“It was Anthony all along,” Silas choked out, lips pulled taut into a grimace. “He paid the waiter to put something in her wine, got him the card key to her room.”
“I watched the footage, Anthony left when I did.”
“He hid… went up later… after drugs kicked in…”
Leon let Silas drop to the floor, breaths coming in heaving pants as he considered it. Oh, Anthony was fully capable of it, but to have drugged Elena instead of trying to seduce her wasn’t his usual method. He charmed them then used brute force if they denied him.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Leon said, fists opening and closing as his anger raged out of control.
But it did make sense. Perfect sense. Anthony’s sudden absence, Elena’s insistence that it was Leon all along. Hadn’t Leon even considered that in the beginning, how similar the two brothers were on the surface to so often be mistaken?
With a bellowing roar, he sent his fist through the wall, plaster crumbling to dust as something within cracked and splintered.
All this time, the answer had been right in front of him, and he’d let the little bastard get away with it. He’d been right there, could have stopped it from ever happening to his sweet little Elena.
Then she wouldn’t be his. He never would have gone to the hotel to apologize for his temper, wouldn’t have seen how broken and lost she’d been.
Would never have made her his.
“I have to go,” Leon said, stepping over Silas as he sprawled on the floor gasping. Shoving his way through the tight knot of Alphas who’d come to see what all the noise was about, Leon lengthened his strides.
He had to get back to her. To somehow make it right.
TWENTY-THREE
ELENA
“It’s just the yard,” Elena reasoned out loud as she slipped through the French doors of the sunroom out into the bright, cold day.
It was something to do. Somewhere to be other than moldering away on one of the too comfortable chairs indoors. She took a steadying breath and let it out on a grateful sigh as her lungs twinged at the chilled air filling them.
The landscaping was as precise and utilitarian as the house itself, but it was something different. Elena wandered the short walk, fingering the dying leaves of a squat Japanese maple as she passed it.
She’d seen the guards through the windows of the sunroom. Knew they’d report her insolence to her warden, but just then Elena didn’t care as she continued to take deep draughts of the clean air. Just a few minutes was all she needed.
Turning a corner, she spotted a seating arrangement tucked inside a high wall on three sides, the fourth left open on a switch back that allowed passage. Greenery still clung to life on the dark boards hiding her as she stretched out on the massive chaise. Letting the thin sun beat down on her, shesoaked up the warming rays as the wind played with tendrils of her hair.
She didn’t know how long she’d been there before the scuff of a shoe brought her out of her reverie. Elena didn’t bother to open her eyes. A hint of evergreens came to her on the playful breeze, enveloping her in the scent that wasn’t quite right.
“Just a few more minutes. Please,” she said, turning her face away to hide the furrowing of her brow as his shadow fell over her.
“Oh, Elena, you poor thing. What has he done to you?”
Bolting upright, Elena swung around to see Anthony lounging in the seat opposite her as if this was his home and not Leon’s. He graced her with a smile that held a razored edge, too sharp to be pleasant.
“What are you doing,” Elena hissed, looking around the enclosed space as if the monster was bearing down on her even now. “He’ll kill us both if he finds you here.”
“I couldn’t abandon you to him, sweet girl,” Anthony murmured, rising to come to kneel at Elena’s side. He took up her trembling hands, clasping them almost too tight. “I came back as soon as I heard what he’d done to you.”
“When you left me to him, you mean.” Elena tried to tug her hands free, but it was no use. Anthony kept them captive in his crushing grip. “You have no idea what he’s capable of, Anthony. What he’s already done…”
“I would never have left had I known him capable of this, Elena. You must believe me,” Anthony said, so earnest it softened her, stopped her struggles against him.
“There’s nothing to be done about it now. I’m his.”
“I can help.”
“You can’t undo a mating,” Elena scoffed, shaking her head before glancing around once more. He’d been here too long, and Leon was due back soon. He’d said he wouldn’t remain gone long after he returned her to the house once the doctors weredone confirming the pregnancy was healthy and normal thus far.
