Tied up lies
“Tom’s put a very obvious claim on you…” He waited for her to say something but of course, she didn’t know what he’d even said really.
“Claim on me?”
“Marked you. Scarred you…” James tried again. “In the simplest terms, that bite on your neck.”
“What’s that even mean though?” She pulled back from him, dropping her hands from his cheeks. He settled in the bed away from her and she watched him struggle with his next words.
“It means your ex-boyfriend has taken up a personal vendetta against me because if he can’t access you through force, what better way to fuck us over?”
She stared at him. “What does this have to do with you?”
He looked away, piecing together whatever it was he had to tell her. “Understand, I was only trying to protect you…”
“James.” She was starting to get scared, not just because of the mark on her neck, but because of the way he looked, unsure and even afraid of himself. He was always the poster-boy of bravery and determination, and right then he looked anything but.
“I wanted to make you happy and you were, weren’t you?”
“Of course.” She breathed, “I’m happy.”
He swallowed. “I guess, I can’t expect you to remember that, but I will ask you to.”
He wasn’t making any sense to her. “What?”
“Do you know what Tom is?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “A Lycan. He can turn into a big, ugly wolf thing—that’s for sure.”
“Right. Lycanthrope. Shifter. Whatever you want to call it.”
“I get it,” she breathed.
“You weren’t ever given the entire truth.”
“And what’s that?”
“That your mother may have given you your Hunter blood but your father, he gave you your Lycan blood.” James got off the bed and grabbed his jacket off the couch where he’d left it earlier in the evening after taking her to bed. “This.”
He handed her the envelope. “This is all the proof you need. A birth document from The Coven but there’s a bit of a fib on your mother’s side. Half-bloods shouldn’t exist in the eyes of The Coven. Your father obviously knew that. So he lied and said you were full blooded. Elite and Burgherdom mix. Not pure but morally acceptable. More acceptable than being half hunter but I still can’t figure out if your father made the choice for love or some other motive to have children with your mother.”
Kara sat up and ripped open the envelope, which he had already done and pulled out the paperwork. She read it. David William Heart, Elite Lycan status, Bloodline four-one-seven.
She read it again and then looked up to him. “I’m half Lycan?”
James nodded. “Yes.”
She put a hand to her forehead and felt the tears and panic set it. “Shit… can I like turn into… into a dog… a wolf,” she corrected herself after he arched his eyebrow.
“Only men can shift. Gender equality wasn’t something ancient Enchanters had in mind when they created the Lycan bloodlines. Women have children, keep the blood pure. Men go to war. In theory…”
“Oh.” She felt she should have known that, especially if he did and then she really felt she was missing something.
James continued, “This is why Tom is fascinated with you. Having you meant a lot of leverage in this world for him. Having you means power. The Coven will do a lot to destroy half-bloods. Money, trades, anything to keep the bloodlines pure.”
She searched him in desperation. “What?”
“You’re like a double-edged sword. I won’t let him have you though. You’re mine.” He glanced away. The longer he stayed silent, the more her mind reeled. She put together his words like pieces of a puzzle and they slotted together into panic.
“You’re like Tom?”
“Tom’s below me. Way below me.”
“You’re starting to make less and less sense!” Her nostrils flared, and just like that, everything she felt she’d ever known or trusted about him had evaporated into thin air.
He moved toward her on the bed and she held out a hand.
“No! You don’t get to touch me…”
He backed off. “Kara, I’m sorry.”
“You’re a liar!”
“And you wouldn’t be with me any other bloody way. I had to protect you. Look at you!”
“What does that mean!” She glared, resentment catching fire to her features and she knew he saw it.
“You’re always in danger. It follows you around like a bloody plague. Ex-boyfriends, demons, our bond… all very dangerous things, Kara.”
“You hid this from me, yet you know everything about me! Are you for real right now?”
He took in a breath to likely calm himself, though it didn’t seem to work. “Up until a few months ago, I didn’t know you traded yourself for an amulet, in which case, you’re now pregnant and being stalked like a commodity! I’ve been trying to protect you ever since from that piece of Recreant trash. I told you I was with you in that dimension with Josh, I told you in the bloody car when I pulled you out of your mother’s house.”
