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wasn’t good about taking care of it. I was hospitalized a few times.”
    “But you got better,” Rylie interrupted.
    Her aunt patted her hand. “I died, babe. Heart failure.” She sighed. “I woke up in the hospital immediately. Scott had given me a charm bracelet before—said it was a Christmas present that would help heal me. But all it did was bring me back when I died.”
    “So you’re like Eleanor,” Seth said.
    “I reckon so.”
    “No way. She’s all rotten,” Rylie protested.
    “He must have brought her back from the grave after she’d been decaying for a while. I was fresh. See, if I break or tear something, I don’t heal. But as long as a necromancer keeps fixing me, I could live like this forever. I was grateful for Scott’s gift. It let me stay with you, babe.” Gwyn smiled fondly at Rylie and patted her hand. “But I didn’t know that Scott had… other plans.”
    Bekah gave another ragged sob. Levi hugged her tightly. “He would never work for Cain,” Levi said fiercely. “I don’t believe it.”
    Rylie rounded on him. “You think Gwyn is lying?”
    “No. I saw the tattoo. But it must be something else. Blackmail, maybe.” Levi pounded a fist on the table, making the coffee mugs jump. “You didn’t have to kill him!”
    Gwyn didn’t rise to meet his anger. She took another sip of coffee and set it down again.
    “No,” she said softly. “I didn’t. Frankly, I don’t know if he’ll be able to keep me running now that I killed him, so it would have been in my best interests to do nothing. But I couldn’t let that traitor run free. He was going to sacrifice Rylie to resurrect Eleanor.”
    Rylie couldn’t hold it back anymore. A hot tear slid down her cheek.
    It was Crystal who spoke. “So you’re going to die anyway.”
    Gwyn just pushed Rylie’s mug closer to her. “Drink up, babe.”
    She stared at the black fluid. A disjointed corner of her brain wondered if she should drink that much caffeine when she was pregnant. Rylie brought the mug to her lips, but didn’t drink before setting it down again.
    “What are we going to do about Scott?” Trevin asked.
    Seth pushed his chair back and stood.
    “Get answers.”

N INE
    The Day before the Wedding
    Despite his exhaustion, Abel couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t even that he still had a fork buried in his ribs—after a couple of hours, it turned to nothing more than a numb spot on his side. And it definitely wasn’t fear, because he wasn’t afraid anymore, either.
    The thought that kept him up was Rylie. She was out there somewhere, growing his baby in her womb, and thinking of it filled him with possessive heat. The urge to claim her, and beat all other claimants away.
    He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t let his guard down. Couldn’t get sacrificed to bring his bitch of a mother back to life.
    A rumbling growl rose in Abel’s chest and rolled through his throat. His muscles tensed as he strained against the ropes, twisting his wrists and arching his back to put all of his strength behind trying to snap them again.
    He had been trying every five minutes ever since Cain left him, and made no progress. But he had to get free. That singular need drove everything else from his mind.
    The night wore on, long and slow. The dawn was broken with the sound of Eleanor’s shriek.
    “What do you mean , he’s gone missing?”
    Abel jerked in his ropes, twisting around to see where her voice had come from. He had smelled her, and known that she had to be close, but his mom hadn’t come out to taunt him.
    Now Eleanor and Cain were yelling at each other.
    “He was supposed to be here last night, and he never arrived!” Cain’s voice filtered through the window, only a fraction quieter than Eleanor.
    “You didn’t have someone watching him?”
    “Of course I did,” Cain snapped. “But he hasn’t reported in lately, and—”
    He fell silent. Eleanor must have said something, but it was too quiet for Abel to hear what she