Ch 8- A bride’s final goodbye

Maya

The day after my dreams was the longest day of my life.

I moved through it like a ghost, drifting aimlessly from my chamber to the window and back again, watching the sun crawl across the sky with agonizing slowness. Valeria tried to feed me, and I tried just as hard to eat, but neither of us succeeded.

At dinner, Kai caught my eye from across the dining hall. His expression was a painful mixture of frustration, helplessness, and barely restrained anger. The sight nearly brought me to tears, but Father was watching.

So I looked away, swallowing the emotions clawing at my throat before anyone could notice.

I went to bed early that night, but sleep remained a stranger. I lay awake even longer than I had the night before, turning the same frightening thoughts over and over in my mind.

What if Tyler Kingston disappointed me?

What if he simply moved on to the next job, the next tavern, the next desperate customer with a pocketful of gold?

What if Theo Griffin meant nothing to him?

What if I arrived at Draken’s fortress because there was simply no one willing or capable of stopping it from happening?

The questions haunted me until exhaustion finally dragged my eyes shut. I didn’t dreamwalk that night. Or perhaps I did. If I had, I couldn’t remember it.

Dawn had broken by the time they came to dress me. I hadn’t slept again after spending most of the night staring into the darkness. I had simply remained beneath the covers in the pale grey morning light, watching the ceiling while listening to Valeria move quietly around the chamber.

I tried not to think about vampires.

Or werewolves.

Or the fact that today was the day everyone had been preparing for.

Today, I was supposed to become Lord Draken’s bride.

Two maids I barely recognized eventually entered, carrying a copper basin filled with warm water. They bathed me, perfumed my skin, and dressed me with the brisk efficiency of women who had been given a task and intended to complete it properly. They avoided my eyes, and I didn’t blame them. They were only carrying out an order.

Valeria stood in the corner with her arms folded, supervising everything with an expression that dared anyone to make a mistake. When one of the maids tugged my hair too roughly, she descended upon her like a small, furious storm.

“She’s not a horse being groomed for the market,” she snapped. “You need to be gentle.”

Despite everything, I smiled.

It was a small thing, but Valeria had always possessed the remarkable ability to make me smile even when my world was falling apart.

When they were finally finished, I stood before the mirror and barely recognized the woman staring back at me. My dress was a deep shade of red, fashioned from fine wool. It was simple in design but beautifully crafted, with a V-neck collar and long sleeves that somehow made me look almost like a goddess.

My hair had been pinned, braided, and curled delicately at the nape of my neck with a skill I could never have managed myself.

I stared at my reflection for a long time and the girl looking back at me appeared composed and dignified. It was neither a good sign nor a convincing lie.

I had my mother’s cheekbones. I knew that because I had studied her portrait enough times to be certain. But I hadn’t inherited her luminous beauty. Mother had possessed the kind of beauty that seemed to glow from somewhere deep within her. The kind that could make you feel warm simply by looking at her. She had been extraordinarily beautiful, while I was merely ordinary.

At least, that was what I had always believed.

I wondered whether Lord Draken would look at my face and see a person or simply a prize he had won.

My fingers rose and touched the cold surface of the mirror. For one brief moment, I imagined I was saying goodbye to something I couldn’t quite name. Perhaps it was the girl I had been before my life had become a bargaining chip in a political alliance. Perhaps it was the last fragile piece of hope I had been holding on to.

Then I lowered my hand. I looked exactly like what I was supposed to be.

A bride being delivered.

Valeria walked beside me as we made our way through the manor, with two guards following at a respectful distance.

I had walked these hallways a million times without paying much attention to them. But today, I noticed everything. The worn patch on the stone floor at the bottom of the east staircase, where generations of Russell feet had smoothed the stone into a shallow hollow.

The crooked sconce on the third wall of the upper hallway. It had been crooked for as long as I could remember and would probably remain crooked long after I was gone.

The narrow window at the end of the corridor overlooking the kitchen garden, where I had spent countless stolen hours as a child watching the cook’s cat hunt mice with businesslike dedication.

Every little detail suddenly felt precious. As though my mind were desperately trying to memorize the life I was leaving behind.

Would I ever walk these halls again?

Would I ever sit beside Kai at dinner, listen to Valeria complain about the kitchen staff, or spend another afternoon watching the sunlight spill across the garden?

Or would I become another forgotten daughter, swallowed by the cold walls of a vampire lord’s fortress?

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

No.

I refused to think that way.

Tyler Kingston had my gold. He had heard my plea and agreed to consider the job. I had done everything within my power to secure my freedom. Now I could only hope he would keep his word.

Valeria’s hand found mine in the dim corridor and squeezed it tightly.

Neither of us spoke.

We didn’t need to.

Her fingers trembled against mine, revealing the fear she was trying so desperately to hide. For a moment, I wanted to stop walking and throw my arms around her. I wanted to tell her I was frightened, that I didn’t know whether I would survive what awaited me, and that I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind.

Instead, I squeezed her hand back then she released me before the guards could notice.

And I kept walking. When I entered the grand hall, Father was already waiting beside the cold fireplace, his hands clasped behind his back as he watched the doorway.

