Chapter 3 — Ofiura's POV

Chapter 3 — Ofiura's POV

My mother's hand found my arm, a warning more than comfort. "Let's all just sit down."

"There's nothing to sit down about." I didn't move. "I'm done."

"You're done when I say you're done." My stepfather's voice stayed level, which somehow made it worse than shouting would have. He pulled out a chair and sat like he had all the time in the world, like this was a business meeting and not my life. "Sit."

I didn't.

"Three years ago," he said, "I made a deal for you. Damon's family took on your sister's university fees—all of it, four years, no strings, the kind of money that doesn't come from nowhere—in exchange for a marriage that kept this family's finances afloat. You said yes to that deal, Ofiura. You stood in this kitchen and you said yes."

"I was twenty-one. I didn't understand what I was agreeing to."

"You understood well enough to sign the paperwork." He spread his hands like he was being reasonable. "You don't get to walk away from it now because your feelings got hurt."

"Because he cheated." My voice climbed and I let it. "Because his mother accused me of lying about medical records to cover for his own infertility. Those aren't feelings. Those are—"

"I don't care what they are." He stood, and the calm in his face finally cracked into something uglier. "You will attend that party, and you will stay married, and you will stop embarrassing this family in front of people who matter."

"No." My voice didn't shake this time. "I won't."

The slap came before I saw his hand move. My head snapped sideways, my cheek burning, the shock of it louder in my ears than the sound itself had been. I stumbled into the counter, one hand flying up to my face, and for a second the kitchen went white at the edges.

"Stop!" My mother threw herself between us, one hand pressed flat against his chest, the other reaching for me without looking away from him. "Please. She'll go. She'll go to the party, I promise, just…don't. Don't hit her again."

He looked at her hand on his chest like it was an insult he was choosing, for now, to overlook.

"You've got a mouth on you," he said to me, over her shoulder, like my mother wasn't even standing there, "because you've never had to actually lose anything in your life. You want to know what happens if you keep this up?" He let the silence stretch, let me wait for it. "Your sister doesn't get to finish that degree. She comes to work for me instead. I've got a bar full of girls who'd tell you exactly what that means, if you'd like me to spell it out for you."

The room went very quiet.

"You wouldn't."

"Try me." He straightened his robe like the conversation had cost him nothing at all, like he hadn't just threatened to sell his own stepdaughter to make a point. "Think about that before you decide you're too good for one party."

He left without waiting for an answer, his footsteps unhurried down the hall, a door closing somewhere in the house like punctuation.

The kitchen was silent except for my own ragged breathing. My mother turned to me, already reaching for the first aid kit she kept under the sink for exactly these mornings, her hands moving with the too-practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this a hundred times before. She cleaned the cut at the corner of my mouth without a word, her jaw tight, her eyes fixed on the wound like if she looked at anything else she might fall apart.

That was when I saw it….when her sleeve rode up as she reached for the gauze—a bruise blooming yellow-green along her forearm, older than tonight, and beneath it, fainter, another one healing on top of it. Not from tonight. From before tonight. From a long time before tonight.

"Mom." My voice cracked. "How long has he been doing this to you?"

She didn't answer. She kept dabbing at my cheek like if she focused hard enough on the task, the question would go away on its own. Her hands weren't quite steady, and I don't think it was because of me.

"Mom."

"It doesn't matter." The words came out thin, worn smooth from being said too many times. "It's not your problem to fix."

"It is if it's happening because of me. Because of this marriage. Because of money he took for—" I stopped, because saying it out loud made it real in a way I wasn't ready for. "I'm going to get you out of here. I don't care what it takes. I'll find a way to—"

"Stop." The word came out sharp, then crumbled entirely. She sat down across from me at the table, and for the first time in my life I watched my mother look like she'd given up on something completely. Not angry. Not even sad, exactly. Just finished. "There's no way out, Ofiura. Not for me. I made my choices a long time ago, and I have to live inside them." She reached for my hand and gripped it too hard, like she needed to hold onto something more than she needed to comfort me. "But you can still protect your sister. Please. Just go to the party. Endure it. For her, if not for me."

I wanted to argue. I opened my mouth to argue, and every argument I had felt small against the look on her face.

I thought of my sister, two years from a degree that would take her somewhere far away from this house, from this kitchen, from a man who kept a bar full of girls he thought of as inventory. I thought about what it would cost her if I lost this particular fight out of pride.

I felt whatever was left of the fight go quiet in my chest.

"Fine," I whispered. "I'll go."

My mother closed her eyes like the words had cost her something too, some last piece of herself handed over in exchange for a peace she didn't actually believe in. She didn't say thank you. I don't think either of us could have survived that.

******--

*FEW DAYS LATER—*

The banquet hall was too bright and too loud, and Patricia found me within the first ten minutes, her hand resting on Damon's arm like she'd been doing it for years instead of months.

"Is this your wife, Damon?" She looked me over, slow and deliberate, from my heels to the dress I'd chosen without caring what it said about me. "The one who can't give you children? She dresses like someone's grandmother."

A few people laughed. Not many. Enough.

I felt my face go hot, and I hated that more than I hated her, that after everything, my body still knew how to be embarrassed in public even when the person embarrassing me was the one in the wrong.

"Patricia." I kept my voice even. It cost me something to do it. "I don't believe we've been introduced properly. I'm the wife who's still wearing the ring."

Her smile didn't move, but something behind her eyes did.

Damon's beta, Rowan, laughed at that—not at her, at me. "Careful, Luna. Nobody invited you here to make a scene. You only came because your family needed the invitation."

"I came because my husband asked me to." I looked at Damon when I said it. "Didn't you?"

Damon had the same expression he'd worn at breakfast like he was waiting for the room to stop being uncomfortable so he could go back to enjoying his evening. "They're just joking, Ofiura. Don't make it into something."

"She called me your grandmother's replacement in front of half your business partners."

"You're being dramatic."

I laughed, and it came out uglier than I meant it to. Days ago I would have swallowed that laugh along with the rest of it. Something had shifted since then, small and permanent, like a bone that heals wrong and never sets quite the same way again.

"I want a divorce," I said. Not loud. I didn't need it to be loud for him to hear me.

Damon actually smiled. "Don't start that again. Not here."

"I'm serious."

"You're not." He said it with the easy confidence of a man who'd never once considered that I might mean something the first time I said it. "Get through the night. Tomorrow you can be as dramatic as you want in private."

I opened my mouth to answer him, and the words died when the room changed around me.

It wasn't loud. Nobody announced anything. But I felt it the way you feel a temperature drop, a shift in the air that made every conversation nearby go quiet by degrees. Damon straightened. Rowan's smirk vanished like it had never existed.

Damon was already moving, already crossing the floor with his hand out and a smile so practiced I almost didn't recognize the man wearing it.

"Alpha Nikolai. Thank you for coming."

I turned because everyone else had.

And then I stopped being able to think about anything at all.