BRIDE FOR RENT IS MY FATED MATE.

I was five years old when my world ended, though I did not understand the meaning of the word 'end' back then. I only knew that the house felt too quiet, that the walls echoed when I called for my mother, and that my father’s laughter no longer filled the rooms like sunlight. I remember standing between two adults dressed in black, holding hands I did not recognize, while people whispered words I could not pronounce. Accident. Tragedy. Fate.

Their faces blur now, but the feeling never left me.

After the funeral, I was taken to my aunt’s house. She was my mother’s older sister, and everyone said I was lucky she agreed to take me in. They praised her kindness and sacrifice, told me I should be grateful. I tried to be. I honestly really did. I learned early how to stay quiet, how to take up as little space as possible, and how to read her moods by the sound of her footsteps.

My aunt believed my parents’ deaths ruined her life.

She never said it outright at first. But It lived in her sighs, in the way she slammed cupboards when I walked into the kitchen, and in the way she spoke my name like it tasted bitter on her tongue. Every mistake was my fault. Every hardship traced back to me. If she was tired, it was because she had to feed another mouth. If money was tight, it was because she had taken in an ungrateful orphan.

I grew up apologizing for existing.

She worked me like a servant, but reminded me often that I should be thankful for a roof over my head. I washed dishes until my fingers wrinkled and scrubbed floors until my knees ached. When I cried, she called me weak. When I asked questions, she called me ungrateful. When I tried to remember my parents, she told me to stop living in the past.

“You’re alive, aren’t you?” she would say. “That should be enough.”

I learned not to ask for affection or even expect warmth. Love, I decided, was something other people got.

By the time I turned sixteen, she had grown tired of pretending she wanted me there.

It happened on an ordinary afternoon. I had just returned from school when she told me to pack my things. There was no argument, no warning, no explanation that made sense. She said I was old enough to fend for myself, that she was done carrying my burden. I stood in my small room, staring at the walls I had memorized over the years, trying to understand how a child could become disposable overnight.

She threw my bag at my feet and opened the door.

I remember standing outside with everything I owned stuffed into a torn backpack, watching the door close in my face. I did not cry until I walked three streets away. When I finally did, it felt like something inside me cracked open and never healed properly.

I slept on benches, under staircases, anywhere that felt hidden. Hunger became a constant ache. Fear followed me like a shadow. I learned which streets to avoid, which faces meant danger, and how to make myself invisible. Survival became my only goal. Hope felt like a luxury I could not afford.

That was when Damon found me.

He appeared one evening when the air was cold and my hands were shaking too badly to tie my shoes. He offered me food first. Then a jacket. Then a smile that felt like warmth after years of winter. He spoke softly, asked my name like it mattered, listened like my words held value.

No one had ever looked at me the way he did.

He told me I was beautiful. He told me I deserved better. He told me he could protect me. I believed him because I wanted to. Because I needed to. Damon became my world in a way nothing else ever had. He was the first man to touch me gently, the first to call me precious, the first to make me feel seen.

I loved him with the devotion of someone who had never been loved properly before.

He gave me a place to stay, and I called it home even though it was small and cold. He held me at night, and I thought safety felt like his arms around me. When he said he loved me, I believed it with my whole heart. He was my savior. My god. My everything. I built my life around him because I had nothing else.

The change was slow enough that I blamed myself.

At first, it was just small things. He would ask for money, even though I barely earned anything. If I questioned him, his voice would harden. If I hesitated, his hand would strike. The first time he hit me, he cried afterward and told me he was stressed. He said I pushed him too far. I apologized.

I always apologized.

Soon the apologies became routine. If he raised his hand, I flinched before the pain came. If he shouted, I shrank. I mastered his moods, predicted when violence was coming, and how to soften myself so it would hurt less. When he told me I owed him for saving my life, I believed him.

Then he started sending me out.

At first, he framed it as helping us survive. Just talk to them, he said. Just be nice. Then it became more. He told me it was my duty, that love meant sacrifice, that if I truly cared for him, I would do this. I hated every moment, but I told myself it was temporary. I told myself it was necessary.

When I cried, he called me dramatic.

When I refused, he broke me.

Each time he hit me, I blamed myself. I told myself I was stupid, difficult, ungrateful. I told myself he wouldn’t hurt me if I were better. Quieter. More obedient. Love, I learned, was pain endured in silence.

Soon he stopped hiding his cheating.

Women came and went like I did not exist. He didn’t bother lying anymore. If I asked questions, he laughed. If I cried, he told me I was lucky he kept me around at all. Still, I stayed. Because leaving felt impossible. Because fear was familiar. Because being alone again terrified me more than the bruises.

Damon was all I had left.

I did not know then that my life was already being sold.

I did not know that survival was about to take another cruel shape.

All I knew was that one night, after he returned smelling of another woman’s perfume, he looked at me with a strange, calculating smile and said—

“Rebecca, pack your things. You’re getting married.”