The Hyenas Gather
Exhausted, she only woke when Baron leaned over and kissed her cheek. She was on her stomach in a
tangle of sheets, as their last round of sex had left her. He was showered and had dressed, the fresh
scent of his cologne still heavy on his skin after recent application. His cheeks were smooth, and his hair
slicked back as he preferred it.
“I have to go into the office,” he told her, stroking his hand down her spine. “Sleep, Jane. It is still early,
and we have a function tonight.”
She could not fall asleep again and so she rose and had a shower before stripping the over-used
bedding off the bed and stuffing it into the hamper. She dressed in running gear, and cautiously made her
way through the house hoping to avoid Angelique. As she reached the front door, movement on the
landing caught her attention, and she looked up meeting Angelique’s eyes, before she dropped her gaze
and hurriedly escaped into the morning.
She ran to the café and knocked on the kitchen door.
“Good morning,” James opened it. “We were beginning to worry,” he added as she stepped inside. “It
has been a few days.” His eyes searched her for bruises. She had deliberately worn a long sleeve
running top to hide the now yellowing bruise left by Baron’s teeth on her shoulder and so knew there was
nothing for him to see.
She smiled brightly. “I just couldn’t get away, I am sorry. They would stop me if they knew, so sometimes
it’s just harder than others.”
“They?” Patrick was in the kitchen unpacking boxes onto the shelves.
“It’s complicated,” she rolled up her sleeves.
“Baron is... Well, that is complicated too, but not in the way you think. I don’t think he will hurt me. Not on
purpose. But my family… and Angelique… Well, they would be furious. Baron would be too,” she added
under her breath. “But I don’t think he would hurt me.”
“Honey,” James exchanged a look with Patrick. “I don’t even know where to start with that.”
“I just need to… If I can just, somehow, disappear,” she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I often fantasize
about becoming invisible, just… dissolving away, vanishing out of sight, so that no one can find me. I just
need to be invisible and then…” And then what? She asked herself. She did not know.
As she washed the endless stream of dishes, she thought through the last three days with Baron. Alice
was to blame for the unhappy start to their marriage, she thought angrily. Baron had been cold and cruel,
and deliberately trying to wound her, because of what Alice had said, and perhaps that made a
difference, but she no longer believed that her mother had been right, and marrying her true mate, her
One, her Only, would lead to happiness.
Life was just not that simple.
Even if her marriage to Baron changed, there was still Angelique in the house until his mission for
revenge was fulfilled, there was still her pack and the other packs in the city to contend with, and she
would still be the runt, the weak, snivelling, pathetic omega of the pack. She would still humiliate and
embarrass Baron at social functions because she would still be the subject of the pack’s vindictiveness.
At some point, their opinions on her would penetrate, and Baron would look at her with distaste and
wonder what he had been thinking in taking her as a mate and wife.
He would curse the fate that had brought him her as his true mate and come to resent Jane as her father
had come to resent her mother.
She needed to escape that future, she thought, or, like her mother, she would surrender to their hatred.
As she ran back along the road, a car swerved and deliberately drove through a puddle dousing her in its
spray. She stood for a moment in shock as the cold, filthy water covered her head to toe, and then
grimaced and continued towards the house. She was not surprised to see the same yellow sports car
parked out front of the house. As she ran across the lawn, other cars began to pull up.
She groaned. Angelique had called in her friends. They were gathering out front of the house, being
greeted by Angelique, exchanging air kisses, their laughter and exclamations loud. One of them spotted
her cross the lawn, and all turned in unison to stare at her, wearing identical expressions of hostility.
What had Angelique told them? She wondered. Not the truth, of that, Jane was sure. Not without
betraying the secrets Baron was paying the she-wolf to hide. How would Angelique explain her demotion
from mistress and future wife to employee? Had she even said that much, or was Jane still the
unwanted, unloved wife of Baron Western and Angelique the long-suffering mistress?
Jane approached the kitchen entrance and found the staff busily prepping for Angelique’s guests,
arranging petit fours and canapes on high tea plates, mixing cocktails, and filling champagne buckets
with ice.
“Madam,” Heathridge met her eyes across the frantic activity. “Best to be to your room quickly now. The
hyenas are gathering, and it will not be pretty.”
The kitchen staff sniggered, and for once, it was not Jane being laughed at, but included in the joke, a
part of the pack, rather than the subject of its vitriol. Here, it was Angelique who was reviled and hated,
not Jane.
This is what it felt like, she thought, to be included rather than an outcast.
Baron’s office was closed when she snuck past it on her way to the back stairs. She wondered if he were
in it, or whether he had gone to the glossy tower in the city. It was impossible to know. She crept up the
servant’s stairs and along to her room. There was no one in it. She closed her door and pushed a couple
of the armchairs against it to discourage attempts of entry, before showering quickly and dressing in
casual clothes.
She sat on the couch with her laptop and studied, managing to regain lost ground. She did the practice
test and had begun the final assignment when the door handle turned, and the furniture lurched.
Baron’s muttered curse had her set aside her laptop and hurry to move the furniture aside for him.
“Thank f-k,” he said entering and closing the door behind him. “When your door did not open, / thought I
was done for.”
He crossed the room to look out the window. “They are everywhere,” he muttered and then turned to
Jane. “Well, I guess we are prisoners, Jane,” he observed. “What is it that you are doing, anyway?”
“Nothing,” she said guiltily as she saved and closed her file. “Nothing important,” she lied.
He threw himself onto the couch beside her, his big body sprawling and taking up most of the space.
“You were working very hard at it when I arrived,” he pointed out. “So, I am intrigued. I am curious as to
how you spend your day when I am not filling it.”
Her heart was racing. “I was online shopping,” she lied.
“Or online selling?” His body remained relaxed, but his eyes were sharp. “A notification popped up the
other day when I borrowed your computer,” he said. “You sold a pair of shoes. Which made me wonder
why you were selling them in the first place?”
She swallowed, hard.
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