my sister stole my fiancé so I married the devil Chapter 07

I got downstairs in time to hear my sister lie beautifully.

“-couldn’t sleep,” Sienna was saying, standing in the great hall with her coat still on and her eyes shining. “I kept thinking about what you said in the courtyard. About the woman. About the lake.”

Damien stood by the fire with his arms folded. Nikolai stood behind him with his hand near his hip.

“Say it,” Damien said.

“I was there,” Sienna said.

The floor slid out from under me.

“Thursday night. The blackout. I go to the boathouse when things at home get-” she let her voice tremble, expertly, “-difficult. And there were men. Four of them. And then someone came, and they ran, and it was dark, and I-” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “I’ve been so ashamed. I’m engaged. My father would kill me. But when I saw my mother’s locket around your neck tonight-”

She reached into her pocket and drew out a small glass vial.

“That’s my scent,” she said. “Jasmine and vetiver. Handmade. My mother’s. Nobody else in the valley wears it.”

Damien took the vial.

He uncapped it.

He lifted it to his face, and I watched him inhale, and I watched his

shoulders change.

She stole it out of my drawer, I thought numbly. She went into my room after I left and she took my mother’s oil.

“Get out,” I said.

Everyone turned.

I came down the last five steps with my heart slamming.

“You’re engaged to Julian Marchetti,” I said. “You were with him Thursday night. In his bed. I saw you.”

“At nine o’clock,” Sienna said, without missing a beat. “Not at midnight.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?” My sister’s eyes were huge and wet and perfect. “Ivy, I know you hate me. I know I’ve been cruel. But you can’t ask me to stay silent while a man tears the valley apart looking for me.”

“Enough.” Damien’s voice cut through the hall like a wire. He hadn’t looked away from me once. “Ivy. Why are you shaking?”

“Because she is lying-”

“Why does it matter to you,” he said slowly, “if she’s telling the truth?”

And there it was.

The door, standing open. All I had to do was walk through it. Because I’m her. Because the ring is around my neck. Because you told me to sleep, and I did, on your chest, and you smelled like rain.

I opened my mouth.

And Sienna said, sweetly, “Oh, God-Ivy, don’t. Don’t do it. Not this again.”

Damien turned. “Do what?”

“She’ll say it was her.” Sienna’s face crumpled with pity so convincing my own stomach turned. “She’s done this since we were children. Whatever I have, she says it’s hers. My grades. My friends. My fiancé-she told the whole compound Julian proposed to her in a boathouse, and there was never a ring, there was never anything, everyone knows the story.” She dabbed her eye. “She has nothing, so she takes. It isn’t her fault. She’s just never had anything of her own.”

The silence afterward was the loudest sound I’ve ever heard.

Damien looked at me.

I watched the doubt enter him. I watched it settle. And I understood, with perfect and terrible clarity, that if I said the words now, he would hear a beggar reaching for a crown.

“Get her a room,” Damien said finally, to Nikolai. “The south wing. Guards on the door-for her protection and mine. Nobody confirms anything until I say so.”

“Damien-” Sienna started.

“Alpha,” he corrected, without warmth. “You’ll call me Alpha until I

decide what you are.”

He walked out.

Sienna waited exactly four seconds until the door closed.

Then she turned to me, and every trace of tears vanished off her face like water off glass.

“You should see yourself,” she whispered. “You look like you’re dying.”

“You weren’t there. You don’t know what he said. You don’t know what

he did.”

“I don’t need to.” She adjusted her collar. “You’ll tell me. Or you’ll say nothing at all, forever, because who would ever believe you?” She patted my cheek. “Sleep well, Mrs. Volkov. Enjoy the name. I’ll take

the man.”

She went up the stairs.

I stood in the hall of a stranger’s fortress in a torn dress and did not move for a long time.

Then I went up to my room, and locked the door, and pulled the chain out of my dress, and finally-finally-held the ring up to the light to look at the crest I’d been too afraid to look at since Thursday.

A wolf’s head. A crown of thorns. Two crossed blades.

The Volkov seal. Not a copy. The Alpha’s own signet, the one he’d worn since he was seventeen, the one every man in this house would

kneel for.

I sat down hard on the floor.

And that was when my stomach turned over so violently that I barely made it to the bathroom-on my knees, gripping the marble, retching until my eyes streamed.

I sat back against the cold tile, wiped my mouth, and did the math.

Then I did it again.

Because Thursday had been eleven days after the last of my cycle. The exact middle. The worst possible number in the world.