Free Tempest of Vengeance by Tara Fox Hall Page A

T
good-bye. “I want to see Elle.”
    “Mom, you know how Theo gets. He said when I
tried that Elle wasn’t really your daughter anyway—”
    Asshole.
    “— and that you could talk to her on the
phone.”
    I made it a point then to call Elle every day
at eight, before I had a late dinner with Venus. For a while that
worked, until I began to get no answer when I called. I spoke to T
about it on the eighteenth of November, and he said Theo had
instructed Elle not to talk to me. I said a few nasty things in
retort, and T insisted he would talk to Theo, and try to get him to
change his mind. He also said Elle had written me a letter, and he
would bring it with him the next time he came. I told him I would
leave everything for now, but if he hadn’t solved it by December
first, I would be showing up in the great room on December second,
whether anyone wanted me there or not. T said that was fair, and
that he was sorry.
    I raged to Dev about it, and he comforted me,
but he said there was nothing to be done. He knew as well as I that
I had no legal right to Elle, just as Danial didn’t. We had never
formally adopted her, when Theo was gone those years, and that was
coming back to bite us in the ass now.
    That wasn’t all Theo was up to, of
course.
    A week after Theo’s attempt to change me, on
the twenty-first, he sent me a certified letter. Well, actually,
his lawyer sent it. I opened it, expecting to have papers to sign,
asking for a separation. But I got a surprise. Instead, I found a
notice, telling me that on January twentieth, our divorce would be
final. And Theo’s wedding ring was enclosed, as was my watch.
    I read the papers with shock, Devlin reading
them too, over my shoulder.
    “He must have gone through Danial’s files,” I
stammered. “Danial must have saved those papers we signed, the ones
I’d been going to fax to my lawyer back in late January of last
year. He must have forged my signature, and bribed someone at the
courthouse for this.”
    “It’s good that he did,” Devlin affirmed.
“The sooner he’s divorced from you, the better for you. This way,
you will only have to wait another month and a week, or so.
According to this, you are already legally separated.”
    I agreed that was probably best, though I
felt a pang of regret. I’d fought so hard for Theo, so hard to stay
his wife, to keep us together. I felt a twinge of guilt now that I
was giving him up almost without a fight. But I’d never trust him
again, and I couldn’t be werecougar for him. And that was the end
of it.
    “You can take my name, Sar, if you wish,”
Devlin said in a low tone. “Or Danial’s, if you prefer it to mine,
though ‘Dalcon’ sounds much more elegant than ‘Racklan’—”
    I hadn’t even thought of that, but realized
with a start that I was going to have to think about it. And
sooner, rather than later. I didn’t want to be ‘O’Connor’ anymore,
anyway. I wanted to be myself. And I already had a name, a good
one.
    “I’ll go back to McGarran, for now,” I said
firmly. “I don’t know why I changed my name in the first place,
honestly. I didn’t when I married Brennan. In fact, I swore I never
would—”
    “Some of it may have been the spell,” Devlin
whispered. “Titus told me he had broken it, and that there might be
a backlash. He had to use the Hellfire, Sar. He said nothing else
would break it. That he tried everything else first.”
    I shivered. Hellfire; real Hell fire.
Cringe.
    “But he asked me to pass on to you that he
did take Aran’s memories, and Cia’s, and Janice’s. Aran told only
Cia what had happened, according to his memories. So we still don’t
know who told Terian about what really happened between you and
Lash.”
    I couldn’t worry about that now. “Can we go
and lie down for a while?” I said, hugging him. “I need to not
think.”
    “I’m sure I can find a way to distract you,”
Devlin said with a slow enticing smile, taking me by the hand.
“Come