Chapter 89: Great news

The public bus rattled against the cracked asphalt of the lower district, the low drone of the engine vibrating straight up through the floorboards and into the soles of my shoes. It’s been a while since I took the bus… Which is insane when I think about it.

I jammed my earphones in deeper, cranking the volume until the music was loud enough to drown out the noise in my own skull. I stared out the rain-streaked window, watching the gray blur of the town pass by, trying desperately to scrub the morning from my memory.

We don't ride with traitors... Or whores.

Damon’s sneer kept echoing in my ears, sharp and toxic. I couldn't wrap my head around it. After the way he and Nate had sat beside me, after they had placed their hands on my back and said they would take care of everything… They had turned around this morning and treated Cole like an outcast and me like absolute filth.

Had it all been a lie? Was their sudden burst of empathy just a momentary glitch before their disgust for me took over again?

Or was it an act?

The thought flickered in my mind like a dying match. Maybe they were playing the long game, putting on a show to keep Ernest from doing to them what he did to Cole. The idea brought a fragile, pathetic warmth to my chest. But if that was true, why hadn't either of them whispered a single word of reassurance in the car? Why couldn't Nate have just looked in the rearview mirror and said, “Sorry, Iris, we’re just trying not to get killed”?

I would have understood. I would have played along.

Instead, there had been nothing. Maybe I was just being stupidly optimistic, grasping at straws because the alternative—that they truly despised me—was too heavy to bear.

When I pushed open the front door, the housekeeper, Mrs. Gable, was waiting near the foyer.

"The Alpha requested your presence in his study immediately upon your return, Miss Williams," she muttered, keeping her gaze glued to the floor before scurrying toward the kitchen.

A familiar dread settled into my stomach.

I stepped inside his office. Ernest was sitting behind his massive mahogany desk, writing something across a thick stack of official parchment. He didn't look up. He didn't acknowledge my presence.

"Shut the door behind you," his said, still focused on whatever he was doing.

I closed the door and stood ten feet away, refusing to close the distance. The silence stretched until my nerves were frayed raw, my fingernails digging so deeply into the meat of my palms that I could feel the sharp edges of my claws threatening to push through the skin.

"You wanted to see me," I said, my voice flat.

Ernest carefully capped his fountain pen, setting the papers aside. He leaned back in his leather chair, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. "Yes. I have some news regarding your future. Great news."

"What about my future?"

"Well… Congratulations, my dear," Ernest said smoothly, his lips curving into a patronizing smile. "You are getting married."

The air left my lungs in a sharp, suffocating gasp.

A wave of intense nausea hit my throat so fast I thought I was going to vomit right onto his Persian rug. "What?"

"I promised I would secure you an exceptional match, and I have kept my word," he rumbled, looking entirely pleased with himself. "Aren't you happy?"

"Who...? Who am I going to marry?"

The words felt completely insane coming out of my mouth. Was this sick old bastard being fucking for real?

I had always known marrying me off was originally a huge part of his plan to keep me from ever restoring the mate bond with his sons. But then he had apparently decided, 'Oh, my dead wife's teenage daughter looks so much like her, I'm going to assault her just to feel something,' and after that, he rarely ever brought up his matchmaking schemes again. For a long time, I honestly thought he had become too obsessed with me to ever let me marry anyone, using whatever excuses he could find just to keep his sick little game going.

Hell, he had once explicitly mentioned that he was going to marry me off to someone and have the guy secretly castrated so he could take over the "marital duties" himself and have the perfect cover to get me pregnant without bad social repercussions. I was so mentally checked out and spiraling at the time that I had actually laughed at the idea that his deranged mind thought castrating a random guy was somehow easier than just finding me a closeted gay husband, which would have worked just fine in this scenario.

He was sick and utterly insane, and to this day I had no clue if he had been deadass about the castration thing or just being dramatically, bizarrely psychotic.

He was taking entirely too long to answer me now, just sitting there looking pleased with himself, and the silence was pissing me off more by the second.

"Who, Ernest?" I snapped. "What the hell, just tell me!"

"Christian Harlow."