TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 220

Two hundred and twenty

Franklin POV

We ended up in the library.

Cameron had pulled a stack of council reports onto the table and was trying to read them. Every few minutes, his eyes stopped moving across the page. He’d go still, stare at the same paragraph, and start again.

A leather folder sat open beside him.

His will.

I glanced at it and immediately wished I hadn’t.

“Cameron. You’re not dying. You’re having a spectacularly bad month. Those are different things.”

He held on to it even as I tried to snatch the folder out of his hands.

“Franklin…”

“No.”

He rubbed his forehead.

“If something happens to me, I need to make sure she can’t touch any of it. Not the businesses. Not the estate. Not the trust. Most of it goes to the child. The rest goes to Nadia and you.”

Under pack law, a mate inherited a significant share of an Alpha’s estate. It was a system built around trust.

Meridian had found a way to turn that trust into a weapon. They didn’t need to seize territories by force when they could place someone beside the man who owned them. If Cameron died while Evangeline still carried the title of mate, she wouldn’t just inherit money. She would inherit influence, businesses, property, voting power, political connections, and access to people who had spent years pledging loyalty to him.

Looking at the determination on Cameron’s face, I realized he was trying to slam every door shut before Meridian kicked them open.

“You’re young, stubborn, and impossible to kill. You’re not writing a will.”

“I was impossible to kill last month too. Look how that turned out.”

Silence settled between us,

I had known Cameron long enough to recognize the difference between fear and acceptance. The look on his face carried a little of both.

A sharp voice carried up from downstairs. A second voice answered, louder than the first.

Nadia and Evangeline.

Whatever had started the argument, neither woman seemed interested in ending it quietly. Cameron and I exchanged a glance before another shout echoed through the house.

“There goes whatever peace we managed to find,” I muttered.

Cameron pushed back his chair. Together, we headed toward the doors and followed the noise downstairs. The voices grew clearer with every step. By the time we reached the foyer, there was no mistaking who they belonged

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Every time Evangeline returned, I found myself wondering which version of Cameron would be left standing when she walked back out.

The curse wrapped around Cameron’s life like chains. Whether any of us liked it or not, Evangeline remained tied to whatever was happening inside his head.

Nadia stood near the foot of the staircase, her face flushed with anger. Across from her, Evangeline looked far calmer than the situation deserved. The contrast only seemed to infuriate Nadia more. Neither of them noticed us at first, too busy tearing into each other to care who might be listening.

“Where have you been, you bloody witch?” Nadia demanded. “Running errands for the people who did this to him?

Evangeline adjusted the sleeve of her coat.

“I wasn’t aware I needed your permission to leave my own house.”

Her voice carried the same calmness and showed no effort to explain herself. That was what made it so difficult to stand in the same room with her. She spoke with so much confidence while watching Cameron waste away. Her composure stirred an anger in me I rarely struggled to control.

Nadia’s hands curled into fists.

“Your house? Cameron’s reputation is being torn apart piece by piece. People are questioning whether he’s fit to remain Alpha, and you’re worried about ownership?”

Evangeline’s gaze didn’t waver.

“People talk when an Alpha gets sick. They’ll talk when he recovers too.”

Nadia took a step toward her.

“Stop talking about his illness as though you’re some concerned bystander! Every time you disappear, he gets worse. Every time you come back, we’re expected to act grateful you’re here. Is this it? The domination that gives you joy? Turning him into a puppet?”

A small smile touched Evangeline’s mouth.

“You said that, not me.”

“I should stop them,” I said, pushing away from the wall and heading downstairs.

Footsteps sounded behind me. I didn’t have to look to know Cameron was following. His lucid periods had become unpredictable. Looking at his face now, I couldn’t tell which version of him I was walking downstairs with.

“You need to undo whatever you’ve done to him!” Nadia shouted. “I don’t care who you have to call, what ritual you have to reverse, or what deal you made. You fix it.”

Evangeline’s reply came smooth and unhurried.

“You keep assuming I have the power to do all the things you accuse me of.”

“Don’t play games with me.” Nadia’s voice shook with fury. “If this keeps getting worse, I swear to God, I will kill

you.”

A soft laugh drifted through the foyer.

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“You’ve been threatening me for weeks, Nadia. At some point, you’re going to have to come up with something

new.”

“Something new?” Nadia laughed. “Fine. How about this? You won’t win. How about you and your coven will regret everything you did to him. Is that new enough for you?”

Evangeline chuckled. “I admire the optimism.”

Cameron approached them, and Evangeline’s eyes settled on him. Disgust and betrayal shifted across his face. Whatever fragile calm he’d managed to hold onto upstairs shattered.

“You liar.”

The words came out rough. He took another step toward her.

“I gave you everything. And you used all of it. You turned my life into a joke. I regret ever knowing you.”

Her eyes gleamed with evil satisfaction.

“You regret it now?” she asked. “Interesting. You didn’t seem to regret anything when you were fucking the surrogate.”

Cameron remained still.

“You made your choices, Cameron. Every single one of them. Yet somehow I’m the villain because you’re unhappy with where they led.”

A bitter laugh escaped him.

“My choices?”

He took another step forward.

“You’re in my head. Every day I wake up feeling less like myself. I can’t think straight. I can’t trust my own memories.”

His voice rose.

“You did something to me.”

Evangeline’s smile never reached her eyes.

“And who’s going to believe that?”

I tensed.

Cameron kept moving.

“You think I won’t expose you?”

“Expose me as what?” she asked. “Your neglected mate? The woman you humiliated publicly while sneaking around with a surrogate?”

The muscles in Cameron’s jaw flexed.

