Every time the sun rose, fear consumed Ella increasingly. The day she had been dreading since she was 15 was approaching: the day she would marry the beast. Xavier, known for showing no mercy to anyone, had steely eyes. The impression she had the first time she saw him was that those eyes, black as night, were capable of cutting through and plunging anyone into utter darkness.
Since then, Ella woke up in the middle of the night startled, and sometimes her screams, after a terrible nightmare, would wake her roommates. Nina, the only friend she had made, had learned to leave her bed to sleep with Ella in those moments of panic. But Ella knew that soon no one would be able to protect her, for the nightmare would become real, and the man who would become her husband would lie beside her in be
