12
1025 Words
ROBYN
"You can give the council my word." He growled at Elias. "I intend to marry her."
Then I heard him walking away, like he hadn't just decided the entire course of my life in one sentence, tossed off like a scheduling note.
I stood frozen behind that bathroom door long after his footsteps faded.
How dare he!
He will marry me? Not f*****g ask me! Just like every other man had apparently been deciding things about me my entire life — my father, Leon, and now him, each one convinced my life was theirs to arrange.
Is this what you were trying to warn me about, Mom?
The thought hit me so hard I had to press a hand to the sink to steady myself.
I splashed water on my face.
"I cannot let them push me around any longer. If I have to marry him, it will be by my own will. For myself, for power. To get back at everyone."
Then I walked back into the ballroom like nothing had happened at all.
Kane found me within minutes, his eyes narrowing the second he reached me.
"Where did you go?"
"The bathroom." I answered flatly. Then I raised a brow. "Is that a crime now too?"
His gaze hardened for a second before he loosened up. I forced myself to continue like nothing had happened.
Every time someone threw a joke at him, I laughed more than intended, waiting for him to at least open up about the decisions he'd made about my life.
But he said nothing until the night was almost spent.
"We're leaving," he said, checking his watch.
I nodded at him, giving him my hand, letting him lead me on. I kept every muscle in my face perfectly still the entire walk to the car.
I lasted exactly until we left the venue, then I snapped.
"When were you going to tell me?"
His face remained on the road. "Tell you what?"
"That you intend to marry me." My voice cracked more than I wanted. "To lock me up. Keep me as a wife. Imprison me, even, since apparently that's how this works with you people." I shook my head, hands curling into fists in my lap. "This wasn't part of the agreement, Kane!"
My eyes were watering, but I wasn't crying from being hurt. I was angry, and apparently my tear glands decided to leak whenever they wanted.
The car screeched to a halt so suddenly I lurched forward against the seatbelt.
My hand shot for the door handle. "Let me out. I want out—"
"No." He cut me off in a flat tone, continuing before I could speak. "You're not my prisoner. You'll be my wife. The most powerful woman in this entire nation."
"That's not—"
"What you wanted?" He scoffed. "You have to make certain sacrifices for things you want to work."
He pressed his thumb to my lips, and my stomach flipped. Not now, I growled at it.
"You get to want for nothing." His thumb moved over my lips. "Every craving you have ever buried, satisfied. Every door in this nation, open. Every man who ever looked at you like you were less than something, forced to bow."
He turned fully to face me.
His hand found the slit of my dress, sliding along the exposed line of my thigh, climbing higher with every inch of silence I failed to fill with a protest.
My breath stopped as a traitorous heat bloomed everywhere his fingers touched, and for one humiliating second, I didn't pull away.
Then I slapped him.
The sound cracked through the car, sharp enough that even I flinched at it.
"I don't become yours just because you decided it," I snapped, chest heaving as his hand moved up to where my palm had left. "You don't get to touch me like I already belong to you. Not until I say I do."
He chuckled, turning to me. "But you always say so. My back has taken your mark. I have memorized the way you sound and—"
"You've made your point!" I cut him off, my chest rising.
"So, what do you say, love?"
**
"Oh my Goddess, look at the size of this thing—" June's scream almost broke my eardrum.
I held my hand out, letting the diamond catch the light. Kane had made a stop at the jeweler when I agreed to it.
There was no ceremony or formal proposal. He just took my hand off my lap and pushed the ring on, like he was returning something that had always belonged to me. I hadn't said a word. Neither had he.
June snapped a photo before I could stop her, thumbs already flying across her screen.
"June—"
"Too late, it's posted." She grinned, tilting the phone so I could see the caption already gathering likes.
SHE SAID YES 💍 #futureLunaSupreme
Her phone buzzed with notifications, and I caught some of the comments, forcing a smile as the numbers climbed in real time. Strangers wished they were me. Some said they would kill to be me. But the real truth sat like a stone in my chest.
"Imagine," June said, flopping back onto my bed with a dreamy sigh, "if you hadn't walked into that room by mistake that first night. None of this would've happened."
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
I kept my face perfectly still, trying to push down the anger rising in my chest.
"Yeah," I said slowly. "Thank the Goddess for the mistake. And thank you."
Her eyes lit up, and she sat back up. "What?"
"If I hadn't mistaken your room for it." I glared into her eyes, drinking in the guilt in them. "You said 204 instead of 304."
For half a second, I could swear her face went pale. Then she chuckled, her lips curving into a smile.
"Yeah." She laughed, a little too fast, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Clumsy me."
She pushed off my bed. "I have to be up early tomorrow. See you, Robs."
- Writer
