I lay in the sheets of our marital bed, my limbs heavy with the post-coital lethargy that only a woman like Marisol could provide.
Her skin still faintly smelling on me was a victory scent. Beside me, the space where Elowen should have been was cold. It had been cold for hours.
I checked the digital clock on the nightstand: 3:14 AM.
Any second now, I thought with a smile. The little bird will come fluttering back to her cage, thinking she's found the secret to our salvation.
Just then, I heard the rhythmic thump of the delivery lift at the far end of the servant's wing, followed by the softest click of the side door. Elowen was home. She was quiet, remarkably so for someone who usually moved clumsily, but my ears were tuned to the frequencies of her guilt.
I closed my eyes, schooling my features into those of a deeply sleeping, troubled husband.
The bedroom door creaked open and a bit of moonlight from the hallway spread across the rug. I heard her ragged and shallow breathing as she entered, as if she had run miles through the damp night.
I could hear the rustle of her hoodie as she tugged it off, the desperate zip of her discarded leggings hitting the floor. She was scrambling. She was terrified of me waking up.
Good, I thought, the smile threatening to break my stoicism. Fear is the best foundation for a lie.
She slid into the bed silently and moved toward the edge, keeping as much distance between us as possible. She probably thought she was being discreet or maybe that she was protecting me from her "shameful" secret quest.
However, when the deep, spicy bergamot scent flew to my nose, my heart did a heavy thud in my chest. I knew that scent. I had smelled it in the council room, a scent that radiated off the man who had looked at me as if I were a cockroach he had yet to step on.
Jarek Ashthorne. The fucking Rogue King.
The smile died on my face instantly. Why did my empty barrel of a wife smell like the most dangerous man in the supernatural underworld?
I remembered the doctor's report from the night of the crash. "She was lucky," Aris had said, avoiding my eyes. "A rogue pulled her from the wreckage. If he hadn't applied the tourniquet, she would have bled out before the paramedics arrived."
I had dismissed it at the time as a random act of a scavenger looking for jewelry but got a cold feet. But now? Now that the Rogue King bastard had dared to step foot in our pack, smelling like the first thing my wife mentioned after waking up from a coma, my skin crawled.
Had she seen him tonight? Or was the scent simply so potent that it had stained her soul from the night of the accident?
A cold prickle of sweat broke out on my neck. I didn't want her near rogues. Not because I cared about her safety—let's be clear, if she fell into a vat of acid, I'd only be upset about the paperwork—but because I couldn't risk her stumbling onto the truth.
My transactions with the Rogue Fringe were the only thing keeping my head off the block. If she started talking to the wrong people, if Ashthorne decided to use her against me...
I felt a surge of pure, lucid loathing. That fucking gutter-wolf!
I had to fix this. I had to brainwash her so thoroughly that she'd start doubting her own shadow.
Don't worry, Ellie, I thought, my jaw tightening. I'll scrub your mind until it's as clean and empty as your womb.
Fortunately, help was arriving today.
Vector Harker, my personal assistant, my shadow, and quite possibly the only person in this country whose IQ made the Council look like a pack of toddlers. He had been "on leave" for two weeks.
It was a necessary disappearance that aligned perfectly with Aurelius's final heartbeats. He was the one who had sanitized the offshore accounts. He was the one who had found the "independent" medical researchers.
I needed him to cut the bergamot out of my wife's memory.
.
.
The morning sun bled through the velvet curtains, painting the room in shades of gold. I woke up, letting out a long yawn. Beside me, Elowen was already awake. She was sitting up against the headboard, her knees pulled to her chest, staring at the far wall with eyes that looked like they had been hollowed out with a spoon.
She looked like a wreck. Pity.
"Morning, sweetheart," I murmured.
I leaned over and pecked her cheek. Her skin was cold. She flinched a little but I felt it. The bergamot was fainter now, masked by her own sweat and the scent of the sheets, but it was still there.
"You're up early," I said, propping myself up on one elbow. I reached out to brush a stray hair from her face. "Did you sleep at all? You look like you've been fighting ghosts."
She didn't look at me. "Isn't everything wrong, Gideon? Everything in my life is... It's just wrong."
I let out a heavy sigh. I sat up and ran a hand through my hair, looking for all the world like a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"I know, Ellie. I know. The Council, the baby, the... the loss. It's too much for one person." I paused.
"I've been thinking," I sighed, making my voice sound weary, as if the words were being dragged out of me. "About what you said yesterday. About the... surrogate."
Elowen's head snapped toward me. Her eyes searched mine, looking for the catch.
"I need one day," I said, holding up a hand. "Just one day to really think about it. To talk to the lawyers, to look at the medical risks. If... if agreeing to do this is the only thing that will make you happy, the only thing that will bring peace to this house... then I owe it to you to consider it."