“Please tell me you haven’t.” Erik looked horrified. “Quentin.”
“What’s going on?” Larkin asked, leaning forward to stare at us.
“Why would you do this? Gray?—”
I cut him off. “Gray made his feelings pretty damn clear, Erik.”
“You’ve lost your mind! There is no way you are that stupid.” Larkin rose to her feet, anger flashing in her eyes.
“How could you agree to marry him?” Erik raged. Red surrounded his body in swathes, reaching out in all directions. Hunter’s blue formed a shield in front of me. The role of protector was something he had perfected when it came to public appearances.
“You want to pretend you care now?” Erik had also latched on to the strange attentive persona he displayed. “I told you to stop this, Hunter! You’re causing too much damage.”
To see Erik so angry only added to the fact that I was now in some warped version of reality. This type of rage was reserved for Grayson. I took it as another thread of evidence that pegged them as related.
Erik turned his fury on to me. “Gray is your bound!”
The comment brought forth a flurry of emotions, but I met Erik’s anger with my own, regardless of the doubts that I’d been experiencing. “Not anymore.”
My statement silenced the room.
“Quentin.” My name was a hiss from Larkin’s lips.
The doubt grabbed me in a chokehold, but I pushed past it. “I’ve made my decision.”
“What did you say to her?” Larkin moved towards us. “What did you do to her?”
Hunter shook his head, maintaining his calm. “I didn’t do anything. Quentin understands what’s on the line. She sees sense where you can’t.”
The tension and anger in the room were palpable. It was a living, breathing entity that threatened to tear us all apart. And Hunter was trying his best to hurtle us over the edge of reason.
His lips twisted into a smirk. “There’s no need to be jealous, Larkin.”
Her eye twitched as she looked at me. “He’ll ruin you. Whatever you think is possible is nothing more than foolish.”
My response never materialised as Hunter took the lead. “We’re not seeking your approval.” His aura stood strong before me as an immovable blue wall. There was no chance he was going to risk his newest prized possession. “We’ve told you, and now I’ll be taking Quentin back to my estate.”
“What?” I was taken aback by the sudden need to move me into his home. It was bound to happen, but I thought I would have a few days to gather my things.
“We can get preparations under way as soon as possible.”
The panic clawed at me, but I told myself this was for the best. This way I wouldn’t need to prolong the game. Let us get married. At some point, he would release me entirely from the cuffs and the moment he did, I was going at him with everything I had. Even if he forced me to wait, I would make him pay.
“I’m not letting this happen, Hunter,” Erik said, following us out of the room. “We’ll petition the council.”
“Go ahead, but I’d be careful if I were you, little brother. You don’t want to end up in the same position as Grayson.”
My brow furrowed as I turned my attention to Hunter.
“There’s an upside to having an alliance with the God of secrets,” Hunter continued. “You can’t hide a thing and I’ll make sure to find your deepest and darkest secret and use it against you.”
Archer.
That God could find out anything from anyone. Hunter had been plotting and planning who to keep onside and Archer had been pivotal in each decision.
“I guess we’ll see you at the wedding.”
Hunter’s aura wrapped itself around us properly, and the last thing I saw was Erik’s distraught expression before we were whisked away.
