She confirmed it just a moment later.
“You know, I hardly gained weight at all with El,” Annabel said, and El had to use all the strength in her body not to laugh, considering the fact that she damn well knew that Annabel had not carried her, as did Ryan.It was a lie, a bald-faced lie, and one that it was very clear that Annabel had chosen to give in light of Ryan.
Not that El could blame her, she silently noted to herself as her eyes slipped over to her mate, doing her best to ignore the hand that resided on his arm as Annabel moved beside him, very evidently trying to keep his attention on her, despite the fact that he had made it clear that he had no eyes for anyone other than his mate.
Fatherhood had suited Ryan well, and he had not lost an ounce of muscle in his physique.If anything, his shoulders had only grown broader, his tan richer from playing in the sun with his young daughter.There was a faint, pronounced scruff on his cheek that made his jawline only appear sharper, and in contrast to everything that had changed, his bright white teeth seemed to almost glow.Everything about him was twice as unnaturally beautiful as he always had been.Only El had to admit to herself, slightly brighter, considering the fact that he was happier.Evidently, most lion males in the shifter world had waited their whole entire lives to have offspring of their own.This had been one of Ryan's dreams, one that he hadn't fully realized he'd had, but one that was fulfilled.
And happiness suited him.
Just as Annabel's hand on his arm very obviously didn't suit him, considering the way that he shrugged it off, slowing down to remove her from his side even though it had become rather obvious that he was doing such a thing when Annabel frowned in his direction.The woman wasn't used to being turned down, and El supposed that she had likely assumed that Ryan would fall into line with her, complemented by the attentions of the beautiful, thin older woman.The one who had always looked like an old supermodel.Unfortunately, his beast rebelled against her and then seemed all that intent on so much as humoring her.
“El was beautiful in pregnancy,” Ryan stated, with not a hint of doubt in his voice, his tone sounding almost somewhat reverent as he recalled it.“She had a wonderful glow.She's a beautiful mother,” Ryan explained, calmly skipping over the part where he had missed a good portion of her pregnancy largely due to the fact that she had been kidnapped by her own mother and whom she considered to be one of her closest friends.
But maybe that was for the best, considering the fact that she highly doubted that her mother would have any sympathy regarding the whole kidnapping attempt.If anything, she would only dare to ask how El escaped the situation without losing a few pounds.Annabel never missed the opportunity to comment on her adoptive daughter’s weight, and she seemed to take every single misfortune in El's life as an opportunity to slim down.
After all, El had been kidnapped in the past before, and upon returning, her mother had only one question for the woman; “How much did they feed you?”Not out of worry, as some better mothers would ask, but rather because she was hoping that in the few days that El had been gone, a miracle would happen, and she would lose 100 pounds or so.Unfortunately, that hadn't happened.
Fortunately, however, she had two sons who married early and gave her new people to torment once her daughter had left the nest.Case in point, both Claudia and Meredith looked up with a certain sense of tension as Annabel entered the room, very obviously associating the woman with various forms of torture.
El was pretty sure that if the two had ever been kind to her, she likely would have felt bad for them, judging by the way that both of them stiffened up with a certain sense of dread and looked at Annabel as she stood in the doorway with a certain sense of dread.
Or at least they looked at Annabel for a moment before their eyes roamed and landed on the tall figure next to her, annoying El as she realized that, once again, women were ogling Ryan.Normally, she would have been glad for the distraction.Whenever you were in the company of Annabel, having a distraction of some sort was for the best, largely because she was so unbearable.But having Annabel already eyeing up Ryan and feeling him up in inappropriate ways had put El on edge, and she was feeling less than kind to the two women.
Perhaps because, for the majority of her young adult years, they had both opted to leave her to the wolves, allowing Annabel to torment El so long as she wasn’t turning her attention to them.Yes, Annabel was a monster and could say things that would probably put most people to tears, but that didn’t mean that you had to give in to her and allow her to make you into a monster as well.Were you really a good person if you stood back and watched other people be tormented, or even worse, in the case of Claudia, join in?
A small, petty part of El almost wanted to leave, if only to watch their faces fall the moment that they realized that their favorite scapegoat was gone, no longer willing to take the heat for them while Annabel stormed.But, again, Annabel had dangled just the perfect carrot in front of El’s face, and while she didn't want to be there, not surrounded by those women and not pretending like everything was OK, she knew that she could achieve her greater goals if she did it.And therefore, there she was.
El held her breath as she entered the room, slowly and purposefully trying to size up both of her brothers’ wives and decide which one of them was the better option to sit by that day.Meredith obviously was the whipping girl, so therefore, she was probably the more dangerous one.People reacted desperately when they were put into situations that they weren't comfortable in.
But Claudia, on the other hand, had a certain predatory lean to her.She made no secret of the way that she eyed Ryan up and down, very obviously comparing him to the softer structure of her husband's body.If El had to guess, the gleam in the back of her eldest brother’s wife’s eyes was one of longing, the same kind of look that showed up on every woman's face when they imagine all the ways that a man would feel frosting into them, grabbing their hair and making them beg for mercy.
Jealousy tasted bitter on her tongue at the very thought.She knew that her mates were beautiful and often coveted by other women, but she hated moments like this when she could watch other girls blatantly check them out.
