Tacet a Mortuis (The Elite King's Club 3)

“He’s going to kill me anyway, Mads!”

“Why!” I threw my hands up, suddenly annoyed at the whole situation. I loved Tillie, but sometimes we didn’t exactly see eye to eye.

“Because I—I may have met someone else, and I don’t know, I think that he would hate that some other male would be a big part of her life, ya know?”

“I need a holiday.” I rubbed my temples with my fingertips. “Ok, here’s what we are going to do.” I pushed off the counter and made my way back to my seat. “We are going to all sit the fuck down when all of this is over, and have a flat-out chat about what we are going to do with little princess. Tillie.” I brought my eyes to hers, drilling them into her. “I do not, under any circumstances, think you should run from Nate. He will find you, and the erratic way his behavior has been since finding out he is a dad, I wouldn’t trust his intentions with you once he does find you, so I honestly think you should take my route, and ju—”

“—Ok!” she snapped at me with a smile on her lips. “You’re still persistent.”

“That shit will never change,” Tate muttered, standing and going to the sink to rinse her plate.

“Now,” I grinned. “Who is this man you’ve met?”

Her face fell.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Honestly, it would never work out. We had a moment, and I don’t know… I just, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Well, who is it? Do I know him? Please don’t tell me it’s one of those weird guards at Perdita.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m wasting my time because it could never happen. He’s too involved with Katsia to look at me again, and we had a moment or two, but then he went cold and I honestly think it’s a waste of time me even mentioning it. It just made me realize that if something ever did happen between me and someone, Nate wouldn’t allow it.”

“I do have a plan, though,” I said.

“Oh goodie!” Tate bit into an apple. “Let me guess, you want to gatecrash this war?”

I smirked.

“And how are we supposed to get past the wicked witch of the west?” Tatum asked, crunching on her apple loudly.

I skipped toward her. “Well, the wicked witch isn’t as wicked as she seems.”

We finished up breakfast and washed the dishes. The house we were staying in was a two-story loft air BNB. There were two bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs. Tillie and the baby stayed downstairs while Tate and I crashed in here. Flopping onto the bed, I bring my phone up to my face and send Bishop a text.

Weird conversation with Carter.

What did he want

I flipped onto my tummy. I don’t know. He said he wanted to talk with me when I got home.

I waited for the three little circles to pop up, but they didn’t. Two minutes pass before I decided to send him another. The thirst was real. How are your plans going?

Fast. We have a good lot of people coming in today and tonight. We will be all flying out tomorrow night. You? How’s Mom?

Okay, so they were going to be leaving Friday night, not morning, which put a slight dent in my plans. I was hoping that they would leave in the morning so we could get there later that day.

Mom is awesome. I want a swap. Mine for yours.

I realized my bad joke as soon as I hit send and cringed. My face was scrunched and my cheeks were on fire when Tillie walked in.

“Hey! Do you—” she stopped when she saw my face. “Are you ok?”

“No. I just sent a really stupid text to Bishop. Anyway! What’s up?”

She walked in farther, stopping near the end of the bed. “Did you ever hear from Ridge?”

I leaned up on my elbows. “I did. I sort of bumped into him at a bank a few months ago before Tate and I ran away to New Zealand, why?”

She paused, her face falling blank. “Okay, I need to know one hundred percent what happened while you were there, but it’s just that, I don’t know, I thought maybe he would have looked harder for me?”

“He probably did, like I did, but always came out with dead ends. It makes sense now that I know now, though. Katsia hiding you and all that…”

Her finger came to her lip. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course?” I scooted up the bed, tucking my legs underneath me.

“What was Nate like after I left?” Out of all the things I was expecting her to ask me, that was not one of them.

“Honestly, he was off.”

“Off?”

I nodded and pulled my bottom lip into my mouth. “There were a few times when he would say something about you, and, okay, I’m not good at this. He had feelings for you, Tillie, real feelings. I hadn’t seen him with any other girl like he was with you, and I witnessed my fair share amount of Nate-hos in the months you were absent.”