076
1433 Words
~ Iris POV
Morning came slow and heavy, like the estate itself was bracing for something.
I didn’t see Eunice taken. I didn’t hear shouting. But the sound of boots, sharp and certain, echoed down the marble corridors. Heavy doors clicked closed. Voices carried authority. Command. Not anger. Not chaos. Just control.
By midday, the word spread quietly, almost whispered: Eunice had been confined. West wing. Locked. Under constant guard. No visitors. No communication. Room arrest.
Until Duncan decided her fate.
I should have felt relief.
I didn’t.
Relief would have meant trust. I didn’t trust the calm. The estate felt… tense, like a held breath that could shatter at any moment.
Duncan’s eyes were sharp, focused, unreadable. No trace of satisfaction crossed his features. He didn’t speak of her again that morning. He turned straight to war.
Maps were unrolled. Patrol routes recalculated. Warriors summoned quietly, names crossed, priorities reassigned. Thorne moved like a shadow, delivering reports that smelled of secrecy and danger.
Cassian’s formal challenge had been announced. Public. Traditional. I knew Duncan would control it all. And still… my stomach knotted in fear.
And then came Alice.
I’d known something was off. The way she watched me, the way her eyes lingered when I wasn’t looking. Doubt. Confusion. Pain. Even now, she clung to trust, just enough to hide the cracks.
Until that afternoon.
I was in Duncan study, I was on ky knees as I took on his c**k sucking on it.
God! I missed this.
“ Take it all in little wolf.” He said.
And then the door opened.
I froze.
Alice.
Fuck!
Alice.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t yell. She just stood there, pale, eyes wide. Confusion, hurt, disbelief all rolled into one sharp line across her face.
Her gaze traveled from my hands on her father’s arms… to my knees on the floor… to the other hand on her father's c**k, and to Duncan’s calm, commanding hands.
It hit her.
Everything.
Her face went pale. Then red. Then… emptied.
And then she fainted.
I tried to reach her. I wanted to catch her. I wanted to explain. I wanted her to understand. But Duncan was faster. He moved with controlled precision, catching her before she hit the ground.
Her body was limp. Her trust shattered. Her love curdled into something dark and sharp.
When she woke in the adjoining chamber, she didn’t look at me. She didn’t even look at her father. She pulled her hand free from his, turned her face to the wall, and for the first time, I realized: everything had changed.
She wouldn’t forgive me. She wouldn’t speak to me. She wouldn’t acknowledge me at all.
No calls. No glances in the halls. Nothing.
Every step we passed each other in the corridor was a knife pressed into my chest. Love doesn’t die quietly,it curdles. It sharpens. And I could see it forming in her eyes when she thought I wasn’t watching: resentment. Betrayal. Something colder.
Something worse.
Three days later, she asked to visit the west wing.
I should have been prepared.
Duncan hesitated but allowed it,one supervised visit. The heir had rights, after all.
And they said she needed to learn politics.
But I knew. I could feel it in the air. Her loyalty was shifting. Her trust breaking.
And she didn’t even realize the trap she was walking into.
Eunice, confined, was waiting. Smiling quietly, calculating carefully. And Alice… would become her unwitting pawn.
I watched from the shadows as Alice passed through the reinforced doors, her shoulders straight, her expression set, a resolve forming that wasn’t hers yet, but was being shaped.
I realized then what I had lost.
Not just Alice’s trust. Not just her love.
Her allegiance.
And I didn’t know how to get it back.
The silence in the halls had become unbearable. Every step I took felt like a drumbeat counting down to something I couldn’t stop. I saw her in passing sometimes,Alice.but she looked through me, past me, as if I no longer existed in her world.
Until that afternoon.
I had been in the library, trying to sort through maps and patrol routes for Duncan, to distract myself from the gnawing guilt that wouldn’t leave my chest. My hands shook, my stomach clenched every time I thought of her.
Every time I thought of Eunice’s smile in that west wing, of the trap Alice was walking into without knowing it.
And then I heard her voice.
“Iris.”
I froze. My heart dropped so fast it felt like it had shattered on the floor.
She was standing in the doorway. Pale.
Trembling. But not weak. Her hands were shaking as she pushed them into fists at her sides. Her eyes,my God, her eyes,blazed with hurt I hadn’t seen before, with a betrayal so deep it made my knees ache.
“Iris…” she started again, voice shaking. And then it broke.
“How… how could you?” she cried, the sound raw and ragged. “How could you be… with him? With my father?”
It looked like she was been holding it for so long.
Her words hit me like a blade. The room spun. The maps and papers blurred into nothing. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
“I trusted you,” she sobbed, taking a step closer, then stopping as if she were afraid I might vanish like a shadow. “I believed in you. I loved you! And you… you’re… you’re wicked!”
Every syllable was fire. Every breath she drew was pain. I felt it in my chest, in my bones.
“I… Alice…” I tried. My voice trembled. “I didn’t… it’s not what it seems…”
She shook her head violently. “Don’t. Don’t you dare start with excuses! I saw you, Iris. I saw you on your knees. With him. My father. How could you?”
“ When did these start? Iris! My father, my f*****g father.”
Tears streaked her face. Her hands clawed at the air, as if reaching for something solid she couldn’t touch. “Do you even realize what you’ve done? Do you even care how much you’ve broken me? First, it was ky, you didn't even care to tell me you've been f*****g my dad also. Do you know how stupid I feel? How heartbroken I am?”
“I do,” I whispered, my own throat tight, my own eyes stinging with tears. “I do, Alice. Every second. Every heartbeat.”
“You’ve ruined everything,” she spat, the words sharp, slicing the air. “You’ve taken… you’ve taken my trust, my love… my family. And for what? For him? For some bond I can’t even understand?”
“I had no choice,” I choked, my hands shaking as they gripped the edge of the desk for support. “You have to believe me, I tried so many f*****g times to cut it off, but the mate b..”
“Stop!” she screamed, stepping forward, chest heaving. “Stop justifying it! I don’t want to hear your excuses. You’ve betrayed me. My father betrayed me too. And I… I can’t…”
Her voice broke. She bent over, covering her face with her hands. I wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to explain that every decision had been a knife in my own chest too.
“I can’t forgive you,” she whispered through tears, voice trembling but resolute. “I can’t look at you. I can’t speak to you. I… I don’t want you near me ever again.”
It was final. Sharp. Irrevocable.
I sank to the floor, trembling. My heart ached, my chest burned. I had known this might happen. I had known that Alice discovering the truth could destroy us both. But feeling it,seeing it,was unbearable.
“And you,” she added, lifting her face, eyes full of ice now, “you don’t even deserve to see me. Don’t even try to explain. Don’t even come near me. You’re wicked, Iris. You’re… nothing but deceit and selfishness.”
She turned, walking away like I was a phantom, her every step a hammer pounding on the fragile hope I’d been clinging to.
And as the door closed behind her, I was left alone.
Alone with my guilt. Alone with the knowledge that I had destroyed the only person I had ever loved completely.
Not Eunice was still manipulating the pieces around her.
And I… I was powerless to stop the unfolding war that my own decisions had ignited.
- Writer
