Chapter 2

The comment feed went completely wild.

[Holy hell, she actually did it! That's brutal! Absolutely brutal!]

[How is this any different from treating the male lead like a dog? This is straight-up abuse!]

[Poor Julian, giving up everything for love. Celeste, you're going to regret this!]

Regret it?

I watched Julian's face, pale as paper and slick with cold sweat, without an ounce of pity.

The butler stepped forward with perfect timing and handed me a folder.

It was Julian's lifetime employment contract, the one that had once made him the most powerful man in the Ward household short of me.

I tore it to pieces in front of him, then had every last one of his expensive clothes and custom weapons thrown into the fire pit in the courtyard.

Flames roared up, lighting Julian's face — a mask of despair and humiliation.

"Throw him out the front gate like garbage. Her too."

I picked up a damp towel and wiped, unhurried, at the side of my neck where his blade had rested minutes ago.

"Get out of Meridian City. Don't come back and dirty my streets."

After Julian was thrown out, every servant and guard in the house went silent, barely daring to breathe.

Nobody had expected it — the man Miss Ward had doted on for ten years, the one everyone assumed would end up running half the family, reduced to nothing in a single afternoon.

The butler steeled himself and stepped forward. "Miss Ward, the position of Head of the Guard is open now. Should we promote one of his seconds, or—"

"Bring the car around." I cut him off, tossing the towel onto a tray. "We're going downtown."

The butler startled. "You want to pick the replacement yourself?"

There could be no gap left at my side. Not for a single day.

Besides, I had no interest in someone else's leftovers. The next Head of the Guard would be one I chose myself — one whose loyalty I could trust completely.

Meridian City's underground fight club reeked of blood, cheap tobacco, and rancid sweat. It was the most lawless, chaotic corner of the entire city.

The moment the club's owner realized I'd shown up in person, he came scrambling out to greet me, practically tripping over himself, and thrust a roster into my hands, gushing over a lineup of supposed top fighters and retired mercenaries.

I watched, unmoved, as men beat each other bloody in the cage for a few thousand dollars, flipping through page after page of the roster. Nothing caught my eye.

Too weak. None of it.

Irritated, I stood to leave.

Just as I stepped toward the door of the private box, a sickening crack of splintering bone rang out from the octagonal cage below, followed by a gasp that swept through the entire room.

I turned my head and looked down.

In the cage, a man drenched in blood had his teeth locked around his opponent's throat like an animal.

His opponent — a brute who outweighed him by a hundred pounds — was pinned to the mat in some twisted, reckless hold, eyes rolling back, seconds from passing out.

The man's torso was bare. His pale skin was covered in a dense, savage tangle of black thorn tattoos that climbed all the way up his neck, radiating something feral and menacing.

"Miss Ward, you don't want to look at that one." The owner wiped the sweat off his forehead and hurried to explain.

"He's an unbroken lunatic. Doesn't even have a real name — they just call him 'Wild Dog.' Bites anyone who gets close, won't take orders from anybody. Killed his own trainer last week..."

The owner kept rambling, but I raised my hand and cut him off.

I walked to the edge of the cage and studied him.

Right then, the man in the cage — eyes still red with bloodlust — seemed to sense something.

Under the glare of the spotlight, I found myself looking into a pair of dark eyes, sinister and vicious, yet carrying an obsessive, almost desperate focus.

He'd seen me.

One second of eye contact, and the violence in his gaze went still, like a switch had been flipped.

While the entire crowd stared in disbelief, he crawled to the edge of the cage and dropped to his knees on the ground in front of my heels, utterly submissive.