“Didn’t realize we were talking.Iwas having a peaceful rest.”
“Once again, you’ve decided I’m the villain. You think Iwantto keep you in here?”
For the sake of being able to use expressions to reply, I lift, turn, and settle back down, legs crossed, and then fold my arms. “Fine. Talk.”
She blinks, surprised I gave in so quickly, but recovers by straightening her blouse as if conducting a business meeting. “What’s your name?”
Already a benefit of facing her: she can read my are-you-fucking-stupid expression rather than having to say it. “If you’ve already forgotten that and have memory issues, let me clear a few things up. I’m your High Priestess and demand you release me.”
Sloane crosses one leg over the other, making her body appear even taller. “Charming. Just answer my question.”
Resisting an eye roll, I reply, “Carina Hargrove.”
“Brooks.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Brooks,” she repeats. “Your real name is Carina Brooks. Hargrove is your adopted name. I’m curious what else you don’t know about your past.”
Most of it.The fact that Sloane knows things about my past that Mom doesn’t know is troubling. But it’s an opportunity, too. Maybe Sloane can tell me about the woman who birthed me and the coven I’m from. For no reason but selfishness and to answer questions I barely have, considering the history of my past is new to me.
“Is it true that I was engaged to Archer?”Amstillengaged?
“Yes. Covens are quite traditionalists and unions between are common. I knew who you were, of course. You or your mother would’ve proved useful. We had an agreement that you and Archer would bond the month after your eighteenth birthday.”
Which means if my mother never ran, I’d be a wife for the past few years. No Mom, no Banff…no Ryder. Just Archer, who seems alright-ish.
Archerandhis insane family.
“What happened?”
“Your mother did.” Her lips flatten into a line. “The deal was to raise you here, but inter-coven drama drove your mother from hers sooner, and then she hid from me. When I went to retrieve you, she ran. Things got bloody as she got defensive.”
Because she learned the truth, no doubt.
Which means doing everything I can to not take in more Darkness. My birth mother died saving me from this fate, and I thanked her by walking myself straight into it.
“Then you killed the rest,” I finish, and she immediately raises her brows.
“Morgan, I presume, is where you heard that? Slaughtering my own kind goes against everything I stand for. No, they were scared of the offered power and went into hiding. Twenty years later and no one’s heard from them since, no matter how many I send back to Vancouver to search.” She shrugs, as though an entire coven—one of the four original, to boot—being missing means nothing.
“Do you know what happened between my mother and the coven that drove her from them?”
“You, of course.”
“What about me?”
Her eyes flick to my neck, and the area where Ryder bit me tingles. Sex with him feels like it happened so long ago, even though my thighs and insides still have the imprint of him, and it was only yesterday morning. This morning? How long was I asleep?
“That depends. What do you know about your birth father?”
“Nothing. Mom barely learned my name before my birth mother died.”
She hums, tapping her chin. “Too bad.” She glances at my neck again before she positions an elbow on her knee and cups her own. “Tell me about your time with the pack.”
Girl talk, really?
“Well, considering how you found me, I’m pretty sure you can draw your own conclusions.”
