Chapter Twenty-One
T WEN TY - O NE
I make Bishop drag me, even when he leans down to my ear and says, “Walk.” I’m not being petty. I’m incapable of forming such a small emotion. I don’t walk because my body will not obey.
Finally, he lifts me up, braced for me to kick or thrash. I lie in his arms and squeeze my eyes shut and focus on my grief and my rage.
I won’t think of what’s to come. It’s only fuel for the fire. Bishop can beat me. I’m beyond caring. I’ll take my revenge when I can, and it will be bloodier than anything Bishop inflicts.
We descend a seemingly endless flight of stairs into a cold and dark basement. Bishop takes me through one thick door and down a narrow hall. Then he grips an iron door so thick that even he has to yank hard to open it.
Once inside, he lowers me to the floor and lights a lamp. When he glances at me, I sit there, holding my removed gag, and he winces, as if he’d forgotten my hands are free.
“Don’t worry, dear Bishop,” I say, honey-sweet.
“You’ll encounter no resistance from me.
No tricks. No spells. No screams, if I can help it.
But know this…” I push to my feet and step toward him.
“What happens in here is immaterial. Once I’m free—and I will get free—I’ll hunt you and Silas down, and I’ll kill you both for what you did to my aunt. ”
He blinks in what seems like genuine surprise, and I find myself laughing at that, an ugly sound that rips from my chest and is ready to become a sob before I swallow it.
“Oh,” I say. “Are you going to tell me that you didn’t have anything to do with it? That you had no idea he’d kill my aunt?”
“I didn’t, Cordelia. Honestly. I expected he’d threaten to hurt her, but…” He rubs his mouth. “He’s more unstable than any of us realized.”
“Maybe because he feels the noose closing about his neck?” I say. “Senses his own wolves circling, preparing to cut him down, his loyal right-hand man leading the charge?”
Bishop’s head whips up, his eyes filled with such shock that I let out another of those ragged laughs.
“You’re planning a mutiny, Bishop,” I say. “If I can see it, Silas can sense it. Only arrogance blinds him. But the more unstable he becomes and the more he doubts your loyalty, the more that fog will clear.”
Bishop wavers, as if ready to deny it. Then he says, “It’s not a mutiny. It’s a leadership challenge. That’s how things work in a Pack. Any wolf may challenge the Alpha, if he feels he has the loyalty of enough wolves to back him.”
I wave a hand. “Mutiny, coup, challenge, I don’t care.
My father is a monster. You probably are, too, but it doesn’t matter to me.
If you defeat him, that’s one fewer werewolf I need to kill.
Not having a man’s pride, I don’t need to take him down myself.
” I meet his gaze. “I’ll be satisfied with killing you. ”
He blanches, but then straightens and meets my eyes. “I didn’t murder your aunt, Cordelia. I didn’t see it coming, even at the last minute.”
“But you stopped me from taking my revenge.”
“By killing your father? You’d never have succeeded. If Silas didn’t kill you, Henry would have—gladly—and I’m not sure I could have stopped them.”
“I had the right to try,” I snap. “If I died doing it, that was my choice. Don’t pretend you care whether I live or die. You brought me to this house.”
He walks to the cell door and sticks his head out, listening and inhaling.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say when he returns to me. “Am I forestalling my punishment? Are you worried someone might realize we’re only talking?”
Bishop lowers his voice. “Your father tasked me with bringing you to him. Could I have counseled that it was too dangerous? Yes.” He braces himself and meets my gaze with a steady stare.
“Reginald wanted to wait. Claude said we could still use your aunt’s next payment.
If I had added to their voices counseling restraint, we might have swayed him.
So you’re right to blame me for bringing you here, and in that sense, your aunt’s death is my fault. ”
His honesty sets me back, though I try not to show it.
“I didn’t know you,” he continues. “You were a pawn on the chessboard. Launching a fake threat and bringing you in seemed the right move for the Pack. Your father was determined, and my plans were better served by impressing him. Also, I worried that if I counseled against it, he’d have done it without me, and wolves would have died.
You were a pawn to me. But when your father sets his mind on a thing, we are all pawns to him.
That’s what I’m fighting for—my Pack brothers. ”
I say nothing. How can I? Of course he’d value his Pack brothers over a stranger. I’d expect nothing less.
“I miscalculated.” The words come with the rush of a terrible confession. “I didn’t fully understand the situation.”
I cross my arms. “‘The situation’ being that I didn’t come along easily. You’re going to blame this on me. Everything has gone wrong because I fought back.”
“No. Of course I hoped you’d come more easily. Even if I suspected your father planned to mate us, I thought we’d have time to avoid that.”
“Time for you to launch your coup.”
“I said I made a miscalculation. It had nothing to do with you, Cordelia. I had no idea how much he hated your aunt.”
I rock back. “He didn’t bring her here to make me obey, did he? No matter what she said or did, no matter what I said or did, he was going to kill her.”
He exhales a long breath. “I think so. He did it in front of the Pack as a show of force. He did it in front of you as a lesson against crossing him.”