“You know exactly what you’ve done.”

“No,” Evangeline said softly. “What I know is that people watched their Alpha cheat on his mate. People watched him lie. People watched him drag another woman into the middle of his marriage.”

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She folded her arms.

“If you want to start telling stories, Cameron, I can tell a few of my own.”

He lunged forward.

I caught him before he reached her.

Part of me wanted to let go. God knew she deserved whatever was coining. Instead, I tightened my grip as Cameron fought against it.

“You don’t get to blame Lisa for this,” he snarled. “You don’t get to drag her name into this.”

Something dark flickered across Evangeline’s face.

“I don’t have to drag her name into it,” she said. “Sooner or later, the world will do it for me.”

“Undo it!” Cameron snarled. “Undo whatever you did to me.”

Her gaze locked onto his. I felt Cameron strain against my grip.

“Let me go, Franklin.”

There was desperation in his voice now. I hated Evangeline enough to consider it. She watched the struggle without a trace of guilt.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” she said quietly. “I’m the only thing standing between you and what’s waiting on the other side.”

Nadia gasped.

“You demon.”

Evangeline’s eyes never left Cameron’s.

“Every day you wake up remembering your own name, every day you can still hold a conversation, every day you can still pretend you’re yourself, is a gift.”

A chill crawled down my spine.

Nadia grabbed a fistful of Evangeline’s hair.

“You sick bitch.”

Evangeline stumbled sideways.

Instead of looking frightened, she smiled.

The sight of it turned my stomach.

“You should be thanking me,” she said softly. “Without me, he’d already be gone.”

“You don’t get to decide that! You don’t own him.”

“He belongs with me. He always has.”

A dangerous look entered Cameron’s eyes as he watched her. Her voice remained calm.

“If you keep fighting me, this will never end.”

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A smile touched her lips.

Cameron’s breathing grew heavier.

“You’ll spend the rest of your life exactly as you are now. Torn between sanity and madness.”

His fury built.

Then Evangeline made the mistake.

“Your little whore can run and hide. But she can’t hide forever.”

Cameron moved with pure rage. He crossed the distance and drove his fist into her face.

The crack echoed through the room.

Evangeline stumbled backward. Blood burst from her mouth. She crashed against a table.

Cameron lunged again, but I caught him around the chest.

“CAMERON!”

“LET GO OF ME!”

He fought like a wild animal, his body shaking with fury.

“LET ME GO!”

I tightened my grip.

“Enough!”

Another struggle.

Another violent jerk.

I held on.

Cameron venting months of pain into her face wouldn’t fix anything. None of it would free him. It would only leave another body on the floor.

Blood stained the corner of Evangeline’s mouth.

“Why are you stopping him?” Nadia said. “Let him beat the evil out of her.”

“No.”

Evangeline wiped blood from her lips and smiled. She looked pleased, as though every second of this had unfolded exactly the way she expected.

Cameron saw it too.

His resistance faltered.

Confusion mixed with anger.

Evangeline straightened.

Blood stained her teeth, yet her eyes remained fixed on him.

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“I love you.”

The words sounded twisted and possessive.

She took a step backward.

“We’ll be together forever.”

“No.”

His voice cracked.

Her smile deepened.

“We’ll see about that.”

The hopelessness in Cameron’s eyes hit me.

He looked defeated, as if he could already hear the stories people would tell.

The Alpha who lost his mind.

The Alpha who became a prisoner inside his own head.

Evangeline headed upstairs, wiping at her split lip. We didn’t stop her. Nobody knew how.

Silence settled over the room.

Cameron stood motionless, staring at nothing. Nadia crossed the room, wrapped her arms around him, and started crying.

“You hear me?” she said.

Her voice trembled. “You are strong.”

Cameron didn’t answer.

“You know why they’re angry with you?”

His eyes shifted toward her.

“Because you’re resisting.”

A tear slid down her cheek.

“If you weren’t fighting, you’d already be gone.”

Cameron’s expression didn’t change. Nadia kept talking anyway.

“Alpha Kieran was worse. He wasn’t walking around arguing with people. He was practically a living corpse. You are still here.”

She touched his face.

“You are still fighting.”

Cameron looked away. I could tell he wanted to believe her, and that hope hurt more than despair.

Hours later, after Cameron had finally withdrawn to his room, I found Nadia at one of the smaller dining tables downstairs.

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A bowl of pureed potatoes sat in front of her alongside slices of roasted meat covered in onion gravy, steamed carrots, and buttered green beans.

She pushed the food around her plate more than she ate it. I grabbed a plate from the sideboard and sat across from her. Neither of us felt much like talking after the day we’d had.

Evangeline had disappeared into her wing of the house. She wasn’t alone. Two of my men had been rotating watch shifts since the afternoon, careful enough not to be noticed.

Her mother was under observation too. We hadn’t found anything useful yet, but I was done taking chances. Every new piece of information seemed to reveal another layer of Meridian’s reach, and I no longer trusted coincidence where Evangeline was concerned.

Nadia stabbed a piece of meat with her fork.

“I take it Cameron locked himself away.”

I cut into my food.

“He made it farther through the day than yesterday.”

She let out a tired breath.

“That’s becoming a depressing way to measure success.”

“Welcome to my week.”

The corner of her mouth twitched.

“How was it at Alpha Kie

ran’s?”

She looked down at her plate.

“Lisa agreed to get help from the sect Kieran trusts.”

Hope flickered across her face.

“Kieran believes they can help us.”

I released a slow breath.

“Sounds like good news,” I said.

She shrugged.

“Better to cling to the smallest piece of hope than let Evangeline win this. Hope is all we have.”

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