Not that El really blamed them.
Life hadn’t exactly been kind to either of El’s brothers.While they had handsome faces and were slim as the result of modern miracles concerning medicine and weight loss surgeries, taking such drastic and cheap methods to remain thin also took its own toll on your body, and El could see how aging had affected both of her brothers fairly clearly, while her mates had assured her that she would remain locked in a state of perfect bliss for the rest of her life as a result of being a shifter, her brothers bore the burden of facelift scars, and the darkened marks of where needles had dived in and out of their skin in an attempt to stem their dietary needs.Not to mention, there wasn't much one could do once their skin began to age, and El could see the effects of spray and tanning bed adventures wearing heavily on their skin, age marks beginning to show early on as the toll of being perfect all the time for the political runway began to become evident.
Admittedly, El had once considered following in her older brothers’ footsteps, having considered exactly what she could do with the type of money that she had and the way that she could change the world.El always lived under the assumption that she had been put on the earth to make it better for the people who would come after her.She figured that that should be everyone's goal.But the further and further that her brothers got into politics, the more that she was proven wrong.It turned out that not everyone's goal was to make the world better.In fact, most people's goal wasn't even close to that.Most people didn't want to make the world better but rather to make their pockets fatter.That was the main goal of her brothers.
They had gone into politics not to change the world but to accept bribes to make sure that they didn't.She tried to confront her brothers once or twice about it, asking them how they slept at night knowing that they had signed off on the modern-day equivalent of child labor allocations, but both of them had dismissed her, telling her that she knew nothing about the world that they worked in.After all, they were the ones who were the political rockstars of the realm, and she was just their annoying younger sister.
This means to say that adulthood had been disheartening, especially considering the fact that while her brothers would never state her to be their favorite sibling or anything of the like, they had had a certain camaraderie when they were children.Especially her and Jonathan, they had been close once.It was difficult to think about that and then see the way that he was now.
Jonathan had wanted to be a Boy Scout troop leader when he was a kid, loving the outdoors and the way that it made him feel.But as he grew older, Annabel discouraged him from such a dream and told him that Boy Scout troop leaders were typically unemployed 40-year-old losers who were desperately searching for fatherhood because they couldn't find anyone to sleep with and impregnate.Annabel had made it clear to both of her sons from an early age that they were winners, and winners didn't settle for anything less than the best.The best wives, the best houses, the best cars, the best everything.Anything less was a disgrace.
El was a disgrace, and she was acutely aware of that fact as she sat down beside Meredith, hoping that today, of all days, would be the one where Meredith didn’t decide to appeal to her mother-in-law.It had happened once before, and El couldn’t see much of a reason why it shouldn’t be happening then.But then, almost like she sensed that El had dared to dream, Meredith took on the same predatory gleam as her fellow daughter-in-law and leaned forward in her chair, obviously seeing yet another chance to try and congeal with her mother-in-law, who was still mad at her about her lack of recent weight loss despite being pregnant.
Before the woman could so much as open her mouth, however, Annabel stood up, doing another one of those overly elaborate stretches that she seemed to perform so often when there was company around.It was an excuse to show off her body.El knew that, but she didn’t know where the fuck Annabel thought that she was going.“Four o’clock,” the woman informed the guests who had gathered in her lobby, acting as if they should know exactly what happens at four o'clock and why it was so important that she leave.“You'll have to excuse me.I just so happened to have a telecom yoga call.You know how important it is for one to keep a healthy mind and body, don't you?”Annabel asked, eyeing both Meredith and El as she did a rather lazy job of hiding her contempt for both of the women.“I'll be back in about 45 minutes.Until then, you can talk amongst yourselves.Don't feel as if you have to work too hard to fill the silence, however,” Annabel stated, believing that the party began and ended depending on whether or not she was in the room.It was just one of her many flaws.
Another one of her many flaws?Leaving El alone with her brothers, the two men who she knew the least about in this world and who also seemed to be the two who were the least inclined to so much as attempt with her.But before she could insist that she join the yoga class or something else along those lines, Annabel made a quick departure from the room, shamelessly leaving them all behind, which meant that El was all alone with her brothers.Brilliant.
Chapter13
Marcus couldn't exactly explain to anyone how he got into the situation that he was currently in, other than the fact that he very obviously hadn't minded his own business, and therefore ended up paying the price as a consequence of that, but he wasn't exactly excited to be doing what he was doing.After all, he had stated more often than not that in his old age, he liked to believe that he had matured.He didn't play around or do anything stupid anymore.This, upon further reflection of his current situation, was the stupidest thing that he could possibly do.And yet, there he was.
In the back of a van, one of the few that the pride employed for special events, incognito missions, and the occasional quiet outing.A white van, to be specific.One of those ones that was visible on just about every single street corner in the United States, and yet somehow remained suspicious in its own way.Really, the only merits to white vans were the fact that if you thought that something was going on inside of one, you very quickly dismissed the notion in the back of your head and reminded yourself that said vans were very often the tools of handymen and other skilled professions and should be respected.
But in this case, Marcus hated to admit it to himself: if you looked at said white van parked on the street, amongst all of the large suburban houses in that neighborhood, you were probably right to think that something was going on.But whether or not you would accurately predict what something was going on depended on whether or not you were capable of anticipating true insanity.
