What were the odds of not seeing the guys at all? Bad, probably.
The whole reason we'd left Shadow Grove and gone to Aspen was their relentless attempts to make me speak with them. Or Kody and Steele, anyway. I hadn't heard a damn thing from Archer himself. No calls, no texts, no showing up on Bree's doorstep uninvited... nothing.
Archer D'Ath.
My husband.
Just acknowledging that fact in my head turned my stomach and made my confident stride falter. The paperwork Zane had provided me with that day had been a copy of my marriage certificate. A marriage I hadn't even been present for. But as my consulted legal counsel had told me, good luck trying to prove that in court. It certainly looked like my signature on the certificate, and my father had signed off as my guardian. The documents had all been completed just before my eighteenth birthday, when I was still a minor.
The other document Zane had gifted me with was a bank statement showing multiple enormous payments made the same day as my marriage had been made official. I didn't have the stomach to dig any further into those accounts, but I could guess what they were. Archer had paid off all my father's bad debts in exchange for... me.
But why? That was what I couldn't understand. The amount of money he’d paid for my forced marriage was more than ten times what my inheritance was worth. So why pay it? He certainly hadn't bought me as a sex slave, like his great-grandfather had purchased Ana all those years ago. I'd basically begged him to fuck me, and he'd refused. So what the hell had he spent the money on?
Sure as hell couldn't have been my sparkling personality.
Unless this was all some elaborately sick mind game. Maybe that was why he’d been fine with his friends having their wicked ways with me, knowing that one day he could clamp a collar around my neck and yank the leash.
Fucking hell. I was giving myself a stomach ulcer just thinking about all the possibilities when I'd done such a good job putting it out of my mind in Aspen. I guess Scott had helped a bit with that. When he was around, he commanded so much attention it was hard to think about anything else. Anyone else.
Bree and I stepped through the doors into the building we both shared for this time slot, and she heaved a sigh. "I guess this is where I leave you," she lamented. "You sure you don't want to switch to my nice, easy arts degree? Then I could move into your apartment and we could spend every waking minute together!" She beamed at me, and I rolled my eyes.
"We would kill each other in a week. Have fun, girl. I'll see you at lunch."
I left her and let myself into my first class of the day, hoping I wasn't too late. I whispered a quick apology to the professor on my way past, but she just arched a brow at me and continued talking. I quickly slid into the first empty seat I could see and hurried to pull my laptop out of my bag as silently as possible.
"Hey," the guy beside me whispered, and I did a double take when I realized who I'd sat down beside.
"Bark," I whispered back, "hey. Sorry, I wasn't even paying attention. How are you?"
He quirked a funny smile at me, then shifted his attention back to the projector screen that our professor was talking about. I thought for a moment he wasn't going to reply, so I opened my own laptop to take notes.
"I should ask you that," he murmured after a moment, giving me a sidelong look. "Last time I saw you, you were pretty out of it. Then there were ambulances, and someone said you'd overdosed on something?" His raised brow conveyed all of his questions around that, and I sighed.
"I'm fine," I replied, keeping it brief. "Someone spiked my drink." His eyes widened in shock, and I shook my head. "Like I said, Bark, I'm fine."
I shifted in my seat, making a clear point that I was interested in concentrating on the lecture and not in continuing our conversation. Bark let the subject drop, but I caught him stealing more than one curious glance at me throughout the class. When it was over, I grabbed my shit and bolted before he could ask me anything else.
Call me crazy, but I wasn't eager to stand around and chat about the most recent near-death experience I'd had. The fact that I'd had more than one was enough to keep me awake most nights as it was.
Bark called out after me, but I was already pushing through the door and hurrying down the corridor with my head down and my long, rose-colored hair creating a shield around my face.
Of course, that meant I didn't see where I was going until I’d run straight into someone's chest. Someone's hard, muscular chest. Someone's very familiar chest that smelled unmistakably of oak and subtle florals.
Ah fuck.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I tossed my hair back and raised my chin to meet his eyes.
It was the meeting I'd been both dreaming about and dreading for four weeks, and one I'd replayed in my mind, over and over, testing out different insults and opening lines to craft the perfect encounter with my husband. Yet none of that could have prepared me for the staggering sense of pain, betrayal, and loss that tore through me on meeting his cold blue eyes in person.
Instantly I knew I wasn't ready for this confrontation. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I tossed aside all those cutting one-liners I'd carefully prepared and simply skated my gaze away from his eyes like he was a total stranger.
"Excuse me," I said quietly, not giving in to the wild tundra of emotions churning within me and tearing strips out of my soul. "I wasn't watching where I was going."
I made to move around him like he meant exactly nothing to me, but he grabbed my wrist in a bruising grip before I could make it more than two steps. A sharp tug saw me turned back to face him, and his mask slipped a fraction, showing me a glimmer of guilt and regret.
Or maybe that was simply what I wanted to see, because in a heartbeat it was gone again.
"Don't be childish, Princess Danvers," he told me in a cutting tone. One that made me want to grab his nuts in my hand and twist.
I arched a cool brow, refusing to let him under my skin. Not visibly, anyway.
"Don't you mean, Princess D'Ath? Or would I be a queen?" I cocked my head to the side, meeting his eyes with my carefully practiced mask in place. We could have been discussing the price of postage for all the emotions I betrayed. Movement behind Archer caught my attention and my heart raced. Of course, the three of them were never far away from each other, but fuck me, I wasn't ready to face the trifecta of fake fucks all at once. Nowhere near ready.
Kody and Steele were heading our way, and I only had seconds to make my escape before I lost my shit in the middle of SGU and forced the dean to call in the coroner. Because no way were all three of them walking away from that conversation alive.
"Maddie, babe," a familiar voice greeted me a second before a strong arm was slung over my shoulders, "there you are. I was looking all over for you!" My new friend Scott grinned down at me with mischief sparkling in his hazel eyes. He knew all about Archer, Kody, and Steele. I'd spilled everything on New Year’s Eve when I'd had way too many shots of peach schnapps and turned into weepy-drunk MK. So what exactly was he up to?
His gaze shifted from mine, and he frowned down at Archer's fingers around my wrist.
"Uh, bro, you got a good reason for grabbing my girl like that?" Scott raised a brow at Archer, seeming not even slightly intimidated by my surprise-husband’s size and general air of danger.