Page 4 of Eternal

She charged toward them, lifting the hem of the dress as high as it could go to prevent her from stumbling. Her shoes clattered hard against the marble tiles and she envisioned the heels shattering into pieces.

“My father is on your hit list. Your number one enemy, and you didn’t think to tell me that before… before I… I threw myself at you.”

“Farren,” Ashton said rising from his chair like a great sleek wolf. He carefully placed his glass down on a side table. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

“This is exactly the time and very much the place,” she shouted. “You both used me,” she yelled. She carried the weight of everyone’s stare present in the hall. She could hear them whisper about what was happening as they moved in closer to hear better. Not a soul in the room didn’t have their attention fixed on Farren.

“We’ll do this in private,” Duncan said calmly but she could see the telltale sign in his jaw.

“I have nothing to say to any of you in private.” Fumbling, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, she yanked her ring off and flung it at the twin alphas. She didn’t wait for the clanging sound it would make as the ring hit the floor.

She spun around immediately, unwanted tears gathering in her eyes. She had to get out of there and as far away from them as possible. It made matters worse that her heart would never recover from the hole they had left behind. And she had been stupid enough to open herself up to them, had fallen crazily in love with them, had allowed them into her heart, and yet they had come armed with a blunt shank that they had used to chisel the crater-sized hole in it she now would carry around with her forever.

Startled, she cried in horror when both Ashton and Duncan seized an arm of hers each and dragged her in the opposite direction of the exit.

Fuming mad, oblivious to the spectacle she created, Farren could do little else but allow herself to be escorted by the alphas out of the hall, and into their study on the same floor. Especially when all her efforts to be set free failed.

She didn’t want them touching her, because that just split her loyalty. Her body crazily still answered to them but her mind knew otherwise. They had used her—were still using her to get to a man the rest of the world believed dead because if her father were still alive, he would have found a way to contact her. He wouldn’t be roaming around the earth letting her think he had died. He wouldn’t do that to her.

“Get your hands off me,” she cried.

“It would be in your best interest to reduce the degree of the spectacle you’re creating because you just graduated yourself from a hand spanking to our belts.”

“You arrogant bastards. You—”

“Enough. You don’t want us to have Alfred bring up our cane, and trust us when we say we’ll flip up your dress and cane your ass in front of each guest here for disrespecting your alphas.”

Disrespecting them? What about her? How could they get away with what they were doing to her? But instinct cautioned her to keep quiet. They were capable of doing that exactly, caning her in front of everyone just to prove their dominance over her.

When she passed a giggling though sneering woman on her way, she instantly knew that that was Faith Back.

The dimly lit study cast ominous shadows around them. If she weren’t so livid… and so utterly hurt and destroyed, she would have cared to be afraid. But she wasn’t. She was numb with pain and anger and she wanted to be left alone.

“What part of I don’t want anything to do with the men who thought they could use me to set a trap for my father just so you could execute him don’t you understand? And don’t try to deny it.”

“Would you care to tell us the source of your information?”

“Why? So you could have them executed too for blowing the cover of your plan concerning me and my father?” Her resolve withered and died.

“How could you do this to me? How could you use me this way, make me give you my body and my heart when all along I was just a pawn in the grand scheme of your plans. Just let me go,” she said softly, brokenly. “I can’t bring a dead man back to you.”

“Sit down.”

“No.”

“Sit down, Farren.”

“You can’t keep me here against my will,” she said, her voice lacking conviction.

“Sit your ass in this chair right now.”

Duncan lifted a chair, heavier than what a normal human man could move on his own, and brought it to her on the opposite side of the desk. When he banged it down on the floor, it sounded like an earthquake beneath her feet. She jumped in shock, then trembling in defeated misery, she lowered her bone-weary body onto the seat of the chair.

Ashton had slipped in behind the desk, opened a drawer, and retrieved a tablet. After a few jabs at the screen, he flung the tablet across the desk, and if Duncan hadn’t stopped it right in front of her, it would have flown right off the gleaming wood.

“Are you ready to listen?” Ashton said, locking his gaze with hers. The intensity of fury in his voice was too much and she lowered her eyes, unsure why suddenly she felt as if she had done something wrong and not them. “You will look at me when I’m talking to you,” he growled. She whipped her face up immediately. “The fact that you chose to believe what could only be idle gossip over us means we’ll yet again have to prove our intentions to you. And trust us, Farren, it’s becoming increasingly annoying that we keep having to serve you with the same lessons over and over again.”

Duncan then tapped his index finger on the screen, drawing her attention to it.

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