Page 137 of Outcast’s Vow

“I don’t want you,” I hiss. “I don’t want this.”

But there’s nothing more I can give, and Ethan knows it.

“Too late. Your husband ran away. He wasn’t man enough to do what needed to be done.”

“If Baptiste saw you here, with me, like this...”

Ethan leans down and snarls in my ear.

“He’ll do what, Sylvie? What? He’s a pussy.”

I tilt my chin up. I don’t look him in the eye. I stare straight ahead.

“Baptiste is a million times the man you are.”

And Ethan laughs again. Deep. Threatening.

“But he’s not here, is he? He’s skulking away somewhere. He really was some poverty boy who got lucky and got rich. Some simpleton raised by some drugged-up single mother.”

“How dare you...”

Ethan cuts me off.

“You’re lucky I’m taking you back. You would be a barren whore without me, locked up in daddy’s castle.”

There really is nothing I can say to that.

I want to be strong. I want to be resilient. But everything is hopeless, and I really want to curl up and weep now.

There’s a toll of a bell somewhere in the room, a call that the ceremony has commenced. Ethan straightens up, adjusts his cufflinks. He can’t help but give me one final wink and one final barb before he joins my father to be initiated into the secret society.

“I can’t wait to call Elwood my father, and I can’t wait to call you Mrs. Thornton.”

His quiet words pierce me like arrows. He says that title as if it’s inevitable. I gulp at the thought.

I hadn’t even considered my last name changing yet again.

Suddenly, there’s a loud crash on the other side of the door. Shouting.

A bang.

And then?

The door swings open aggressively. Masks turn. Men move to the side in shock.

“What the hell?” Ethan yelps.

And standing there in the doorway, his shadowy figure barely illuminated by the flickering candlelight, is Baptiste. His giant frame is unmistakable.

The anger? The fury? It’s definitely him.

There’s a gasp from the men in masks as they behold their disgraced former member, frozen to the spot in shock.

I have less than a heartbeat to recognize him before he flies into the room, heading straight for Ethan.

And before I can even say his name, Baptiste punches my ex square in the face, knocking him to the floor, and immediately wraps his hands around his neck, strangling him with cold murder in his eyes...

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