Tegan walked over to Cooper and wrapped her arms around him. “That was not me. I mean, yeah, I had Willow make the duplicate of him, but I was just rolling with my gut. I did not . . . God, even I would never have done that to us. It will haunt me, no matter how much he gives me shit for my PDA with Tenn.”

Everyone turned to Willow with questions in their eyes.

Her brown eyes were wide like a deer in headlights. The blood in her strawberry blonde curls made my stomach turn. She licked her lips. “What?”

“Did you plan that with Everest?”

“OH, yeah, maybe that wasn’t really him either?”

Easton snapped his fingers on his good hand, “That makes sense. Because why would Everest do that?”

I sighed and felt the hollowness in my chest, which made everyone turn to me.

“Wait a second,” Lennox said sharply, lifting her head off Warner’s shoulder. “Your soulmate marks are gone.”

“They’re not soulmates.” Lily gestured between me and Cooper with her swollen fingers in braces. “We were in that throne room looking for the missing page when Everest just emerged from the shadows, which is the single creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, and he just lost his shit. He grabbed Frankie and then slammed her and Cooper with magic and their soulmate marks vanished. Then he got all caveman possessive and was like, Cooper is not your soulmate.”

“Then he bit her on the throat and said, you’re mine, not his. Mine.” Bentley nodded. “It was kinda hot. Won’t lie.”

Royce threw his hands up in the air but said nothing.

“Yeah, it definitely was hot.” Lily smirked. “But more importantly, Everest is Frankie’s soulmate, and apparently seeing someone else pretend to be hers is something dear old Everest could not handle.”

Easton cackled. Everyone stared at him, but he just shrugged. “Yeah, I knew they weren’t really soulmates, but I figured crazy was up to something, so I was rolling with it.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Trouble, what did you do?”

“I saw a way to protect Frankie from Sweyn and took it.” Tegan shrugged one shoulder. “It worked . . . until Everest lost it.”

“Yeah, babe, I think I wouldn’t have handled it much better.” Tenn arched one eyebrow at his soulmate.

“I didn’t know Everest was her soulmate or I wouldn’t have done that.” She raised her hands. “I wouldn’t have knowingly put Everest on blast like that.”

Easton tapped on his own chest. “If you’re Everest’s soulmate, then where’s the mark? The glyph?”

“Sam used magic to conceal it. She said it was too soon to have Everest’s loyalty revealed.” I rubbed my hand on my neck. “I don’t know how to make it come out?”

Tegan shrugged. “Just blast it with some magic.”