Oh, my God.
I clutched the phone harder.
I’m a better person away from the people who love me most.
That meant I excelled while living with people who hated me.
It was fucked up.
It didn’t make sense.
But how could I argue against something that was true?
VtheMan:I know everything, Threads, and I’m coming for you. I’ll bring the army. I’ll kidnap the fucking Queen if it means I’ll get you free. Just stay alive, sister. I’m coming.
My attention reverted back to the current issue.
Vaughn.
Father must’ve told him what happened. I didn’t know how much he shared—hell, I didn’t really know how much he even knew himself—but I feared for my brother. I feared for myself.
Vaughn was volatile and likely to do anything to get me back. Every day since I was born, I let him baby me, protect me from life experiences I really should’ve faced rather than hide from. That protectiveness sometimes came across as too much, and before, I secretly loved it. I loved being so significant to someone—their entire reason for living.
But everything had changed.
I’m not the same person I was a few days ago.
If I was bluntly honest, our relationship seemed a little much now.Blurring lines that had kept me firmly in my place as daughter and sister with no need to spread my wings and hurl myself from the nest.
“Get up.” Jethro paced to the huge windows, wrenching open a sash pane letting the pretty English morning into the stuffy room. I breathed deeply as sunshine bounced around, merrily painting corpses of winged creatures.
Yesterday, I’d named some of the prettier ones. Snowdrop, Iceberg, and Glacier were all addressed in honour of their tormentor and mine.
I needed to reply to Vaughn, but I tucked the phone beneath the quilt, eyeing up my nemesis. “Nice to see you, too.”
His nostrils flared. “Don’t get uppity, Ms. Weaver. I don’t have time for nonsense.”
I stretched, deliberately taunting him. “Nonsense? You can’t talk. All of this Weaver and Hawk charade is utter nonsense.”
Jethro stomped over. Dressed in beige corduroys and black shirt, he looked as if he had a meeting with his local backgammon club. The requisite diamond pin glinted on his lapel. “Shut up and get out of bed. Now.”
My heart thundered. His golden eyes were icy and steadfast.
The intensity and raw visceral desire I’d seen in the forest was gone. Hope fizzled into dirty bubbles in my chest. I’d thought we’d climbed to a new dimension with what happened in the woods. I thought I’d showed him that he couldn’t undermine me without undermining himself.
How wrong I’d been.
Squinting in the sun, I whispered, “What did you do?”
He reared back as if I’d slapped him. “Excuse me?”
Shuffling in the covers, I eyed him closer, trying to figure out what had changed. Nothing outward looked different. He was the perfect resemblance of a country gentleman. But his tone was smooth as silk and just as unbreakable.
“You’ve done something. A few nights ago you looked human...now...”
“Now?”
I scowled. “Now you just look like the cold-hearted robot who came for me at my runway show.”