“You told me you were there—like I thought you meant metaphorically, James!”
“Why the fuck would I mean that!” However difficult it seemed he got himself back under control and continued, “I was trying to make you happy. You were happy not knowing it all.”
She let out a sob of desperation. “You’re joking right?”
“There’s more to it…” He shut his eyes and looked away. “And no one can know this, it’s a bloody death sentence for sure but we’re bonded,you and I.”
She got frustrated with him and his cryptic nonsense. “What are you talking about now!”
“It’s the reason we can’t be without each other, it’s the reason we always want each other, can’t move on from one another. For years I tried to let you go and couldn’t. Then there was no going back after Josh died. No matter the situation. You were going to be mine.” His eyes went to her stomach and she wrapped her arms around herself as his words crept through her. “True bonds.”
Her brow furrowed with her increasing confusion.
“Listen, I did fuck up, I know this, but I will kill him. I will make it right.”
“You’re going to kill Tom? You?”
He nodded without hesitation. “He has to die now. It’s the only way to remove his forced bond with you. If I had half a mind, I would believe he knows what we are and he did this on purpose.”
She felt her tears brimming. “What?”
“Tom is messing with Elites. It’s suicide and he must know it, yet he’s still doing it.”
“Is that what you are?”
He twitched. “My family is at the top of the Lycan hierarchy; Elite.”
“So that isn’t some stupid term you all keep saying to feel good about being rich and better than everyone else?”
He creased his brow. “What?”
“This has been under my nose the entire time, hasn’t it!”
“Because you’ve been blissfully happy with everything I’ve provided you, Kara.” He sighed. “Maybe you don’t want to see it but I like to be in control and you like to follow me. That works well between us.”
“Excuse me?” She stared at him. “I don’t need you.”
“Yes, you do,” he corrected. “I love you but bloody hell, sometimes you have zero direction. I make sure you have everything. I even make sure you eat on a daily basis. For god’s sake, I chose your dinner tonight because you couldn’t.”
She scoffed and looked away. “You’re such an ass.”
“I like doing all that for you and you like me doing it. It even makes you wet.”
Her eyes went to him fast. “Not everything is about sex—”
“What we have is a lot more than sex, our relationship is a perfect balance. As soon as you came home with me it started and it hasn’t stopped. I’m one hundred percent devoted to you and I might have known better, I did but it felt too good to stop. I’m addicted to you and I’m useless against it. This bond, it’s not a blessing, it’s a curse and it makes me do stupid things, Kara. Stupid things and I’m blind to it all. I always believe I’m doing the right thing and then…”
Her eyes flashed to him and she held out her hand. “I need your phone. I need to call my grandparents. I need to go home.”
“You’re not going anywhere. It’s not safe for you or the baby with Tom still out there.”
She ground her teeth, breathing through her pain. “Give me your phone, I don’t know where mine is!”
He sighed and siphoned his phone from the front pocket of his dress pants.
“I can’t believe you thought this was the right thing to do. Honestly. Do I look like a piece of property to you?”
He groaned. “You look like my wife. Who I love more than life itself.”
“Oh.” Kara let out a laugh. “That’s rich.”
“How can you fault me?” He snapped clutching his phone. “I was trying to protect you and that baby. You didn’t need to know, you would have ran from me. I can’t have you running away, endangering yourself. I need to protect you, you’re mine.”
His words angered her more. “Oh god, I am not your possession, James!”
“I know you know how the Hunter bloodline works but there’s a lot more to Lycan lines. I’m not some Demon—”
She made a face, “You know what’s wrong with you? Your family. They taught you that you’re above everyone else—”
“I am above everyone else!” James shouted, startling her into shutting up. “You don’t get anymore at the top than me, Kara. Not only am I Elite blood but I’m a generational Alpha of my family. The only Alpha-blood until I have a son. This isn’t like Tom’s little games. He’s so below me, he might as well rank demon status, honestly.” He came in close to her. “I would never hurt you like he has and he will die for what he’s done. You’re my wife, you’re my True Bond. Not his.”
