Chapter 4
1081 Words
CHAPTER 4
LUCIA'S POV
My aunt found me exactly where Dorian had left me sitting at that dining table with my hands folded in my lap like I hadn't just been quietly threatened by a man who shared a face with someone I'd found perfectly pleasant twenty minutes earlier.
She took one look at me and said nothing.
That was the thing about Aunt Emilia. She had a talent for reading a room and deciding which parts of it weren't worth speaking out loud.
"We can go," she said simply, resting a hand briefly on my shoulder as she passed.
I stood, smoothed the front of my dress, and followed her out without looking back.
The ride home should have been quiet. I wanted it to be quiet.
I had so many things going on in my mind and I needed the silence to sort through them.
One thing that irritated me was Dorian's voice, the way he'd said girl like it was a category beneath his notice.
“The conditions for your marriage have been revised,” Emilia said as she set the glass of water down.
I looked at her. "Revised how?"
"The original arrangement allowed for six months before the formal ceremony." She paused.
"That has been removed."
Something about her tone made my stomach tighten. "And replaced with what?"
"You will be married to Dorian in two days." She said quickly.
I had just lifted my own glass of water to my mouth.
I almost didn't stop myself in time.
The water sloshed close to the rim as I lowered it back down with more care than my hands were currently capable of and stared at my aunt with what I was certain was not a good expression.
"Two days," I repeated.
"Yes."
"As in forty-eight hours."
"Give or take." She picked her own glass back up with so much calm you'd think she just announced a dinner plan change.
"Dorian's people made the adjustment. He said he needed the wedding to be done as soon as possible."
I turned to look out the window because I needed somewhere to put my face that wasn't directly at her.
Two days? The thought rang in my mind.
I had not even fully absorbed the part where I was marrying him at all.
***
They did not give me forty-eight hours so much as they gave me a sequence of events I moved through in a daze.
People from Dorian's house came for my fitting, documentation, and explanations on how the ceremony will take place.
And in the blink of an eye, it was the morning of the ceremony and everything was happening.
The ceremony was held in the great hall of the palace. Every alpha in the region was present. I felt their eyes from the moment I entered. They were all assessing, curious, some openly skeptical but I kept my chin level and my pace measured because the one thing I had learned in years of surviving a pack that underestimated me was how to walk into a room as if you had already decided it belonged to you.
Dorian was waiting at the front.
He looked like he had been born for exactly this.
When I reached him and we turned to face each other, he held my gaze with a steadiness that I matched through sheer force of will.
We exchanged the words we were supposed to exchange.
He slid a ring onto my finger with completely steady hands.
When he was supposed to, he smiled at me and it was convincing enough that I felt it in my chest before I could remind myself that it was a performance.
I smiled back.
We were very good at pretending.
The reception moved the way these things did with food, conversation, and pleasantries. Dorian kept one hand at the small of my back whenever we were in eyeline of anyone significant, and I kept my expression warm and my body language easy, and together we constructed something that looked, from the outside, exactly like a couple who had chosen each other.
I was reaching for a glass of champagne when a hand closed around my wrist from behind and pulled me sideways into the narrow space between two pillars.
I spun around.
Axel.
My ex-mate looked the way he always did.
"I know why you did this," he said in a low voice.
"You were hurting. I understand that. But Lucia, rushing into a marriage with someone like him because you were heartbroken is not.."
"Let go of my wrist." I interrupted him.
"I'm trying to help you. If you would just listen…"
"She doesn't need to listen to anything you have to say."
The voice came from directly behind me.
Axel's eyes lifted. I felt the shift in the air a half second before Dorian stepped around me, and then his hand was at my jaw, tilting my face up toward his, and he kissed me.
It wasn't a light kiss or something brief that I could just dismiss as a performance and continue with my life.
He kissed me like he had all the time in the world and no interest in rushing, one hand curved at my jaw and the other settling at my waist, and my mind which had been maintaining a perfectly reasonable running up until this point, went completely blank.
When he finally pulled back, I was aware that I was gripping the lapel of his jacket with one hand and that I could not immediately remember deciding to do that.
Dorian didn't look at me, he looked at Axel.
His voice, when he spoke, was the same tone he used for everything. That sounded uninterested and bored.
"Did that look like something done out of heartbreak?"
Axel's mouth opened but nothing came out of it. He looked between the two of us with the expression of a man whose argument had just been lost.
I watched him search for something to say and come back empty.
Dorian straightened the front of his jacket and turned back toward the reception like the entire thing had been a minor interruption.
I stood very still.
My pulse was doing something I didn't have a name for and I needed it to stop immediately.
It was all a performance. I reminded myself.
But when I pressed my fingers briefly to my lips without meaning to, I wasn't entirely sure I believed it anymore.
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