Page 105 of Outcast’s Vow

But would it do anything?

“I’m warning you...”

He cuts me off with a lazy grin.

“What are you going to do, Sylvie? Bitch and moan at me? Again? You and I are the right fit. Your father knows it, I know it, and, deep down, you know it. You will come crawling back to me, and that’s when I’ll truly own you.”

I freeze. Ethan is deadly serious. He wants me. He wants my last name.

And there’s a part of me, deep down, that figures he might be telling the truth. By every metric, he should be the man I marry.

But I never will.

I can’t leave this room, and Ethan is not stepping aside. I guess that, even if I scream, no one would hear me down here.

I don’t know what to do.

He stares at me, wanting an answer. He wants me to get on my knees and beg him to take me back.

And then, puncturing the silence, over Ethan’s shoulder, a voice booms.

“No one talks to my wife like that. No one.”

Ethan scowls and spins around to the source of the deep voice.

“Who the fuck are...”

But before he can finish his sentence, he is thrown onto the ground from behind.

And there stands Baptiste. Standing over Ethan.

He’s here?

He’s come? But how?

How could he have guessed?

Ethan, in shock from being manhandled, squirms to stand back up, but my husband immediately pins him back down to the ground with his boot.

Baptiste glares at my ex, but he talks to me.

“This is Ethan?” he asks darkly. “This pathetic excuse?”

“Yes.”

“Say the word, Highness, and I will end him.”

Ethan splutters. He squirms against the force immobilizing him against the study room floor.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I’ve killed stronger men than you for less,” Baptiste says, his voice reverberating around the room like an alarm but also somehow deeply, deeply intimate. “You want to test me? You’re fortunate your fate is up to my wife. What will it be, Highness?”

I shake my head, the crack of Ethan hitting the floor still reverberating in my head. I can still hear the scuff of Baptiste as he lunged at my ex.

“I refuse to have that power,” I mutter. “Let him go.”

Baptiste snarls. That’s not what he wants.