Chapter 127

I know Caleb’s idea of interrogation involves torture. I’ve seen it happen. Hells, it even happened to me once. And I don’t totally trust Caleb’s promise not to kill Leah, either. When he gets in those overly-aggressive moods sometimes, it’s hard for him to hold back even when he wants to.

So I tell him, “If you are going to interrogate Leah, I want to be there. Not just watching, I want to be in the room.”

Caleb glances at me sideways. “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have the stomach for that. You are too soft.”

“I don’t think it will come to actual torture,” I say. “The threat of it should be enough.” My presence will ensure he doesn’t go too far.

I might hate my sister for what she’s done to me: drugging me, mocking me, stealing my life and treating me like her own personal slave. But beneath it all, she is still my sister. My parents love her. She’s Samuel’s wife.

I hate her, but I can’t be responsible for her torture and death.

I deserve better than the guilt that will come with that, even if she doesn’t.

Caleb glares me down like he thinks that will change my answer. He can still be intimidating as hell when he wants to be, but the concern that occasionally flashes in his eyes takes away all the real heat in this moment. So I stare straight back at him.

Eventually, he acquiesces. “Fine,” he says. “But if she starts badmouthing you again, I can’t promise to be civil.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to be anyway,” I say, lightly teasing.

It feels good to have the past aired between us. I’ve always wondered how Caleb felt. I didn’t remember him finding me. I do remember being insanely attracted to him, craving him with my entire body and soul. And that scent – all masculine Alpha. It must have been his rut.

His rut was triggered by my heat, but it also amplified my heat. We were the perfect kind of storm, gone on each other for the entire length of the evening.

Knowing that, I can’t even fault him for disappearing in the night before I woke up.

“That night,” I say, my final question. “In the morning.”

He nods, letting me know he’s listening.

This question isn’t easy to ask. It takes me a moment, gathering my courage, “Were you going to come back?”

“I thought about not,” Caleb says. “I went on a long walk to clear my head. When I did return, the bed was empty and you were gone.”

He came back. My heart aches. If my parents hadn’t found me. If Caleb had returned in time to claim me properly… How much would be different?

Or was I always doomed to end up in Caleb’s harem?

“I assumed you wanted a one-night stand. I wasn’t angry then,” Caleb says. “It was only later, when I found out about the child.”

With a sigh, I tell him, “There is no child.”

He frowns at me. “So you keep telling me.”

Before we can speak further, Bethany returns with a doctor, and Caleb insists the doctor check me over. Once the diagnosis is delivered, that I’m more or less okay, though I should eat something and drink more water, Caleb walks out of the room and does not re-enter.

“Are you okay?” Bethany asks, once Caleb and the doctor are gone.

“I don’t know,” I reply. It’s the honest truth.

After lunch, I receive a strange summons from a handmaiden I do not know.

“My mistress, Annabelle, wishes to speak with you,” she says.

From my doorway, I glance up the hallway at the guards, but they pay the handmaiden very little mind. Caleb likely authorized this then. Perhaps he’s given Annabelle and her servants reign over the entire palace.

My stomach flip-flops but I push down the feeling. I’ve been sick enough for one day.

Well, if Caleb has authorized this, then I have no choice really but to honor this summons, even if I’d rather run screaming, naked into a forest filled with bees.

“Very well,” I say.

The handmaiden leads me out to the courtyard, to a small rod-iron table in the shadow of a great oak tree, where Annabelle sits, having her afternoon tea.

There’s only one cup, so I imagine I’ll just stay standing. She’ll say what she wants, and we’ll both move on with our days.

So it surprises me when she gestures to the empty chair across from hers. “Sit down, Harper. We should probably have a little chat.”

I want to refuse, but knowing there will be consequences if I do, I just sit instead.

“How are you feeling, after your little tumble this morning?” she asks.

I look at her with suspicion, but her eyes seem genuinely concerned. Her lips dip down at the corners in a small, worried frown.

“I’m doing well,” I say. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night, I think.” It’s not the full truth, but she doesn’t need to know my entire life story. She’s Caleb’s suitor, after all. Not mine.

“Sleep is important,” she says and sips from her tea cup.

She’s stalling, even I can tell.

There’s no way in hell she called me all the way out here just to ask after my health, so I prompt, “I imagine you wanted to ask me something else.”

“Yes,” she says. She sets her tea cup down with a clink of porcelain. Then she dabs at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “I suppose there’s no point in delaying the inevitable. It’s not an easy question to ask, mind, so I know it will be equally difficult for you to answer. Still, I must persist, and I ask you to as well, for Caleb’s sake.”

I nod, though truthfully, I’m waiting until I hear the question.

“I want to know more about the relationship between you and Caleb,” Annabelle says. “He has assured me that you are simply a member of his harem, but I saw the way that he dropped everything for you this morning. He even ignored me, in favor of tending to you.”

Caleb didn’t tell me that part. As far as I knew, I passed out and some guard dragged me back to my room. But I suppose it made sense now, how Caleb was already there when I came back into myself.

“You are more than a member of his harem,” Annabelle says. “But how much more?”

Annabelle was right – this is an exceedingly difficult question to answer. Also, I’m not sure I’m the person to ask for the answer. “Only Caleb really knows that.”

Annabelle frowns a little. She clearly doesn’t care for that answer. I don’t blame her. If she does try to ask Caleb about me, he will likely blow off the question as absurd.

And maybe it is. Caleb and I are intertwined based on our one night stand and a brief trip to a farmhouse. Aside from that, I am no different than any other harem member, despite what it looks like to Annabelle.

“Regardless,” Annabelle continues. “I do want to make one thing clear to you. If I am to marry Caleb, which seems like a distinct possibility for our near future, you will step back and take a more passive role in his life. Not just for me, or for him, but for yourself.”

I blink, unsure how to feel. Presently, all I feel is stabbing hurt.

“When the wedding is completed, the first thing I’m going to ask Caleb to do is release his harem as a gift to me,” Annabelle says. “I insist on being the only woman in his life.”