Kara didn’t know what to think anymore but she knew one thing. He thinks I’m his.
James locked his eyes on her. You are mine.
Her eyes widened. “How did you do that! You can hear me?”
“I can.”
“All the time?” she squeaked out, putting a hand to her mouth.
“Yes.”
She snatched the phone from his hand. “You asshole!”
“It’s only something True Bonds have, it’s a fucking a mind link. It drives me mental.”
She inched back from him and saw the low battery on his phone flash across the screen.
“We were young and to find a True Bond is… It confused me and when I came back to see you the year before, I had to cement that and make sure that’s what you were. Then I had to deal with it and that was so hard because I’m not supposed to run on desire. That’s not how I was raised. That’s not what my family expects. You make me desire so much.”
“You listen to me.” She pointed at him. “Find Tom. Kill him. You owe me that and then this will all be done.”
James nodded. “Then we can… work on things.”
The feeling crept through her, and the bile raised in her throat as she said to him, “I don’t think we can be together.”
“Kara. Don’t.” He took her hand and she tore it away.
“Don’t what?” She shot, “You don’t deserve me!”
“Don’t you love me?”
“What kind of question is that? Look what you’ve done to someone you supposedly love, James. I would never hurt you like this!” She shook with anger. “You’ve had five years to tell me what you are, and you’ve always chosen not to.”
“I understand why you’re upset with me, but what about our baby?”
Kara’s jaw dropped. “She’s not even your baby!”
“She bloody well is after all this. I’ve married you… for her, to protect you both.”
“Did you? Or did you do it so you’d look good?”
He smiled, like what she said was a joke. “So I’d look good?” She watched him clench and unclench his fists as he methodically continued in his mental anguish. “I think it goes without saying, there is no looking good having children at our age. There’s riding a sinking ship and trying to survive which is bloody accurate in this situation, but I didn’t do this to look good. I did it because I love you.”
“People that love each other, don’t lie to one another.”
“If I could hit reset on it, I would tell you the moment I met you. I would.”
Kara let out a sob and looked away. “I want to call my grandparents. Leave.”
He got off the bed. “I’ll be down the hall in the study, if you need me.”
Kara shut her eyes as he left, waiting to hear the click of the door.
She didn’t know who was right or wrong anymore. If James had points or if he’d been entirely stupid. It all just exhausted her. The baby tossed inside her belly and she tried to rub her into a calm state.
She looked down to his phone in her hand again and swiped it across the screen, ignoring the stack of notifications and congratulatory texts in his incoming folder.
“Shit…” She muttered to herself and started to type in their phone number. It rang, more than a few times before her grandmother answered in a groggy voice.
“Hello?”
“Grandma, it’s Kara.”
“Oh, Karrie!” The voice perked up with excitement. “How was your wedding?”
She burst into tears before the sentence even finished.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s all so bad!” Kara cried harder.
“What do you mean? When we talked on the phone last week you were so excited.”
“I…” She stumbled to explain the situation, not knowing where to start. “James hasn’t been honest with me.”
“Oh no, what has he done?”
Kara swallowed. Unable to form the rest of words. “I just want to come home.”
“Is that necessary? Is it that bad? Is it another woman?”
“I wish!” She grappled her forehead in desperation.
“What’s going on, Karrie, really?”
Kara shut her eyes with her exhale as the whole thing washed over her and overwhelmed her. “I need to leave.”
“You shouldn’t come back so pregnant. You’re safe there. Whatever he’s done, can’t be unforgivable… you’re just upset.”
Kara let out a scoff. “It’s unforgivable.”
“You sound very upset. I don’t think now is the time to make this choice.”
“Grandma, he lied to me about everything!”
“Kara, that makes no sense. You’re having a baby together. Could you afford the medical bills if you came back here alone?”
She got frustrated the longer the conversation continued. “Never mind, I’ve got to go.”
“Kara—”
“Just forget I called.” She ended the call and as soon as she did, a new wave of problems came at her. She had no money, or insurance, or anything that could give her an ounce of security. It was either James Dray and all that he came with or running back home and taking a massive chance. She looked to her pregnant stomach and fell back into the bed, staring at the ceiling as the tears streamed her cheeks.
