“When you send a spy to watch me, they’re determined and they’re loyal. You pay them too much to walk away.” Archer walked away from my dad’s money, and he’s the only one who ever has. Because he wanted to be loyal tome. Not my dad.
Juniper didn’t look like she was walking away to anything. She looked shocked and scared, but determined.
“So?”
“Juniper just walked out of this house without a second look back.”
Silence.
When his laugh comes, it’s too late to be convincing. “I guess I should have paid her more.”
“You didn’t pay her at all, did you?” The sound of my heart is like crashing waves filling my head, making it hard to think. I swallow the sickness that rises from my stomach and burns my throat. “She was never a spy at all, was she, Dad? You lied about everything. You never chose her at all.”
Archer and Torin are silent.
My father laughs. “Of course I did. She?—”
I hang up, and I turn to Torin and Archer. They stare at me, white with shock.
Breathless and sick, I feel winded, like someone drove their fist into my gut.
“She was never a player in this.” My cell phone slips from my nerveless fingers when I think of everything we did to her. So many wrongs she never deserved.
Juniper refuses to look at us when we enter a room on one of the lower floors of the Council building in the city center. She’s wearing a white shift dress that reaches the top of her knees, and four small pools of water block us from our mate.
We’re in white pants and nothing else. If we had a choice, none of us would be here. Thirty minutes after Garrison left with Juniper, a black car arrived. Kylian got out of the passenger seat,opened the back door and leaned against the side of the vehicle, waiting for us to get in.
The look on his face made it clear saying no wasn’t an option.
We got in.
The other four people in the room are silent but alert. Kylian, Garrison, Roman, and a petite dark-haired woman I’ve never seen before. They are there to break the bond between us. Forever.
Now that my eyes are open, I see all the things I was too blind to before.
She’s lost weight. She’s thinner than she was on the day we danced at the ball, and her back is stiffer. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to her. If she smiled or laughed over the last year, I never heard or saw it.
I noticed her coldness growing as the weeks and then the months passed. I thought she was cold because we were shutting her out, giving her no information to share with my dad.
I was wrong.
Her coldness was a shield to protect herself from us hurting her, and we hurt her in so many ways. Unforgiveable ways that no scent match would ever treat their mate.
“Don’t do this, Juniper,” I plead.
Her profile is carved from stone. Brittle, hard and fragile all at once. She doesn’t look at me as she speaks. “We are—were—scent matches. Will that stop this from working?”
Silence rocks the room.
The brunette standing beside Juniper shoots me a nervous look. “I—we’ve never—broken a bond between scent matches. I’m not sure. There might still be some lingering?—”
“I want it gone,” Juniper cuts in.
“Juniper, there were reasons,” I say, trying again. “You don’t understand.”
“Because you never tried to get me to understand.” Her words are a whip she uses to flay me. But her eyes are still cold. Still indifferent. “You shut the door in my face, over and over again. Never listened. Never explained. And now I’ve had enough, you suddenly want to explain?No. You never listened to me. You decided I was the enemy and made my life a misery. I don’t want to listen. I don’tcareenough to listen. The cruelty was bad enough, but my book? The other omega? Never speak to me again.”
What book?
