Short
The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée

The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée

작가:  Eternity참여
언어: English
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Three days ago, my vampire fiancé, Clan Lord Raven Ashford, took his aide Vera on a private overnight trip to the southern border and gave her the seat reserved for his betrothed. He expected me to make a scene. I didn’t. I had stopped fighting a month ago. A year's worth of small surrenders had finally added up to something I could no longer ignore. He handed the border treaty I had negotiated myself to Vera, thinking I would appeal to the elders. Instead, I organized the handover documents and sent them over. He dismantled the territorial affairs I had managed for years, piece by piece, to pave Vera's way forward. I said nothing. I took the blame that was mine, accepted the cold looks, and let it all pass. At the banquet, he seated Vera beside him. He nodded more at her words than at mine. He thought I had finally accepted it, thought I was afraid to lose him. Then he came to me with offers. A manor in the south. Hunting grounds in the west. The family ring that should finally go on my finger. For the first time, he initiated these things himself, speaking as though granting me rewards. I asked for nothing. The dissolution papers he had already signed were buried among the documents he approved without reading. Those papers contained two declarations: the end of our betrothal and my departure from the clan. He never noticed. He still believed I was his betrothed, still waiting. I wasn't.

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1화

Chapter 1

"Seren, the lord needs these survey records completed before we leave for the south. Could you have them done by the end of the day?" Vera Saine, Raven's personal aide, placed a thick stack of patrol notes on my desk.

I took them. "Sure."

She lingered. "We're heading out shortly, so you'll need to drop the finished records in his study before we go. Also, his lamp oil is running low. Would you mind topping it up while you're there?"

The hall went quiet. A few clan members glanced my way, then quickly looked elsewhere, faces caught between sympathy and the desire to pretend they had seen nothing.

Everyone knew Raven Ashford was my betrothed. Everyone also knew how openly he favored Vera. He had recruited her personally from a border clan and never missed a chance to call her a rare talent who deserved every opportunity. It was his script, repeated so often he seemed to believe it himself.

I had spent two months traveling the border, mapping every stretch of frozen ground with my own hands. He transferred the completed survey to Vera's name, explaining that she was more familiar with border affairs. When I objected, he called a meeting of the elders, confident they would see it his way.

They didn't. Every elder recognized my handwriting on the maps. Vera received only one vote. His.

Afterward, he pulled me aside. He said I should not have embarrassed him in front of the council. He said it undermined clan unity. He said Vera was already struggling to find her footing in Ashford, and my objections would only make others ostracize her further.

I used to think he was genuinely caught between difficult choices. Now I just feel tired.

Vera had never even seen the border.

Undermining clan unity. I almost laughed. He was the one doing that.

Footsteps on the staircase. I looked up. Raven was coming down from the upper floor in traveling clothes. At his collar, a brooch I had never seen before, with an engraved vine.

His old brooch had been the Ashford clan crest, cast in black iron, simple and worn. He had worn it for as long as I had known him. I had chosen it myself, commissioned a smith to make it.

Vera had mentioned recently that a lord's accessories should vary with the occasion. She said it like an offhand suggestion. The next day, the black iron was gone.

He took her advice on everything now. The brooch. The reshuffling of the inner hall staff. The redrawing of territorial jurisdictions. Each decision made sense on its own, each one justifiable as something done for the good of the clan.

This had been going on for a year. It started with the late-night messages I discovered between them. I had confronted him that night.
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