“Except I haven’t crossed him. I agreed to marry you and stole his excuse. He murdered her in cold blood, after tricking everyone into relaxing their guard. It was as cowardly as if he stabbed her in the back.”
“Yes, that was his miscalculation. So was admitting that Petey died bringing her in. But I know that doesn’t matter.” His voice drops. “Your aunt is still dead, and that is what matters.”
I move backward, hand out, as if looking for a chair to collapse into. Except there isn’t a chair. It’s an empty cell, devoid of even a cot. When I falter, Bishop reaches, as if to steady me, but I duck him and straighten.
“You’ll need to hit me hard enough to leave bruises,” I say. “Soft tissue is best, though please avoid my torso. Internal injuries are particularly dangerous. You might want to break one of my arms. I fractured the right one as a child, so that’s probably easy to snap again.”
He stares in such horror that I arch a brow at him.
“I’m not going to hit you,” he says.
“Then do you propose I hit myself? Break my own arm? All that would do is free you of the guilt. It wouldn’t help me one bit. Now, I can provide more tips—”
“I’m not hitting you, Cordelia, and I’m not going to let you injure yourself.”
“My father is going to personally ‘inspect your handiwork,’ remember? You need to do something.”
His mouth opens and shuts.
I cross my arms. “Fine, maybe it’d be enough if you took your wedding night early.”
The horror in his face only grows. “What?”
“We can fake it. Tear my undergarments. Bloody my nether regions. I’ve treated women who were attacked. I’ll tell Julius what internal damage he needs to report to Silas—”
“Absolutely not. Your father would never believe I’d do that.”
I pause, remembering what Silas said when Henry proposed that. Bishop is right. Silas wouldn’t believe it.
“Then what do you suggest?” I say.
He leans forward, as if he had been waiting for this. “Your nose is already bloodied. We can make it bleed more. Julius can say I broke it. You must have some bruises rising from Henry knocking you around. We’ll say I’m responsible for those.”
“I think Silas expects more than a bloodied nose and a few bruises.”
His jaw sets. “I won’t hurt you, Cordelia. And I won’t be the coward who lets someone else do it. This can be accomplished by subterfuge.”
“No, it can’t.”
He glares at me. “Is this my punishment, then? You’ll force me to strike you?”
“So I can later blame you for striking me?” I say. “Is that really what you think of me?”
“No, but you can tell it’d cause me great distress to hurt you. You’re angry with me, justifiably so, and you wouldn’t mind having another reason to think me a brute.”
“Oh, you’re such a pompous ass,” I say.
“Pompous?”
I step toward him. “Pompous and conceited and arrogant. You say you miscalculated? I’d say you missed the mark entirely.”
His face suffuses with red. “I admitted to making an error in judgment. But no one in the Pack understood the situation with your aunt and the depth of your father’s hatred.”
“Oh, that wasn’t your miscalculation.” I step even closer, until the smell of him sets my insides burning, with something that doesn’t feel like rage. I meet his gaze. “You miscalculated how you’d come to feel about me.”
“What?” The word is oddly strangled. I expected to surprise him, and I have, but not in the way I thought. The look in his eyes is akin to panic.
“You miscalculated your ability to continue being rude and dismissive to someone who didn’t deserve it.”
“Oh.” He eases back. Then his jaw sets again. “If you consider that a defect of character—”
“Not at all. But you pride yourself on being cool and collected. You are cool, but you’re not cold, are you?”
Is he flushing? That’s not what I’m aiming for, so I try again.
“You pulled me into this, but you couldn’t follow through. You needed to be able to mistreat me. To watch others mistreat me and not react. To send me down here with someone who would beat me if you couldn’t do it yourself.”
His eyes flash. “Again, if you mistake that for weakness—”
“I mistake it for empathy. For consideration. For the sort of thing one would expect of a man who wants to depose a monster to protect his Pack, not because he wants to be king.”
The smallest tweak of his lips. “Oh, but I also want to be king.” The look in his eyes—the raw ambition—fans that burning spark back to life.
“Then you need to do it.” I put my face to his, so close now that I can feel his breath. “You’re overthrowing a monster. If you can’t fake being monstrous yourself, maybe someone else should take the throne.”
That finally does it. His eyes flash, temper rising. “Are you questioning my right—”
“Yes. I question your right, your ability, whether you have what it takes.” I rise on my tiptoes, until we’re almost nose to nose. “I question you. Now what do you want to do about that? Put your hands around my neck? Throttle me?”
“You’re goading me.”
“Took you long enough to realize it. Are you sure you’re as smart as everyone says?”
His eyes burn hotter, and I move his hands to my throat. He doesn’t resist. I wrap them around my neck and then lift again until our lips almost touch, my eyes locking on his, my voice coming inexplicably hoarse when I speak.
“Go ahead, Bishop.” I start to tell him to punish me for insulting him, but he won’t fall for that. Instead, other words come, unbidden. “Go ahead. I trust you not to truly hurt me. It’s a game and…” I move my lips to his ear. “I want to play it.”
His fingers tighten around my neck, and I brace for pain, but his face only hovers there, gaze on mine, dark eyes alight with something that blazes through me.
“Delia,” he whispers, and then he kisses me.