A pin could have dropped and everyone would have heard it.
“We need The Coven involved,” Garrett finally broke through. “They have investigators that will be able to track this Lycan down, sooner rather than later.”
James’ eyes went to his uncle as the man sat at the desk. The same desk his father sat at, the same one he would if he managed to keep it together enough to get there.
Millie glided across the rug and stopped in front of him, breaking his view of his uncle. “We need to know everything before we do that. Everything.”
“I told you,” James snapped. “It’s her ex-boyfriend.”
“What else is she mixed up in? This doesn’t add up.” Millie still tried to crack through the surface of Tom and Kara. He wasn’t going to give her it, he wasn’t going to tell them his wife was half Hunter.
“What do you want me to say?” James shot. “She’s from a little town in America, overrun with Demons and drugs.”
“I just can’t get around it…” Millie looked positively vile in her expression to him. “How did you think this was a good idea with her, James? Marrying her… having a child with her! Have you lost your mind! Honestly! You’re our Alpha-blood, this is disgraceful.”
James shut his eyes from the way those statements exhausted him.
“That point is moot.” Rose stepped into the conversation. “He’s married her and she’s due in a month with the baby and now, she’s got an ownership on her by another man. That can’t happen in this family, let alone to our heir, so it must be dealt with immediately. Your uncle is right, it will be faster to involve The Coven this time, James.”
He looked between his family members. “Fine.”
“Good.” Garrett washed with relief. “I’ll make a call. Is she alright for now?”
“She’s afraid… wants to go back to America.”
“Out of the question!” Garrett snapped. “She’s not going anywhere with any Dray blood.”
James winced from that statement while wishing it held some truth.
“Obviously she needs protection—”
“That’s the point.” James cut off his uncle. “I didn’t protect her well enough and now I’m paying for it.”
Rose shook her head. “Oh, Jamie, it’s not your fault. These things… well, sometimes these things are not for-seen.”
His eyes found his grandmother through the dimly lit room. “It’s my fault, Nan, trust me.”
“God!” Millie rolled her eyes and stepped back into the conversation with a tap of her heeled feet on the wood plank floors. The same floors generations of his family had stood on and now, he wasn’t sure if he would bring that to an end or not. “Why are you such a slave to her? If I remember correctly, you left Blackwell because we told you no more girls on sleepovers. This is not the behaviour of a man that warrants that type of recommendation.”
“I’ve loved Kara since the day I met her.”
“What are you talking about? She’s American!” Millie grew agitated. “You don’t go to America, ever! She’s a diluted mix of Lycan blood for God’s sake!”
“He has gone to America.” Rose nodded. “Tell them.”
James felt they deserved some level of understanding and perhaps it would get them off his back. “Almost five years ago when the flight was grounded to that American football camp.”
Millie stopped and shared a glance with Garrett. “I told you not to send him to that waste of money.” She spun back toward him. “She must be very special.”
James nodded. “To me, she is.”
Garrett cleared his throat before Millie could continue. “If we help, if we get The Coven involved to find this man who has done this, then you need to get a promise of her behaviour from this point on. She needs to behave herself. She needs to be your wife and obey.”
He stared at his uncle and swallowed. Of all plausible recommendations that one wasn’t in the bag. He’d never been able to control her and how could he, when half of her raged with Hunter blood and wished her own life away?
“Are we making ourselves clear, James?” Garrett added in when he didn’t reply. “Do you think you can reign her in? She seems aloof at times.”
“We can’t deal with any bad press,” Millie told him. “The last thing we need is front page remarks like how your mother often grabbed attention. You don’t need a front page. We don’t need it. Unless you’re kicking a goddamn football, you better not be on a tabloid. Do you understand us?”
James nodded. “Yes.”
“Go make her happy. Calm her down. I’ll call Malcome Clarke and tell him we need an investigator.” Garrett shooed him and as he passed by his grandmother by the door, she gave him a weak smile.
His hand slipped the knob once he’d shut the office door and he heard his family start in on one another right away. It was like they knew what she was already. He had to protect that information with his life. No one could know. He walked toward his room, slowing his step with each nearing stride. Until he was in front of the door. He knocked once.
