CHP 1

GRACE

I should have known something was wrong the moment Father summoned me to the dining hall. 

He never gathered me with his real family unless it was to allow his wife shame me. To make me the spectacle, the bastard mistake who carried the blood of a woman whose name was forbidden to be spoken.

The air was thick with roasted meat and sour wine, but it wasn’t a meal. it was  judgment.

We stood when he entered. The crows embedded in the blood claw pack seal in his sword, glinted in the moonlight as he walked to his seat.

He gave a little grunt of satisfaction. He had always liked these little rituals. It reminded me he was untouchable. My head bowed, though my spine screamed against it.

“Rogues have been a terror and we need help, debts have been incurred and I’ve found a solution” he began. The silence lightly disturbed by the scrapping of cutlery against ceramic.

“There has been a request for your hand in marriage,” Father dropped, his tone smug and self-satisfied.

My chest hollowed. Marriage?

For a minute, I let my mind rejoice that it could be me. That my father after 18 years of allowing my step mother physically abuse me that he would finally let me go since I was mute with a stunted wolf.

But from the corner of my eye, Lily, my stepsister, straightened like a queen already crowned. Her smile bloomed, sharp and sweet, as though she’d been waiting for this moment her whole life.

My eyes burned with unshed tears. I knew I could never be the chosen one. Not when I had my stepsister and my stepmother.

“Damon Croft.” He said and my head snapped up in shock.

 My throat seized, a useless sound clawed inside me but never reached my lips. 

From my side, my sister had gone stiff and my step mother’s fork clattered to her plate, the silence hunting each of us.

Father couldn’t be serious…right?

Damon Croft? the legendary monster? The man I believed to be my mother’s killer!?

Father’s gaze slid right past me as if I were smoke. “Your mother will make the arrangements.” He said to Lily.

The silence shattered instantly.

“I won’t allow it!” My stepmother shrieked, slamming her fist on the table, her chair toppling behind her. “What kind of father sells his daughter to that beast?!”

Her face twisted but just before I averted my eyes, a look of realization crossed her eyes but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was she was realizing.

Perhaps she realized Damon, the man chosen for her daughter was the same monster who had killed my real mother.

 My stepmother has never for once shied away from any opportunity to put her daughter first even though it never ended well for me but this time, even I knew, she was going against my father to protect Lily. After all, who would want their daughter married to a killer?

My own mother would have done the same if she was here but she wasn’t.

What use were the angry tears that leaked from the sides of my eyes if I couldn’t voice out my hatred? 

My step family has been nothing but cruel towards me but even this was too much!

“What about Grace?” she suddenly said, pointing at me like I was filth on the floor. 

My gaze snapped up at her, rage filtering my blood. “She’s useless. She’s mute. Let her marry him!” She argued.

“After all, she looks like my lily. I can even make it work,” she said and attempted to touch my hair in contrast.

I slapped her hands away, my lips trembled as a sound burst out of me, an attempted snarl. Pathetic. My mother’s daughter, yet powerless and voiceless.

The room stilled. Her eyes widened at the audacity, then narrowed to slits. She moved fast, her hand  struck my cheeks, the sting exploding like fire beneath my skin. 

I stumbled. Father didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even flicker. The snarl came back, biting even harder.

Her hand raised to hit me again but my father made a sound and she stiffened. Then something spread across her face that caused me to blink.

“You know…” she began, facing my father now. 

“Damon never specified which daughter,” she said and the air turned to ice. 

“We can still turn this around. I can still make it work and nobody has to suffer after all, you and I know that you’ve been wanting to get rid of this mute bastard for ages,” her voice had a malicious bite but my heart was hammering.

My own father wanted to get rid of me?

“I can brush her up. She’d look good…” I looked to my father in shock. He wouldn’t…

His face was unreadable and the second time my step mother attempted to touch my hair, my father snarled viciously.

My father snarled viciously. ‘My word is final. Don’t you dare.’

But even as he said it, I caught the flicker in his gaze…the calculation, the way he didn’t entirely dismiss the idea. My stepmother must not have seen it. She dropped her hands and scoffed then in one motion, pulled Lily with one hand and dragged her out of the room leaving me like a bitter disappointment alone with my father.

