For an instant, nobody moved. Pure stillness. The forest before a kill shot.
But then he rose from his chair. The chair legs squeaked on the marble floor. He stared straight at me. Angry, full of rage and spite. He threw his napkin down and crossed his arms in front of himself.
“Have you heard the one,” he bellowed, speaking to all of us, “about the bride who gets her mouth washed out with soap on her wedding night?”
This man. How dare he. What was he even doing here? Who was he, anyway?
I turned to the dais, for any sort of lifeline from my family. My mother, never one to shy away from having an audience, stood and bowed at him. Preening, too polite. Sickening.
“Prince Galen, please,” she said to the man. “Anika is merely participating in our time-honored tradition of heckling her new groom. She is, I assure you, as obedient as any woman you might meet. And now is as good a time as any to introduce you to her.” She gave him another exaggerated bow.
A wave of nausea seized me.
No. No, no, no. I felt all the blood drain from my face.
I was faint, dizzy, and confused. I glanced around for some sign, any sign, that my mother was joking. But there was none. I felt ambushed and betrayed, as well as sickened by this man who was—it was now quite clear—my promised husband to be. I turned to see Maria, with her mouth open in horror and shock.
Sliding my eyes to the right, just a few feet, I stared at Maksim. For one moment, he met my stare. Then he rose, shoving his chair back with a clatter. I thought perhaps he might intervene in some way, to stand up for me, to put things right…
But he didn’t. Instead, he headed directly for the door through which he entered and stormed out of the hall. Without so much as a glance.
In all my life, I had never felt so abandoned as I did then, watching him disappear through that door. He had saved my life that day, but it was clear to me that he would not be here to save my future. I was all alone in this. With nobody to help me. Nobody at all.
Chapter 5
Maksim
If I hadn’t walked out when I did, I’d have killed that motherfucker with my bare hands. But leaving the room did fuck-all to calm me down. If anything, having time to think made my anger worse.
The very idea of that son of a bitch being anywhere near my sister made me fucking crazy.
Now, I paced the trophy room in a murderous rage, like a predator out for blood. One room over, the noise of the dinner filtered in to where I paced. The dinner was breaking up and this would be the next place everybody would go.
I was ready and waiting.
I cracked my knuckles as I stalked the long side of the room, back and forth. Maids skittered out of my way, like terrified rabbits. They were used to my moods, but this—this—was something different entirely. Protecting Anika wasn’t a fucking mood. It was my fucking mission.
As I paced, everything became crystal clear. Though there was no question that the guy was a full-blown asshole, it didn’t really matter what he was like; he could’ve been a gentleman, a decent guy, and I’d still feel this exact same fucking way.
Nobody, nobody, could have my sister except me. Not to look at her, not to talk to her. Nobody but me would ever pleasure her.
Touch her. Fuck her. Breed her.
Those were my rights and nobody else’s. She was mine. I’d kill for her. I’d fucking die for her. Simple as that.
Still, I paced. Above me were rows of hunting trophies, raw skull bones and polished antlers mounted on the red walls. Even the biggest were smaller than the game that Anika had bagged, which I kept in my own private quarters lest her mother should admonish her for such mannish behavior.
That was the Anika I knew and loved—the powerful one, the driven one. The wildfire. That was the Anika I needed. That was the Anika that made my life worth living at all.
But the Anika that now came out of the dining room and into the trophy room was a different woman. She looked fucking dazed and weak, like she’d been punched in the gut. She might as well have been.
If I hadn’t known that the plan for the dinner was to introduce her to Prince Motherfucking Galen then nobody did. Our castle had ears and eyes, and they were mine. I hadn’t known and neither had she. And she looked damn near as wrecked over it as I was. More hurt than angry, but wrecked, nonetheless.
She let herself be led around the room by her bitch of a mother. Periodically, she gave her mother long stares of horrified confusion that went completely ignored. Same as fucking ever.