“Kara?”
No reply came and after a few seconds of nothing, he couldn’t help himself but walk inside from how the silence made him panic. Luckily, she lay on her side, facing away from the door and the relief was instant as he heard her faint breathing.
“Go away,” she mumbled.
“I need to talk to you…”
“No.”
“It’s not really an option.”
She huffed. “It never is.”
He walked over to the bed and looked down at her, wishing he could lie with her, hold her. He didn’t dare though. “Garrett is getting an investigator. They should be able to find Tom—we can hope. In the meantime, I need you to stay here. I want you to stay.”
She twisted around to face him with her smile of insanity. “Don’t worry. My grandmother pointed out I can’t afford to have the baby back home. I assumed you wouldn’t be giving me money for that, being it’s not actually your baby—”
“You need to stop saying that.”
“She’s not though.”
“Are you trying to hurt me? Because it’s working.”
Kara’s eyes narrowed and she shut up.
“My entire family believes that baby is mine right now and I’m not going to tell them otherwise but if you must, then go do it. They’re down the hall.”
Kara rolled her eyes and turned back away from him.
“I’ve already had to explain more than I wanted to.”
“What was that?”
“How I met you. Where I met you. How Tom fits into the mess.”
“That must have been embarrassing.”
“Not as embarrassing as it’s going to be if they find out Emma isn’t mine after all this.” He shifted nearer the bed and sat down beside her. “Promise me you’ll stay here, in the UK with me.”
“No, I won’t—”
He came around her, arms on each side and she moved to her back to look up at him when he growled.
“That should be my mark on you. Do you know that? If I were even a bit out of control, it would be. But instead, it’s your ex-boyfriend’s and he’s trying to claim you and fuck with me in the process. I didn’t fight this hard to have you for nothing.”
She stared up at him. “Because of this bond?Is that what makes you fight for me? Is that what makes you sink your reputation for me, go against your family, marry a woman not worthy of your blood? Is your love for me even real? How do you know?”
He winced. “It’s real.”
She snorted. “It sounds like a supernatural pull. Which means neither of us have any control or mind over it. It’s all a big lie. Our relationship is a lie.”
He pulled away and sat, shaking his head in frustration.
“Isn’t that true?”
“So what if we love each other because a bond might enhance what we feel? At least we love each other.”
“That’s not the point, James!” Tears stung her eyes.
“The point is I waited years, until I couldn’t wait anymore, until I knew you had to be in my life and even if we have lied to one another…” He looked at her with a few laboured breaths. “What’s between us is not a lie. You know that. You feel it. I know it.”
She shut her eyes from the pain of that statement. “I feel like I don’t know you at all, that’s what I feel! I’ll stay here but not in this horrendous monster of a black hole.”
“Blackwell is safe,” he concluded.
Her anger got the best of her. “Then why do I have a bite on my neck if it’s so fucking safe!”
“You have a bite on your neck because he waited for the most opportune moment. I couldn’t possibly sense him with all these wedding guests and staff everywhere. He took this day for all it was worth, getting close to you for a few minutes was all he needed. His failure at the New Years party obviously let him evaluate how he could do it better and he did. He fooled me.”
He heard her gulp.
“You’re safest with me. He won’t attack. He doesn’t like that you got away from him to begin with and now have me protecting you. It’s all just a game to hurt us. It’s all just a bloody game but he won’t win. I won’t let him.”
Kara’s silence edged him into a panic and he watched her shiver into the bedding. Her arm moving to hold her pregnant stomach, he wished he could too.
“Let me protect you. I owe you it.”
“Okay,” she whispered into the dark silence around them.
He let out a sigh. “Thank you…” Then stood to take off his vest, dropping it along the bed where her foot shot out from the sudden contact.
“But we’re not going to sleep next to each other.”
James groaned. “Kara…”
“You can sleep somewhere else, but you’re not sleeping next to me.”
He stared at her through the light of the rising sun coming in the near window. “Right.” He walked to the couch and sat in defeat.
“And I want to go to the house. I want to be there.”