He was dressed formally, as though this were an important state occasion rather than the morning he was sending his daughter toward what could very well be a cruel fate.

Mateo stood to one side, straight and silent as a post. He looked up when I entered, and for a brief moment, something flashed in his eyes.

Guilt.

Or perhaps something that wanted to become remorse but hadn’t quite gotten there. Then it disappeared.

“You look well,” he said.

The words were true, but his tone lacked warmth. He might as well have been commenting on the weather. I studied him: his pointed nose, sagging shoulders, and the permanent furrow between his brows that made him look perpetually burdened. Strangely, I felt something I hadn’t expected.

Not anger.

Not anymore.

Just a vast, exhausted sadness.

For both of us.

“Goodbye, Mateo,” I said softly.

He cleared his throat and looked away.

“Try to be good, Maya.”

There it was.

His answer to everything.

Obedience. 

Sacrifice.

 Silence.

As though being good meant accepting whatever cruelty life placed before me without daring to protest.

I wanted to ask him whether he would still call me good if I returned from Draken’s fortress broken beyond recognition. Whether he would be proud of me if I obediently allowed a stranger to take everything from me.

But I let it go. I didn’t have the energy to be angry with him today.

Besides, I had bigger things to worry about. Like whether a certain rogue mercenary was currently positioned somewhere along the Geriatric Sacred Temple Road.

Or whether he was three villages away, spending my mother’s gold on ale and whores.

The thought made my stomach twist. I had placed my life in the hands of a man I barely knew. A man whose reputation had been built on danger, violence, and a willingness to accept almost any job for the right price.

What if I had made a terrible mistake?

What if Tyler Kingston was no different from the men who had brought me to this point?

I pushed the thoughts away before they could consume me. There was no turning back now.

Father slowly looked me over, inspecting me the way he might inspect a horse before a sale. I forced myself to remain still beneath his gaze as I thought about Tyler’s dark corner in the Grim Goblin Inn. Then, unexpectedly, my thoughts shifted to the midnight-black wolf from my dream.

Those familiar brown eyes.

The strange warmth that had drawn me toward him.

The way his presence had shattered Draken’s hold over me.

I still couldn’t explain what I had experienced that night. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a dream born from fear and desperation. Yet something deep inside me refused to believe that.

I drew a slow breath.

“You look perfect,” Father finally said.

High praise from Alpha Russell. He moved toward me, and only then did I notice what he was holding.

A box.

My breath caught in my chest as he stopped in front of me and opened it.

Inside lay a delicate strand of white-gold pearls. Each bead possessed a creamy luster that seemed to glow from within, and at the center hung a pendant bearing the emblem of a white wolf.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I had seen that insignia only once before, in a portrait of a woman whose belongings remained locked away in the room in the north wing.

My mother’s chamber. I stared at the necklace, scarcely daring to believe what I was seeing.

“Father…” My voice came out as little more than a whisper.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted the necklace from its box and stepped closer.

His hands were not quite steady as he reached around my neck and fastened the clasp. When he finished, he remained standing before me for a moment, his gaze fixed somewhere near my shoulder rather than my face.

His jaw worked silently, as though he were struggling to force words past his lips. 

But none came.

I understood his silence. I had spent twenty-one years learning how to read my father’s silences. I knew the difference between his anger, his disappointment, and the rare moments when something inside him threatened to break through the hard shell he had built around himself.

The necklace was his way of apologizing to me.

Perhaps not for everything.

Perhaps not even for the most important things.

But it was something.

My throat tightened as I touched the pearls resting against my skin.

“Thank you, Father,” I murmured. “For Mother’s insignia necklace.”

It was the first time I had ever spoken about Mother aloud in his presence without being interrupted, dismissed, or met with the cold reminder that I was the reason she was gone.

Father flinched as though my words had struck him. It was slight almost imperceptible.

But I saw it.

For one brief moment, the hardness in his face faltered. His eyes seemed to lose their familiar sharpness, and something painful flickered across his expression.

Regret.

Grief.

Perhaps even love.

Then, just as quickly, his expression hardened into the familiar, grumpy mask I had known all my life.

But I had seen it and for the first time, I had seen what he tried so desperately to hide. And suddenly, I wondered whether my father had spent all these years hating me because I had taken Mother from him or because loving me reminded him too painfully of the woman he had lost.

The thought hurt more than I expected as I lowered my gaze to the pearls and gently closed my fingers around the pendant. Whatever the truth was, I might never have the chance to ask him.

A distant sound of horses and wheels reached us from outside.

The carriage.

My heart lurched as the moment I had been dreading had finally arrived. Father straightened, the brief vulnerability disappearing from his face.

“It’s time,” he said.

Two words.

That was all he gave me.

I nodded, afraid that if I tried to speak, my voice would betray me. As I turned toward the doors, my fingers tightened around my mother’s pendant.

Somewhere beyond the manor walls, Tyler Kingston might be preparing to save me. Or he might already have abandoned me.

I had no way of knowing.

But as the guards escorted me toward the waiting carriage, I made myself one silent promise.

If I had to enter Lord Draken’s fortress, I would not surrender without a fight.

And if the gods were merciful, I would live long enough to discover why a mysterious black wolf had appeared in my dreams and why his eyes had felt so much like home.