My eyes zeroed on him. A question burned in my throat — why do that to Lily? What could he have possibly done to warrant such a union? Had he forgotten that Damon killed his forgotten wife? My mother?

But my throat was sealed. He slowly stood up and for a minute, I saw something flash in his eyes. Regret….or was it anger? 

I couldn’t figure it out before he dismissed me.

I hated this family but I hated Damon more for creating so much chaos when he stole my mother from me. I had barely had time to settle in my room when rough hands clamped over my mouth, another twisted my arms and steel kissed my throat.

 I thrashed, but my cries died useless in my chest. Panic flooded my veins and my eyes widened with horror as I could hear my heart thunder in my ears.

Something moved in the shadows and suddenly I was forced to my knees . My stepmother emerged, calm and venomous, like she’d been waiting for me all along.

The air grew thick. What was she doing?

“You think I’ll watch my only child be thrown to the butcher?” Her smile was thin, cruel. She lifted a small vial, black liquid swirled like smoke. 

I recognized it instantly and attempted to move but the guard’s nails bit into my shoulders.

“Nightshade. One drop, and you and your useless wolf will be too weak to move, and the more you resist the more the poison draws your blood till it dries up and you die. Unless…” Her gaze cut through me like a blade. “You take Lily’s place at the altar.”

She couldn’t be serious!

I shook my head violently, angry tears streamed down my face, but the guard’s grip pressed harder, slicing skin. I winced as the metallic scent of blood wafted to my nose.

I was still struggling with the guard when she suddenly grabbed my chin and forced the vial to my lips. 

I recoiled as the poison scorched down my throat. My body convulsed, veins set ablaze as blood spilled hot from my nose.

My wolf shrieked inside me, writhing, breaking.

I collapsed, clawing at her skirts, praying for death. My mind was in chaos but my throat was sealed.

She crouched low, cupping my chin. “Agree.”

How could I agree to marry my mother’s supposed killer!? I clenched the chain locket that sat lazily around my neck. The last thing mother left to me.

Her eyes went to the locket and before I could phantom what was about to happen, she snatched it from my neck. 

Something instantly whizzed out of me. I reached out instantly fighting the pain building up in my veins.

“Agree! Or I’ll turn this little trinket to ashes,” she spat. Tears burned my eyes.

I couldn’t let her take the only thing I had left. Rage flowed freely as my wolf whimpered and gritted her teeth in pain. I would not let her desecrate the last memories I have of my mother.

My gaze locked on the locket in her fist, the last piece of my mother. If she destroyed it, then even death would leave me with nothing. Slowly, hate burning through my veins, I nodded. I sealed my fate, not for her, not for Damon but for my mother.

A viscious smile stretched over her lips as she forcefully poured the antidote into my mouth and threw my locket at me.

Instantly the antidote began to work. It was like sucking in fresh unfiltered air filled with robust energy.

I stood up, the fire ebbing away in my veins but rage burned brighter than any venom of death. I stared dead at her eyes. 

I was going to make her pay.

Twenty minutes later, a veil suffocated my face, my body dragged forward like a corpse toward the altar.

People whispered and their eyes pierced gazes at me but I remained stoic. I have never met Damon before but every tale carried a beast for a man.

Yet, as I walked towards the aisle, something strong pulled at my chest. At one point, my legs were moving on their own. When I got to the aisle, four men turned to me but somehow the man at the center…called out to me.

His aura swallowed the room whole, every man shrinking back while he stood tall, carved from stone and shadow.

His jaw was brutal, his eyes merciless, but it was the way the air bent around him that made my wolf stir despite the residual poison still burning in my veins.

I was taken aback by his beauty but he couldn’t be Damon Croft. He was rumored to be a beast in every way. My eyes scanned the environment for an ugly beast but suddenly he reached for me. Just a brush of his hand under the veil, tilting my chin up.

My eyes widened in shock.

Fire shot through me and my wolf purred.

No. 

It couldn’t be.

The veil lifted.

Damon’s crimson eyes swept over me, his lips curling.

“Is this the best they could do?”

Disgust burned in his words, yet his stare clung to me hungry, furious and dangerous.

And in that moment, I knew two things with terrifying certainty:

The man who I believed without a doubt killed my mother was now my husband.

And the cursed pull in my chest whispered the one truth I dreaded most—

He was my mate.