THE SUBSTITUTE BRIDE

Eden's POV

My hands shook as I smoothed down the ivory silk of my wedding dress, staring at my reflection in the bridal suite mirror at Saint Michael's Cathedral, and I barely recognized the woman looking back at me. Five years, I had spent five years loving Matthew Kingsley with everything I had, believing he felt the same way, and today was supposed to be the day all our dreams came true.

"You look absolutely stunning," Mirabel said from behind me, adjusting my veil with gentle fingers, her warm brown eyes reflecting genuine happiness for me, or at least that was what I thought I saw. She had been my best friend since medical school, the one person I trusted completely in a world that often felt cold and confusing, and right now, her presence was the only thing keeping me calm.

I tried to smile but my stomach twisted with anxiety, that strange feeling I had been experiencing for weeks now, like something important was slipping through my fingers but I could not identify what. Matthew had been distant lately, claiming work stress and wedding planning nerves, but there were moments when he looked at me with an expression I could not quite read, something between guilt and... pity, maybe.

"He is just running late," I told myself, glancing at the antique clock on the wall that showed we were already twenty minutes past the ceremony start time, and my mother Patricia would be furious about the delay. The Ashford family did not tolerate tardiness or anything that might embarrass us in front of Crescent City's elite families, and this wedding was supposed to be the social event of the season.

Mirabel's phone buzzed and she glanced at the screen, her face going pale in a way that made my heart drop straight into my stomach. "Eden, I..." she started, then stopped, biting her lip like she was trying to decide something difficult.

"What is it," I asked, moving toward her even though part of me wanted to run in the opposite direction, sensing that whatever she had seen would change everything. My heightened instincts, the ones I had learned to ignore because my parents said they were just anxiety symptoms, were screaming at me that danger was coming.

She turned the phone toward me without a word, and I read the text message that had been sent to the groomsmen group chat, apparently by mistake: "Married Celestine this morning, she is pregnant, you understand."

The words did not make sense at first, my brain refusing to process what my eyes were clearly seeing, and I read them again, then a third time. Married Celestine. This morning. Pregnant. Matthew had married someone else, on our wedding day, while I stood here in a dress that cost more than most people's cars.

"Who is Celestine," I whispered, though somewhere deep inside, I already knew the answer because Matthew had mentioned that name exactly once in five years, late one night when he was drunk and vulnerable.

"His first love from college," Mirabel said quietly, reaching for my hand, but I pulled away, needing space to breathe, to think, to understand how my entire life had just collapsed. "The one who rejected him and married someone else, but I heard she got divorced six months ago."

Six months ago, right around the time Matthew started acting strange and distant, claiming he needed space to focus on an important project at work. I had been understanding and supportive like always, never questioning or demanding explanations, and apparently, that had been exactly what he wanted, a convenient placeholder while he pursued the woman he really loved.

My chest tightened and I could not get enough air, the cathedral walls seeming to close in around me like a trap, and I stumbled toward the door, needing to escape. Mirabel tried to stop me but I pushed past her, running down the hallway in my ridiculous heels and elaborate dress, and I could hear the wedding guests murmuring as I burst through the doors into the main sanctuary.

Two hundred people turned to stare at me, their faces showing various expressions of shock, pity, and barely concealed satisfaction at witnessing such a scandal, and I saw my mother Patricia stand up, her perfectly made-up face contorted with fury. My father Richard remained seated, looking coldly disappointed like he always did when I failed to meet his impossible standards, and neither of them moved to comfort me.

"The wedding is canceled," I announced, my voice carrying across the silent cathedral with a strength I did not know I possessed, and then I turned and ran, ignoring my mother's sharp command to stop this instant. I ran down the stone steps, my veil tearing free and floating away on the wind, and I kept running until I reached my car in the parking lot.

I drove without direction, tears streaming down my face and blurring my vision until I had to pull over before I caused an accident. My phone buzzed with increasingly angry calls from my mother, a few concerned messages from Mirabel, and nothing, absolutely nothing, from Matthew, the man who had promised to love me forever but could not even be bothered to tell me he had married someone else.

How could I have been so blind, I wondered, thinking back over five years of a relationship that suddenly made terrible sense. Matthew had pursued me aggressively at that charity gala where we met, seeming almost desperate in his attention, and I had been flattered that someone so handsome and successful wanted me. But now I remembered odd comments from his friends, jokes about me being a "dead ringer" for someone, and the way Matthew's mother always looked at me with a strange, calculating expression.

I pulled down the visor mirror and really looked at myself, seeing past the bridal makeup to the features underneath: dark hair that fell in natural waves, green eyes with gold flecks, a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones. I had always thought I was reasonably attractive but nothing special, certainly not beautiful enough to inspire the kind of obsessive love Matthew had claimed to feel, and now I understood why.

I was not Eden, the woman he loved, I was Eden, the woman who looked like Celestine.

My phone rang again but this time it was the hospital, Mercy General where I worked as an emergency room doctor, and I almost did not answer. But years of training overrode my personal crisis, and I picked up to hear my supervisor Daniel's urgent voice: "Eden, I know it is your wedding day, but we have a mass casualty incident, multiple victims from a warehouse fire and shooting, and we need every available doctor."

"I will be there in fifteen minutes," I said, ending the call and starting my car, grateful for something, anything, to focus on besides my shattered life. I drove to the hospital still wearing my wedding dress, and when I burst through the ER doors, the nurses stared but no one commented, they just pointed me toward the trauma bay where chaos reigned.

The next few hours passed in a blur of blood, adrenaline, and the familiar rhythm of saving lives, letting me forget that my own life had just fallen apart. I worked on gunshot wounds, burns, and blunt force trauma, moving from patient to patient with mechanical efficiency, and it was not until midnight that Daniel pulled me aside.

"There is one more patient in bay seven, but Eden, you should know he is dangerous," Daniel said, his expression grave and worried. "Police found him surrounded by dead bodies, and the officers are calling him the Rogue King, some kind of gang leader, so be careful."

I should have refused, should have let someone else handle it, but something pulled me toward bay seven like an invisible thread. I pushed through the curtain and found a man on the gurney who looked more dead than alive, his body covered in deep claw marks that no animal I knew could have made, and multiple bullet wounds that should have killed him hours ago.

But it was his face that stopped me in my tracks, even unconscious and dying, he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Strong features that looked carved from stone, dark hair matted with blood, and an aura of power that seemed to radiate from him even in this broken state, and I felt something shift inside me, something I had never experienced before.

His eyes opened, just for a moment, and I gasped at the sight of irises that glowed pure gold like melted metal in firelight. Those eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that made my skin prickle, and I felt a pull so strong it was almost painful, like my soul recognized something in him that my mind could not understand.

Then his eyes closed again and alarms started blaring as his heart rate plummeted, snapping me back into doctor mode. I worked frantically, barking orders at nurses and pushing my own exhaustion aside, determined not to let this stranger die on my table after everything else I had lost today.

Three hours later, against all odds and medical logic, his vitals stabilized and I stepped back, swaying with exhaustion. The mysterious man with golden eyes was alive, and as I stared down at his now peaceful face, I had no idea that saving him would change absolutely everything.