The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 384

Liora’s POV

I kept my distance as I followed Bianca to the bathroom. She rounded the corner and, pausing in front of the door to the girl’s restroom, she glanced over her shoulder.

Taking care not to be seen, I pressed myself flat against the wall and waited until she was gone before I approached the door.

Inside the bathroom, I heard her walk up to the sink and turn the water on. I cracked the door open and carefully poked my head into the room, then slipped in when I saw that her back was turned to me.

She was leaning against the sink, looking at her phone, smirking at something she saw on the screen.

She didn’t seem sick to me. In fact, she seemed perfectly fine.

Not that that had to mean anything, of course. A student feigning illness to get out of class for a few minutes wasn’t exactly unheard of.

But when it came to someone like Bianca, there was no telling exactly what her intentions were at any moment. She could be planting a bomb for all anyone knew.

I stood there for a moment, just watching her as she tapped away on her phone screen. I took a second to study her. Her belly was still just as flat as it had always been—although, to be fair, she had resorted to wearing more baggy hoodies lately. Beyond that, her hair was perfectly styled, her makeup just so.

I recalled how she’d been making such a big show of being so sick recently. Like the morning sickness was so bad that she could hardly function. And yet here she was, looking just as perfect as usual. Hardly the image of a woman who was allegedly suffering day in and day out.

Unbidden, my mind went to the moment I had run into her in the forest before everything happened. She had been gathering wild ipecac—a plant that we’d been warned about in the very class she was skipping out on now. Even touching the sap was known to cause vomiting. Bianca knew that.

So why had she been gathering it?

It seemed like a long shot, but something about it didn’t sit right with me. Nothing did when it came to Bianca.

She must have felt my presence, because before I could slip away, she looked up and met my gaze in the mirror. Her eyes narrowed.

“What are you doing here?” she bit out.

I straightened. “It’s a bathroom. What do you think I’m doing here?”

“Well, if you need to piss, then piss and stop staring at me.”

I didn’t move right away. Bianca’s lips curved. “You were following me, weren’t you?”

I hesitated, but then figured there was no point beating around the bush. She and I both knew that her little charade was up.

“You set up that incident in the woods, didn’t you?” I asked. “You hired those rogues to attack me.”

Bianca blinked at me. Like I couldn’t see right through her fake fucking mask. “Of course not,” she said, pressing her hand to her chest. “What are you talking about?”

Before I could answer, she shoved past me, flinging the door open. She strode out into the hall without a second look back.

I stepped out into the hallway behind her. Classes had let out, and students were flooding into the corridor. Bianca strode down the path, hips swaying, and I knew she was smirking triumphantly even though I couldn’t see her face.

My chest tightened as I watched her go. Fury overtook me—how dare she? After everything she’d put me through, after all of the lies and schemes, knowing fully well who she really was, how dare she speak to me like that?

For months, I had remained quiet. I had watched her carry out her schemes without saying a word of it to anyone because I had faith that one day, she would be found out without me having to lift a finger. That I would get my wolf back and put an end to this nonsense, finally, once and for all.

But now here she was. Walking all over me like I was just one of the many tiles on the floor beneath her expensive designer heels.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of rolling over and letting Bianca win every single time. I was on crutches because of her. My wolf was gone because she had meddled with my fated mate. Every horrible thing that had happened over the past eight months was because of her.

“Everyone!” I shouted.

The hallway lost some of its volume. Faces turned toward me. Bianca stopped walking, her shoulders tensing.

I pointed at her.

“Bianca is not the real princess. She’s been lying to all of you for months!”