“Our house?”
“Yeah,” she breathed.
He leaned his head back into the couch and shut his eyes. “We need to see what the investigator says.”
“Fine,” she mumbled and he heard her sputter of a few tears.
“I’m right here, Kara.”
“Stay there,” her cries muffled into the pillow.
That’s what he listened to and deserved to listen to, her whimpers and sobs but it was better than not hearing her at all. It was better than being kicked out of the room again.
She never fell asleep and she was sure as she listened to his breaths from across the room, he hadn’t either. When the morning sun burst through the windows bright and cheerfully, that’s when the reality of it all really set in. The knock on the door came like a sledgehammer and James stood from the couch, she watched him walk to answer it.
“The investigator is here. Come down to the sitting room with Kara.”
James shut the door and she took it upon herself to sit up, holding the blanket to her chest. When he turned to her his pause came with a hesitation.
“The investigator—”
“I heard,” she snapped, getting out of bed and feeling the sting of the bite under the bandages. She found her suitcase nearby and opened it up to an array of inappropriate and floaty dresses for the summer weather in France. None of which she had any interest in wearing. She pulled her sherpa pink housecoat from the bottom and put it on, tying it at the side. It went well with the fuzzy socks she added to her cold feet.
James watched her dress with an edge of disapproval, but he wasn’t any more presentable with his wrinkled dress shirt, undone by a few buttons and creased trousers. He walked for the bedroom door without a word and she followed. As his hand turned the doorknob, his cufflinks caught the light. Her heart did a sputter from how much her life had changed in only twelve hours. Those custom designed pieces of metal had been a gift to her husband and now he felt like someone else wearing them.
“From this moment on…” He turned to her and moved in close.
Kara froze mid-step and looked up to him and his natural height.
“You’re Lycan.”
She swallowed.
“It will jeopardize your safety otherwise.”
She swallowed. “Tom will tell them.”
“Tom’s word is worth nothing against ours, don’t worry about that. He can say all he wants, it won’t mean a bloody thing. Come.”
She walked just steps behind, until they were in the main sitting room. Her eyes caught the investigator’s as he stood near the fireplace in a black suit. Looking more like a bodyguard than anything else his title suggested. His clean-shaven face and block jaw, framed his bright blue eyes as they scanned over her housecoat covered body and immature socks.
Garrett and Millie stayed silent as she sat in a particular slowness that James ended up helping her with. She hissed away the contact but tried not to make it obvious.
“Mrs. Dray…” The man adjusted his feet on the rug but it’s as far as her eyes got, his shiny leather shoes. He cleared his throat and she realized he was talking to her and not Millie. “I’m Edward Manning. A private investigator for The Coven. I just want you to be aware that this type of behaviour is unacceptable and we fully intend on helping find him and destroy him.”
Shit.
James looked to her next to him and she wallowed in the way she’d let her thoughts slip. Her eyes lifted to the man.
“Great, thanks.”
He pulled out a notebook from his black blazer. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”
Kara swallowed and out of habit, she looked to James for reassurance. He gave her the most guilt stricken expressions and she wanted to puke.
“Do you know his full name?”
Her eyes darted “Thomas… Nash.”
“How did you meet this Recreant?”
Her eyes lifted with her pause.
“I need to gather information so I can properly execute the investigation, Mrs. Dray.”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
His eyebrow lifted. “Why is that?”
“Do I have to answer that?” Her breathing got heavy.
James’ hand came to her back and she flinched away from him. That’s when the room went silent. Her eyes went around to Millie, Garrett and then the investigator.
“You would prefer to talk in private, ma’am?”
“Nonsense,” Millie snapped.
Kara looked to the man as he gave her an option no one ever had. She nodded to him.
He turned to the room. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Dray alone.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“It’s perhaps a sensitive subject—” The investigator was cut off by Millie before he could finish.
“She has no right to a private audience.”
“Millie.” James stood with a shake of his head.
His aunt stared at him. “Don’t you want to know what she’s done, where she’s been!”
Garrett took Millie’s elbow and whispered, but they all heard his words. “You’re making a scene, dear.”
