Page 15 of Smoke

That was news to me. Why would he know anything about me—unless George had already told him what he felt there was to know?

“It doesn’t bother you to know that your wife will spend so much of her time away from you?” I asked.

“Why should that bother me?”

The way he shrugged told me everything I needed to know. He only wanted a wife. He didn’t want a partner. A companion. An equal.

Our marriage wouldn’t be like my parents’ marriage was. They were in love to their dying day and had no qualms about showing it. She adored him, looked up to him, but was never a doormat.

Many was the time Jasmine, and I stayed up late into the night, ears pressed to the wall between our bedroom and theirs, listening to Mama give Papa an earful on any number of things. She had passed her opinionated nature to the two of us.

Even better, Papa had respected her opinion. He’d valued her the way he’d valued Jasmine and me. He didn’t talk down to her, never condescended, and always asked for her thoughts on any major decision. He never even went away on clan-related business without first clearing it with her, in case she’d made plans for something else.

Bradley had no such visions for his marriage. It didn’t even matter which sister he married, so long as he married into the family and secured his position.

And George certainly didn’t care, because it meant securing the money Bradley’s family possessed. As far as they were concerned, this was a match made in heaven.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to see who he really was. It was a trick I had trained myself to never use, not ever, because it was normally better not to see how my fellow clan members appeared under the glamours they put up to make themselves look beautiful.

We all did it. It was tradition. And only we could see what was underneath.

I looked nothing like the Alina who was in that office—not ugly, but hardly beautiful. Small and plain and elfin.

Who was Bradley?

I flipped the switch in my head and let my vision settle into what was real.

And I had to bite back a scream of revulsion when I saw what lived beneath that tan, fit illusion he put up for the world’s benefit.

I wanted to thank him for it, because the slobbering, rotting monster who actually sat in front of me was nothing I wanted to share a room with. Much less a last name, a life, a marriage.

I blinked hard to make it go away and wished, as I knew I would, that I hadn’t looked.

I had never wanted Smoke as much as I did right now.

“Does it even matter that I don’t want this?” I asked in a low voice, almost a whisper.

Bradley blinked. “You’ll come to understand in time why this was the best decision we could make in the face of a hopeless situation.”

“I doubt it.”

“Alina!” George’s voice cracked through the air.

I winced at its power.

He had never raised his voice to me—he had never dared. Knowing he had the upper hand, and that there wasn’t much I could do gave him the balls to let his true nature rise to the surface.

His features twisted into an ugly snarl. “You’ll do as I say, because I’m leader of the clan and your last living blood relative. I’m also your guardian, according to the provisions your father made in his will.”

“I’m not a child anymore,” I reminded him, standing.

My long, cotton dress hid the way my knees knocked together. Frankly, the two of them terrified me, but I would rather have died than let them see it.

“I’m of age, so I don’t need a guardian to tell me what to do. I refuse this match. It’s ludicrous. Jasmine’s death negates the blood oath.”

In reality, Pierce’s blood negated it, but they had no way of knowing that. They only knew the oath had dissolved, its power nullified, once Jasmine’s blood mixed with a dragon’s.

“Blood oath or not, there’s still the issue of the plans which had already been laid.” George was about to turn eggplant purple, he was so enraged. His eyes bulged. Sweat beaded around his temples.

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