Page 103 of Wicked Dreams (Fallen Royals 1)

“What did you do, Margo?” she asks. She looms giant in my memory, gripping my shoulders.

I don’t answer, and she shakes me back and forth.

“Mom,” I cry.

“Margo.”

I thrash, trying to break her bruising grip.

“Margo!”

“Stop,” I moan.

“Wake up!”

My eyes snap open, focusing on Caleb.

His eyebrows are creased.

I try to remember what I was dreaming about. It seems impossible that I fell asleep, but the clock tells me an hour has passed.

“You were crying for your mom,” he murmurs.

The scene zooms back to the forefront of my mind.

I lunge up and throw my arms around him, bursting into tears.

“I-I-I can’t remember what I did to make her hate me,” I hiccup. “Why did she leave me?”

I know the answer. She loved drugs more than her daughter. She was declared unfit to parent—that’s what Angela told me. I don’t remember much of the hearing with the judge, except that Mom never showed.

Dad was already gone at that point.

There was no one left to take care of me… so into the foster system I went.

Caleb rubs my back. “It’s okay.”

It isn’t. It won’t be until I find the answers I need.

I don’t know which questions to ask, though. I don’t know where to begin to look for Amberly Wolfe.

“Will you help me?” I sniff. “You…” To say he was there would be a lie. After Dad was arrested, I didn’t see Caleb for seven years. He wouldn’t know where my mother is, and he sure as hell wouldn’t care.

“No.”

His answer stings, but I get it.

I ask, “What are you doing here?”

“I told you I’d see you tonight.”

I squint at him through my unshed tears. “Did you get them the reservation?”

He smiles. “I might’ve been planning it for us, but you’re still grounded. So… yeah, I offered it up to get them out of the house.”

“Devious,” I mutter. “And arrogant.”

“And ruthless,” he adds, kissing my cheek.

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