Tempted by My Evil Lycan Stepbrother novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Ring

I was dressed before Rupert got back down the ladder.

Sweater on inside out, jeans unbuttoned, no shoes.

Leander ran beside me up the wet lawn in last night's jeans and nothing else.

"Showed her what?" I said. "Rupert. What?"

"Photos," Rupert said over his shoulder. "From the dock. Through that round window. You can't see much. You can see enough."

The whole household was in the great hall.

The housekeeper, two cooks, a gardener, the King's driver.

They'd been called in for the morning meeting about the Rite.

They stood in a loose ring around my mother, who was sitting on the arm of a leather couch with Sybil's phone in her hand.

Sybil stood beside her in pale gray, perfectly calm.

The King stood by the cold fireplace in his robe, looking at the floor.

I stopped in the doorway.

My mother looked up.

She didn't look angry.

She looked at my inside-out sweater, my bare feet, the man with no shirt behind me.

"Oh, Teag," she said softly.

"Mom. I can explain."

"I don't think you need to, honey."

She held the phone out to Sybil without looking at her.

Sybil took it.

"I thought she had a right to know," Sybil said to the room. "Before she married into a house where her own daughter is sleeping with the groom's son."

"You took those," I said.

"The dock has a lovely view."

"You stood out there at one in the morning with a camera pointed at a window."

"I take a walk every night. Ask anyone."

The housekeeper looked at her shoes.

My mother stood up.

She walked across the hall to me, small and wiry in her old barn coat, and took both my hands.

Hers were cold.

"I'm going to ask you one thing," she said. "And I want the truth, not the answer you think I need."

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