The Monster they made me marry

005

CAMILLIA'S POV

I haven't felt more humiliated than this day.

Pacing around the room with the huge ripped gown still on me was the worst.

Ricosta was dead cold to me. Fine. Expected.

But Dante.

I pressed my fingers to the side of my neck where the memory of his almost-kiss occurred.

The same Dante whose hands had pinned my wrists above my head. The same Dante who had looked at me like I was something worth looking at.

The same Dante who was the entire reason my dress had ended up in pieces on Ricosta's bedroom floor.

Monster.

Both of them. Different flavors of the same catastrophe.

The sound of a heavy engine cut through my spiraling thoughts.

I crossed to the window without thinking. Pushed the curtain aside just enough.

A car.

Black and looking all expensive. I like it.

And standing beside it—

A woman.

Red hair pulled back so sharp it looked like a weapon itself.

Quickly, I ran to the bathroom and changed out of my ripped dress to something simple.

Dying to know who she was, I ran down the stairs and just between the cracked open door I listened and watched.

She was talking to Ricosta and whatever she was saying was making his jaw do that thing where it looked like he was chewing on something he refused to spit out.

I cracked the curtain a bit more open.

"...the Council sent me specifically. She needs to be trained before the assembly or they will pull the recognition entirely."

Ricosta said nothing for a moment. Then. "Fine."

Trained.

They were talking about me.

I dropped the curtain immediately and ran back in.

I was halfway up the stairs when his voice cut through the entire foyer.

"Get out from between the doors, Camillia."

I froze.

Slowly I turned around.

Every single eye in the entrance hall was on me.

Guards, maids, Sabrina, Dante.

Fuck, I didn't see them before.

The red haired woman. Ricosta. All of them looking at me wedged between the staircase door like the world's most obvious eavesdropper.

Argh….How did you even see me?

I lifted my chin and walked the rest of the way upstairs with as much dignity as the situation allowed.

Which was not very much.

★★★

They put me in a corporate suit.

What's this? Who's raising war on a hot afternoon?

Dark grey vest, so heavy that I couldn't lift my legs.

On top of that they strapped armor. Actual armor. Chest plate, arm guards, something heavy around my thighs that clinked when I walked.

"This weighs approximately the same as my entire future," I muttered to no one.

The field behind the mansion was enormous. Open grass stretching toward a tree line in the distance. The afternoon air was hot and sharp, smelled like roasted s**t.

Sweat is already dripping from the side of my face.

I walked out and stopped.

Sabina stood to the left in a dark coat looking like she was attending an execution and had dressed appropriately.

Dante leaned against the far fence with his arms crossed and that permanent expression of dangerous amusement.

Ricosta sat in a chair slightly elevated like this was a performance being staged entirely for him.

Servants lined the edges.

And then, before I could process any of it, the Council elders filed in and took their seats in a row.

I looked around at all of them.

Why is everyone here? Why is this so serious?

Emma, yes, that was her name according to what Ricosta had called her.

Hold on a second, she's the popular Emma Harrison— she’s the strongest warrior of—ohh rumor has it that she was supposed to be this monster’s Luna.

Ohh she's Ricosta—argh— who else would have stayed with him anyway.

She walked onto the field.

No smile. No greeting. Just cold, precise movement and a sword drawn before she had fully stopped walking. The blade caught the sunlight and threw it back sharp and mercilessly.

Why's everyone so serious about this?

She looked at me the way you look at a problem you already know how to solve.

"Draw your weapon." Her voice cold and sharp. I had to hold my breath.

I looked at the sword at my hip, looked at her, looked at the blade she was holding.

I drew mine and hell, it was heavy.

The moment the metal cleared the scabbard, my wolf stirred. Something instinctive and uneasy moving underneath my skin. ‘Danger,’she said. ‘Real danger.’

Emma moved.

I barely saw it. One second she was standing still and the next the air between us had collapsed and there was a sharp burning line across the side of my neck and something warm running down into my collar.

I pressed my hand to my neck.

Blood.

Bright and dripping onto my fingers.

"Emma." Dante's voice came from the fence.

Every eye on that field shifted. I felt them. The Council elders lean forward. Sabina's gaze moved over me like she was calculating damage.

I turned to Ricosta, he sat there and said nothing.

So basically I really was just a tool. An object. A pureblood vessel in armor that doesn't even fit properly.

"Do not insert yourself into a pureblood training exercise." Emma said to Dante, her face filled with no remorse but pure disgust.

"Take it slow," Dante said. Quieter. "She's new to this."

I looked at the blood on my hand.

My chest gripped so hard that all I wanted to do now was to behead Emma.

I was done performing patience for people who saw me as inventory.

Fine.

I wiped the blood from my neck slowly, looked at it on my fingers. Felt my wolf rise up through my bones.

I lowered my sword to the ground. Dragged it. The metal screamed against the ground.

Then I picked it up and threw it.

It landed two feet from Emma with a sound that rang across the entire field.

I turned and walked toward the mansion.

"To hell with you all," I said. "And your pureblood."

I made it to the hall doors.

Just to be gripped by my wrist and spun around.

Pressed against the wall in one swift motion.

Ricosta. His forearm braced beside my head. His face was close enough that I could see the exact moment his jaw tightened.

"You do not walk out of training," he said quietly. "This is part of the process."

I looked straight at him.

“Getting slit by the throat is part of the process of what?” I stared straight into his sharp grey eyes and for the first time I didn't flinch.

“Your ex lover should not be allowed to vent her anger on me, you idiot.”