Chapter 105: 105. Terms & Conditions II
Soren
Two weeks had passed since she demanded a divorce. Two weeks since she punched me into the wall and stormed out. Two weeks since the woman I’d spent years obsessing over walked away like I was an inconvenience she could solve with paperwork.
Not that I didn’t deserve it, but that didn’t cool the sting.
We knew where she was. Of course we did. Knowing the whereabouts of your wife at all times wasn’t stalking.
It was security.
At least, that was the justification we gave each other. Every morning, we received updates. Where she slept. Where she’d gone. Who she spoke to. Which lawyers she’d contacted. What judges were petitioned. How many times she’d attempted to challenge the validity of the contract. How many times she’d failed.
It was fascinating.
Watching Maisie Adams attempt to escape the contract was like watching a hurricane try to punch through a mountain. Undeterred. Determined. Entirely unwilling to accept reality.
And strangely beautiful.
I’d predicted it. The simplest people to read weren’t the ones who claimed to be open books. It was always in the eyes. Maisie’s eyes were like a window into her soul and the last time I’d seen her, her soul had spoken to me.
It said: Fuck you, Soren Black.
You see, anyone else would have looked at the settlement and stopped fighting. Anyone else would have seen the monthly stipend she was entitled to as ours and accepted reality.
Anyone else would have realized that spending a year married to four obscenely wealthy princes before walking away with filthy rich was, objectively speaking, a fantastic deal.
Not Maisie.
Maisie looked at the contract and saw chains. She looked at the money and saw a bribe. She would call it an insult. A slap to her face. She might even call it a trap to keep her tied to us. I called it buying time.
Time to let her anger fade.Time to figure out how to make it right. Time to let ourselves so deep inside her skin and heart, leaving would no longer be a choice.
Because we knew her first lucid thought would be leaving.
It was a coward’s move, but really, it was difficult trying to explain to someone why you made all the wrong choices for all the right reasons.
The popular argument would be; There must’ve been another way.
Short of leaving her in that pack to suffer for the rest of her life and possibly become Cole Hayes’ little mistress, there wasn’t.
I had replayed the alternatives a thousand times. Maybe if I had just walked up to her and had that conversation with her, it could’ve made things better?
Hello, Maisie.
My name is Soren Black.
You may not know me, but I know every little detail about you. What side of the bed you wake every morning. What your bedhair looks like. What your skin smells like before and after you shower. The size of your underwear. I always thought you might look good in red. I know you prefer your coffee sweet and creamy. I also know prefer love pancakes overcooked because you love the crispy edges. I know how many licks it takes you to finish a lollipop. Three. Because you prefer to break and chew the candy—
But we’re moving too fast.
Back to the introductions.
My name is Soren Black. Your father saved my life. But your mother destroyed it long before that day. I spent years hating you for crimes you didn’t commit because every time I looked at you, I saw your mother. Some days, I still do.
But I can’t stop thinking about you.
I think of killing you as much as I think about holding your hand. Lately, I’ve thought more about the latter than I have about the former.
I think about kissing you.
An embarrassing amount.
This makes me irritable. You may have noticed.
Contrary to your belief, I do possess feelings. I simply handle them the way I have been taught is the safest way to handle feelings in my life, by life.
Poorly. With alarming levels of manipulation. Blame that on my aunt. She enjoys toying with the things I care about.
Speaking of manipulation.
I should probably mention that we erased your memories.
In hindsight, this conversation should have happened sooner. I am the reason you spent the last five years scrubbing piss and shit off those toilet seats, peeling off your fingers in the pack floors, and working yourself half to death.
That sounds terrible when I say it aloud. I assure you it somehow sounded better in my head.
Also, there is a reasonable chance you might die. I feel like I should have led with that. After months of waiting for you to realize what you had done to me and how my Lycan had silently claimed you too, seeing you in the woods at the mixer, smelling like fucking Hayes, touched by him, kissed by him, it made my Lycan go crazy.
He decided it was time. And you were ready. And neither of us had a say in it. If I was being honest, I didn’t fight it either. I didn’t want to.
Oh, and the good news is that there’s a good chance that your beast prevails and you live. Usually, the odds are very slim, but you don’t know it yet, but the Hunts aren’t just any royal line. They are the first royal line that ever existed. The oldest. The strongest.
Bright side? If you transition, you just might be the strongest Lycan alive. The other side? You will be bond to me and my brothers forever, whether or not you want it. You’ll always want us. You’ll always want to spread your legs for us. If it is any consolation, we will always feel that way about you.
Which is fortunate. I think.
Would you care for dinner with me? Or do you want to hit me with a chair?
I’d never witnessed wolves or humans confess love for each other before, and neither have I partaken in such things, but even I knew that was unhinged and disturbing on so many levels.
So, I did what any sane Lycan male would’ve done. Eliminate the choices that wouldn’t benefit me and create an illusion of options, where it was really just me pushing her buttons into doing what I wanted.
Because the alternative was losing her. And I hated the alternative more. I didn’t lie when I told her I cared more about her safety than her hatred for me. I just omitted that I also cared more that she was mine than the fact that she hated being mine.
The line between hatred and desire was very, very thin. Made things spicier, if you asked me.
Don’t look at me like that. I’m a bastard and I know that.
You didn’t spend years in court as a prince who was constantly in danger of being killed and not learn how to manipulate situations to your advantage.
I admired her effort, trying endlessly to find a way around us. I smiled everytime I was notified, and I looked forward to whatever new angle she tried every day. I looked forward to the updates.
Because they were all pieces of her. And I had spent far too many years surviving on pieces, glimpses of her and fortunately, I knew where this would end.
Eventually she’d stop.
Eventually she’d realize there was no way around it. Eventually she’d come home. The lawyers would tire of running into dead ends.
Didn’t she know? Lycans made the law. There was no way out. We’d made sure of it. We had every judge in the city in our pockets. And if she decided to flee, we would find her. There was no continent she could run to that we wouldn’t find her.
In the end, she’d settle for negotiations. In the end, her anger would subside. In the end, she would come home and we would have her in our arms again.
And she did return.
But I should’ve known Maisie didn’t just lay down and take the things you threw at her. She caught it. She mulled over it. And when she couldn’t find a solution, she broke it.
Maisie Adams returned after two weeks with a team of lawyers, a new haircut and an attitude.
And I knew we had created something of a monster when she walked in.
Maisie Adams was in black leather.
****
I’d been summoned by the Queen’s Council many times in my life, ripped into by their sharp, wagging tongues and reduced to the level of incompetent. I had been summoned by my aunt, brought to my knees before her while I awaited judgement.
But somehow, those meetings felt inconsequential next to this one in particular.
The tension in the living room was sharp enough to cut glass.
And fuck knew I couldn’t hear jack shit her lawyers were saying to us. Some nonsense about amendments to certain clauses and negotiations for some.
I’d replayed how this meeting would go several times in my head. I’d fantasized about it, even. She would have such rage in her eyes. She would cuss us out. She would snarl at us, bare her teeth at us, say things that would make me want to shut her up by kissing her.
None of my fantasies had involved her looking like... that.
