1. A Bleeding Stranger

“Yes, I got the wedding rings,” 21 year old Eizlina said to her mother on the call. She was returning back home after getting her wedding rings from the jewellery store.

Her wedding was going to be held the day after tomorrow.

“Where are you? Isn't Anton with you?” Eizlina heard her mother, Gisella, questioning her. Her smile slightly dimmed. 

Anton Kloez….her fiance.

The only man of her life, and the only man she had ever been allowed to think about as her life partner.

“No. Actually, something came up in his office. He told me about it, and said he would send someone to pick me up from the store but I told him I will manage,” Eizlina told the truth to her mother.

She and Anton were supposed to collect their wedding rings together from the store. But Anton couldn't show up because of some very important work.

“And I…..” Eizlina stopped, when suddenly her dark brown eyes caught something which froze her feet. She saw a man laying on the ground of the alley she was walking on. He was looking lifeless.

Was he sleeping or was he dead?

“Mum, I…” she was about to tell her mother about that stranger, but her battery went completely dead.

She had forgotten to put her phone on charge this morning.

Eizlina gulped, especially witnessing her surroundings looking completely quiet, and even dark as the evening had already begun.

No one was present around her, except for that man.

Gathering all her courage and hoping in her heart that he should be alive, Eizlina strode towards that man, even though a sane part in her mind was telling her to turn around and run away.

But what if that person genuinely needed her help?

She should not be leaving him to die if she could save his life.

Clutching her handbag, she kneeled before that man. She noticed his face was covered with a mask. His eyes had been covered with his own black hair.

“Excuse me, Mister. Are you alright?” She asked him, hoping he would wake up and answer her. But he didn't. 

Her eyes widened when she noticed that the man's arm was bleeding badly. His clothes were covered with blood. 

But he was alive. She could see his chest moving up and down slowly.

“Hey! Are you….” Her words paused, seeing him slowly opening his eyes. His pale grey eyes came into her sight.

The corner of his eyes were looking reddened, like he was intoxicated.

But only if she knew why his gaze had reddened.

Panicked Eizlina, immediately dragged herself closer to him.

“Mister, are you alright? What happened to you?” She asked him again, but no word came out of that man's masked mouth. His eyes were also barely visible because of his front hairs.

She couldn't understand any of his reaction, but once again, her eyes fell on his bleeding arm. 

Restless to help him, Eizlina opened her handbag and took out her handkerchief. Luckily, it was clean.

Placing that man's arm on her lap, she carefully wrapped it around his wound to stop the bleeding. That man's blood continued to stain her hands and clothes, but she didn't care. All she cared about was just to save his life. To cure his wound, unaware that those silver eyes continued to peer at her every move.

“I will call someone for help. You need urgent medical attention,” she said to that man, extremely worried, panicked and even scared.

Those grey eyes clearly noticed the corner of her eyes glistening up with tears of worry and fear.

Worry of seeing him dead. Fear of finding him dead in her arms.

Eizlina attempted to get up but suddenly she felt that man gripping her wrist. His hold was extremely tight and somehow aggressive too. It stunned her.

How did he still have so much strength left to hold her hand like this?

Trailing her eyes back at him, she looked at his face. She saw him pressing his other hand against the road, and with its help, he got up and sat on the ground.

It widened her eyes. Couldn't he just get up a little second ago?

She gulped, especially when she noticed that his grip around her wrist seemed unbreakable. 

“Mister, are….” she stopped when suddenly his bloodshed eyes snapped in her direction. Something trembled inside her just the way his eyes fell on her, like he had been searching for her for years.

And his hunt had finally ended.

His behaviour terrified Eizlina. 

She immediately tried to take back her wrist, but his grip continued to tighten to the extent she could feel his fingers digging against her bare skin.

What was he doing?

“Leave my hand. What are you…..” her words got stuck inside her own throat when suddenly that man grabbed her neck and pushed her down on the ground. Her watery eyes enlarged more in horror.

What she had gotten herself into?

He hovered over her. His knees rested on her one side.

“We finally met, Eizlina Witner,” his voice felt dangerously dark and unfathomable.

Her blood ran cold in horror.

How did he know her name? Who was he?

Extremely afraid, Eizlina tried to fight back and push him away from her, but this made him pin her hands.

“Seems like, I will have to make you obedient in our future,” A hint of deviousness was evident in his tone, but she was too scared to notice it.

Horrified, Eizlina watched that man's perilous eyes roaming all over her face, but the beating of her heart inflated in terror the second his gaze stopped at her trembling lips. The malice in his gaze intensified.

Dread washed over her.

She witnessed the man pushing his face closer to hers. Eizlina immediately tilted her head. She tightly squeezed her glossy eyes shut, thinking of the worst. 

“I have been dying for our meeting, my dove,”

Her tears turned more aggressive, hearing him whispering those words in her ear.

