Tempted by My Evil Lycan Stepbrother novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Speaker

Teagan shames Leander on camera at the gate, and Sybil corners her in the library: she saw the silver, and she'll make Teagan a princess if she lets him bite her.

By breakfast the photo had four hundred thousand views.

Breakfast at Marchmont Hall was a long table in a room with antlers on the walls and a fire going in September.

Lycans ate.

There were platters of steak, eggs by the dozen, and a whole ham that nobody had sliced yet.

My mother sat at the King's right hand in a borrowed sweater, pushing toast around her plate.

Her ring caught the light every time she moved.

Godfrey kept sliding food onto her plate when she wasn't looking.

"I can't eat four eggs, Godfrey."

"You didn't eat last night."

"I was busy being humiliated."

He looked down the table at his son.

Leander was at the far end, in yesterday's shirt, scrolling his phone with one thumb.

Rupert sat next to me, already on his third plate.

"Morning, sister," he said.

"Don't."

"Stepsister? Sister-in-law? I'm workshopping it."

Sybil sat across from me in gray silk, eating half a grapefruit with a tiny silver spoon.

She hadn't said a word to me.

Leander put his phone down.

"Good news," he said to the whole table. "I've invited the press to the Rite."

My mother's toast stopped halfway to her mouth.

"Every site," Leander said. "Live feed from the gallery. They're very excited."

"Leander," the King said.

"What? It's a royal occasion. The people deserve to see it."

He looked straight at me.

"If I'm going to be turned down by a paramedic, I'm doing it in front of the whole world. My father will love that."

Under the table, I could feel my palm start to hum.

My mother set her toast down.

"Why would you do that to her?"

"I'm not doing anything to her. She's the one with the speech."

I wiped my mouth on the cloth napkin and stood up.

"Where are you going?" Rupert said.

"To talk to the press. Since we're inviting them."

There was a reporter at the gate.

There had been one since dawn, a man in a rain jacket with a phone on a stick, filming every car that came down the lake road.

I walked the whole quarter mile down the gravel drive in my uniform pants and a borrowed Marchmont Hall sweatshirt.

He saw me coming and nearly dropped the stick.

"Teagan Mackey? Are you his mate? Is it true?"

"You want a story?" I said.

"Yes. God, yes."

"I came off a shift with a man's blood still on my pants."

He pointed the phone at my knee. I let him.

"The prince met me on the dock with four of his friends, and they filmed it. You can ask them what he said."

"Is there video?"

"His friends have it. Ask them for it. Ask him why he didn't post that one."

"And the mate claim?"

"Ask the moon. I'm going back to breakfast."

By the time I reached the house, the clip was up.

By lunch, someone had found the friends' video and put it next to mine.

Leander's front-page face throwing a suitcase, then my knee with a stranger's blood on it.

A hundred thousand people had an opinion about him by two o'clock.

Rupert sent me a row of fire emojis and a doughnut.

The library was the only quiet room in the Hall.

It was two floors of books, a ladder on a brass rail, and windows over the terrace.

I'd gone in to call my partner and tell him I'd still be on shift Tuesday.

When I hung up, Sybil Penrith was sitting in the armchair by the fire.

I hadn't heard her come in.

"Your little performance at the gate was effective," she said. "Crude, but effective."

"He started it."

"He usually does."

She stood and walked to the window that looked down on the terrace wall.

She tapped the glass with one fingernail.

"I saw you last night. From here."

My stomach turned over.

"I saw your hands. I've read the marks for thirty years, Miss Mackey. I know a real bond when it lights the whole terrace."

"Then you know I'm refusing it."

"Why on earth would you do that?"

She turned around.

Up close, her eyes were nearly white.

"Let him bite you," she said, as calmly as if she were offering more tea. "Tonight, tomorrow, whenever you like. Then there's nothing to refuse."

"And my mother can't marry his father."

"Your mother is a human widow from a cow town. She'll get over a wolf."

I didn't move.

"You'd be a princess," she said. "Queen, one day. My nephew is a disgrace, but he's a beautiful one. Your mother keeps her little clinic. Everyone gets something."

"Except my mother."

"Your mother was never going to sit on that throne. I would have seen to it one way or another. This way is kinder."

"No," I said.

"You haven't thought about it."

"I don't need to. No."

She looked at me.

Then she smiled, and it was worse than the look.

"Then I'll just wait," she said. "Wolves never could keep their teeth to themselves."

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