The black water vibrates until an image emerges. Skyla lying naked in Logan Oliver’s arms.
Demetri is right. Even your own brother can surprise you from time to time.
But then, it’s not much of a surprise. Is it?
* * *
By the time I get home, I find Chloe prancing around the living room wearing a thin see-through robe, opened in the front, her naked belly protruding the way Skyla’s did when she was carrying the boys—and Sage.
“Get to bed, Chloe.” I head to the fridge and pull out the OJ, drinking it straight from the carton.
“That’s the point.” Chloe rubs up against me, her bare flesh trying its best to seduce me. “You and me in bed together, Oliver. No more of this runaround. I’m your wife. Your body is my body. It’s in the New Testament. Crack the Good Book, would you?” A dark laugh bubbles from her like poison from a witch’s cauldron.
“That’s not happening. Head hurts.” Head hurts? More like heart hurts. Balls hurt. Everything hurts from watching the horror of that Mustang moving like it was designed to do just that all along. That vision I had way back when I thought I was a Levatio comes to mind and a dull huff of a laugh bounces through me. The vision came true a long time ago, but it was a misunderstanding. Logan and Skyla weren’t really sleeping together then. A part of me wonders if the vision had been for tonight all along.
“What’s so funny?” Her voice is curt. Chloe is at the end of her sexual rope with me and I couldn’t give a shit.
“Logan and Skyla. I saw them, together, in the Mustang.”
“What?” Her entire face opens up as if I just delivered the best bit of gossip.
“That’s right. They are officially right where they were designed to be from the beginning.”
“Oh, who cares. You heard her. Second best,” Chloe spits out the words as if the thought of me being anybody’s second best enraged her. “Trust me. They deserve one another. Logan has always thought he was superior to you and don’t you deny it. He’s a little punk and she’s a little bitch.” She pulls me to her with insurmountable strength that I can only credit her Celestra lineage for. “You are Gage Oliver. You are the king of the Fems, the Steel Barricade, and soon you’ll be the king of the free world, too. And they will answer to you. Skyla and Logan will bow down in your presence, begging you for mercy. Don’t you forget that you are in charge. You knocked that little bitch right off her pedestal. You don’t have to burn over the fact she used you. You don’t have to compete with Logan anymore just to win.”
It’s ironic how Skyla didn’t buy that bullshit, but Chloe ate up her own lies.
“Don’t worry”—I gently brush the hair from her eyes—“I am most assuredly going to remind them who I am and what I am capable of.”
Her bottom lip trembles for a moment. “What are you doing?”
As much as Chloe’s devotion for me runs deeper than reason, she still has a heart for her people. If I like anything about Chloe, it’s that.
“Don’t worry. You and your family are safe.”
Her hand cradles the side of my face, her eyes widening with horror. “But my people are not.”
“You don’t have people, Chloe. You have me.” I press my mouth to her hand in an effort to quell her. Chloe is a wild card, and if that faux kiss calms her down, then it was well worth it.
She draws her hand back, giggling like a schoolgirl. “A sign of things to come? Namely you and me?”
“Maybe.” I head up the stairs. “But not tonight. See you in the morning, Chloe.” I head straight for the attic, to the butterfly room that I built for the only woman I will ever consider my soulmate, and my heart wrenches.
Skyla. I bet she considers Logan her soulmate. I’ve been left in the dust, the discard pile the way Demetri discarded Chloe. I know the pain she went through with that, but it’s nothing like this dagger in my heart. I step into the dark room and lock the door behind me as the cobalt butterflies stir to life, illuminating the darkness.
“Where are you?” I roar it out, angry and bitter at what the night has brought me, what it’s made me do.
Skyla’s form emerges from the darkness, her Cheshire cat smile, those glowing baby blue eyes, but it’s not truly Skyla and we both know that.
“Here I am, master.” A husky laugh quivers from her. Those long, wavy locks glow like shimmering gold as her body comes toward me, paper-white, inhuman, but it’s Skyla’s body replicated right down to the lightning-shaped scars she garnered from carrying the kids.
“Face the wall,” I growl. “I want you on all fours.”
She bites down on her lip, feigning the look of innocence, but we both know there’s not one innocent thing about her.
She looks up at me from under her lashes. “Will this hurt?”
“Yes, Skyla. It will.”