Millie flew from the room and Garrett followed. Which left James standing and then he too left the room.
Kara relaxed back into the couch as the man picked up an Edwardian high back chair and sat down in front of her.
“I’m not a bad guy.” He clicked on his pen and settled into the seat. “I just need to figure out how to find him and history will help that.”
“I know…” Her eyes lifted to him and she felt his understanding.
“You’ve been hurt tonight. That’s a violation of your body and life. You’re more than entitled to feel what you do.”
Kara caught her need to burst into tears. She’d never in her life been told that, never in her life felt the security of what life as an Elite must have been. Then she realized—she was in it—living it—breathing it and she had been the past eight months unknowingly. Everything James gave her, everything he did for her, he was able to do because of who he was and who he would become.
“You’re a wife of an Alpha-blood, this man has warranted the hunt that will be after him.”
“All because of who I’m married to?”
“Not just married to.” The man smiled at her. “You’re a Dray and any blood of The Coven is thicker than the water of the womb.”
Kara stared at him as her mouth parched. “What?”
“Just an old expression but really, if you are a Clarke, Pottery, Buratti, or Dray, your blood’s so tangled in Coven history, you might as well be Lycan Royalty.” It was clearly a bit of a joke, but hadn’t quite stifled a laugh to go with it. He gave her a once over instead. “But you know that. Where in America are you from again?”
“Virginia.”
“And that’s where this man that’s done this to you is from as well?”
“Yeah…” She nodded.
“Whatever you can tell me about him, that would be very helpful. His profession—”
“He doesn’t really have one.”
He scribbled notes. “Stalking women is his past time then?”
She swallowed while staying quiet. The baby inside her tossed around and she almost broke to tears. Tom might have been involved in all things illegal but he hadn’t seemed like a bad guy until she’d broken promises to him and run off. When she’d met him, he’s just been a slightly intriguing man with an edge of danger she could appreciate. An edge that had fed her Hunter side and made her feel whole, now maybe she realized it was her Lycan side that he had fed. James did all those things and more for her though, he filled every single part of her with a warmth and purpose. She shut her eyes tight to stop the tears.
“Mrs. Dray?”
She looked to the investigator. “Just call me Kara. I’m not…” her words faded.
He lifted an eyebrow, closed his notebook and leaned toward her in the chair. “What this Recreant has done to you, is no better than rape. I want to make sure you get justice, Kara.”
She stared at him, unsure if she deserved justice after everything—after all that had happened to her. The only one that had deserved justice had been Josh and he hadn’t gotten it, yet here she had been enjoying a facade of life. It made her want to puke and then she felt it. It came up her throat and she dared not let it turn up all over the sitting room of antiqued furniture worth more than she’d ever be able to guess. She ran from the room and made it to the front door, just in time to puke over the stone steps and into the garden. It hadn’t been glamorous but it had been better than inside.
“Kara…” James had stepped out behind her.
She stayed bent over the railing, closing her eyes to breathe through the anxiety.
His hand came to her back and she straightened, stepping out of his touch and trying not to have a breakdown. Her eyes watered as she stared out across the manicured gravel driveway. It didn’t look like it had been host to so many cars just twelve hours before. The property could pull off being perfect even after receiving a large reception.
“Are you done with the investigator?”
“I don’t think he has any good information. He won’t find him.”
James stepped up beside her but she didn’t take her eyes off the trees as they rustled gently in the early morning breeze.
“You might be surprised.”
“You’re hopeful but it won’t happen… Tom’s gone.” Kara turned to him, he’d changed his clothing but he still looked exhausted. They both were, she felt it in every nerve ending. She could have collapsed in his arms if it wasn’t for her growing fear of him. He was all the things she’d always thought he wasn’t.
“We have to at least try.”
“What does it matter? Really?”
James stared at her with a growing heavy breath. “We matter, Kara.”
She shook her head and stepped up to him. “I was raised like this. My whole life has been like this. I don’t care what you say or what I may be… I’ll always be a Hunter. It’s what I am.” She walked around him and back into the house, wiping her tears and heading straight for the stairs. There wasn’t much else to say to the investigator because Tom had won.