby’s life.”
“I thought only of you,” she says quietly.
“But, what am I to do with him?” I ask, exasperation leaching into my tone. “I need to escape. I can’t be carrying aroundtwoinfants. And,” I shake my head, “call me a bad person, but I don’t really want to raise Sophie’s baby.”
I don’t add that my daughter is also out there somewhere, and that one day I hope to be reunited with her too. I can’t think about that now, just in case it never happens.