His grip turned brutal around her wrists, earning a hiss of pain from her mouth, and this made him smirk.

“Just like I had thought, you are too delicate for your own good,” his words continued to scare the life out of her.

Her hiss of pain evoked that lethal urge in him to hurt her more, because he had been aching to demolish her for years, just to wreck Airkin Kloez irredeemably.

Suddenly, her sweetly intoxicating smell invaded his nostrils, and this automatically forced his cruel urges to start fading.

He closed his eyes. His grip slowly started turning gentle around her.

“Wh…who are you? What do you want?” She finally dared to ask him. Her question widened his smirk.

“We will answer all your questions, but …..” whispering in her ear, he pulled back to look into her horrified, watery eyes.

“At our wedding altar,” 

His words froze her till her core.

Our wedding altar?

Before Eizlina could do anything, she witnessed that man leaving her wrists and neck. She immediately got up, and dragged herself away from him.

She looked at him, petrified, which filled his gaze with more cruelty.

Without thinking about anything further for a second, she stood up and ran away from there as fast as she could before he could cage her again.

A treacherous grin crept on his face by seeing her running away from him. Trailing his eyes down, he looked towards his wound where she attempted to cure him.

Snatching her handkerchief away from his arm, he looked in the direction she had fled away like a scared bird.

“We will meet again at your wedding altar, and there…..” his eyes shifted down towards her hand bag which she had left behind in terror. 

The box of rings had slipped out of it. Grasping that box, he opened it, and his smirk grew more sinister.

“You won't be able to run away from me, would-be daughter-in- law of Airkin Kloez,” he finally completed his words, sealing her destiny with the only intention to become her most cruel fate.

……………

The taxi halted right in front of the Kloez manor, where she had been living since she had taken her very first breath.

It was the only shed she had and it was the only shed which was supposed to cover her till her very last breath.

With her shivering hands, she paid the taxi driver the money she had in her pocket. After that, Eizlina hurriedly stepped out of the taxi and dashed inside the manor.

She stepped inside the hall of the manor and just like she had expected, she caught both of her parents, Gisella Witner and Vincent Witner there, who had been serving Arkin Kloez for more than two decades now.

“M….mum,” her shivering voice grabbed her parents' attention, and their eyes widened, seeing their daughter's clothes and hands stained in blood. Tears were shimmering in her eyes.

“Lina….” her mother uttered, terrified. Both her parents stormed towards her.

“Eizlina, what happened?” Her mother asked her, but she just hugged her mother tightly and teared up.

His hauntingly silverish eyes, his brutally painful hold, his venomously deep voice…that man had made sure to leave his barbaric mark just not on her skin, but on her soul too.

He had shuddered her very existence, who had never encountered something like this ever in her life before.

“Eizlina, please tell us what happened?” Her father became more worried, hearing her sobbing in her mother's arms.

“Lina …..” 

“What happened?” That voice made both her parents turn their heads and they saw Airkin Kloez, whose grey eyes were fixed at Eizlina, and they filled with concern the moment he noticed she was crying.

That old man walked towards them. Her parents made Eizlina sit on the sofa.

“Eizlina, what happened, dear? Tell us,” Airkin asked her. Eizlina slowly took her head upward. 

Her palms were tightly closed, and everyone noticed that terror in her presence. Something had petrified her.

“When I was returning home….I….I saw a masked man lying on the street. I thought about helping him but he….” Eizlina told everything that happened between her and that masked man, to her parents and uncle Airkin.

“H…he knew my name, and he…he said, we finally met,” she uttered, horrified. Her words made Airkin ball his fists, because somehow he had already understood who that man was.

Exhaling a heavy breath, he said to Gisella, “Take Eizlina to her room.”

Her mother slowly nodded, and then both of her parents took Eizlina to her room.

As soon as they left, Airkin took out his phone, and called that specific person.

“Where the f#ck you are, Anton? Do you even have an idea what has happened?” Airkin glowered at his son, outraged.

“Theron came in front of Eizlina,” and the second those words escaped from Airkin’s mouth, his son went completely silent because they both knew who Theron was, and what exactly he wanted from Eizlina.

But poor Eizlina didn't even know who that man was and how cruel his intentions were for her, and how barbarically he was going to fulfill them right at her wedding altar.

……………

‘Our wedding altar ,’ his gravelly dark voice continued to echo inside her head.

Sitting on her bed, Eizlina was trying her best to forget about everything that had happened just a few hours ago. But she just couldn't. She couldn't forget anything about that man, and it was badly distressing for her.

His thoughts were haunting her now.

The sound of her room's door getting opened gained her attention. She looked towards it, and her eyes immediately watered when they fell on that man's greenish eyes.

Her grip tightened around the edge of the bed.

It was her fiance…..

Anton Kloez.