Chapter 452
Four hundred and fifty four
ronica’s POV
Going on dates with Zachary turned out to be much easier than I had expected.
Julius had cut off all contact with me. I wasn’t planning to beg him, but I had hoped we could stay civil. We had been together for years, and it wasn’t as though Zachary and I were officially committed yet.
My best friend, Claire, still talked to Julius occasionally. She told me he was taking the breakup hard and feeling like a total failure.
“Julius is just a big dreamer, V. It’s always one grand scheme after another. You can’t spend your whole life competing with his wild ideas. Zachary is wealthy, and stable. What else could you possibly want p>
“What if I end up like my mother?” I whined. “Just stuck in a marriage of duty and obligation? I wanted to marry for love p>
“Julius isn’t right for you,” Claire insisted. “You deserve someone who actually has his life together p>
I mourned the end of my relationship with Julius in silence. I had genuinely loved him, and moving on wasn’t something I could do at the flick of a switch. Zachary picked up on my distance pretty quickly. I had been honest with him from the start about being in a relationship, so he didn’t pry. Instead, he promised to make me forget the boy who had nothing to offer me.
He showered me with gifts: boxes of pastries, armfuls of flowers, high-end perfumes, and fish from the northern markets. Every little thing I casually mentioned liking turned up at my doorstep the next day.
Zachary was surprisingly good at showing affection. He remembered details I had forgotten I ever shared with him. When I mentioned that I had always wanted to see the waterfalls at Wildfang, he drove me there the following Saturday, and set up a private picnic by the river.
That was where he kissed me for the first time. It felt natural, mostly because he had spent the entire afternoon listening to me without checking his phone once.
Two years later, our courtship became official. My parents cried with joy when they saw the diamond ring on my finger. My father kept staring at my hand as though he couldn’t believe his luck, smiling the way he did whenever he landed a massive trade deal.
“You give us two strong boys, Zachary,” my father chuckled during a family dinner. “One to take the Silverbrook seat for my line, and one for Iron Wells p>
“Consider it done, sir,” Zachary replied smoothly, taking my hand across the table.
The first time I visited the Iron Wells Alpha estate as his official fiancée, I wore a sage-green dress. It was conservative enough for a formal introduction to his mother.
The estate sat high on a ridge. The main house was a gray mansion that looked more like a fortress than a family home. It lacked any real warmth. The windows stretched high up the walls, making me feel like a little child sent to deliver a message to a king.
I squeezed Zachary’s hand as we walked up the front steps. He laughed and kissed the side of my head.
“Don’t be afraid. She’s going to love you p>
His mother, Luna Elizabeth, was finishing a private meeting, so Zachary gave me a tour of the house. He showed off the library, bragging about its four thousand volumes with the eager pride of a boy showing off a new bicycle. I
1/6
Tour hundred and fifty tour
+15 Bonus
found it sweet.
led me into a wide gallery lined with family portraits. Hanging right by the entrance was a painting taller than me. It depicted a broad-shouldered man with intense blue eyes, caught mid-laugh as though someone had just told him a good joke.
“Who is that?” I asked, stopping in front of it.
“My father,” Zachary said. “Alpha Edward p>
I looked at the portrait, then back at Zachary. I couldn’t spot a single shared feature between them
“Did… did your brother really kill him?” I asked gently, trying not to sound intrusive. The scandal was public knowledge throughout the territory, but nobody spoke about it openly.
Zachary looked away.
“Yes. My father was relaxing after a long day during the midyear festival when Alexander stabbed him to death in cold blood p>
A chill ran down my back. I looked up at the laughing eyes in the portrait, feeling uneasy as we walked out to the landing.
Luna Elizabeth glided down the staircase as though the steps had been built specifically for her. She was tall, with perfectly styled silver-blonde hair and a dress the color of storm clouds.
“Veronica,” she said smoothly as she reached the bottom. “How lovely p>
I bowed my head.
She offered her hand, barely touching mine. On her pinky finger, she wore a black ring carved with a strange symbol-a circle split straight down the middle by a single red line. It looked oddly harsh against her refined clothing.
She took us into a sitting room for tea. Right away, I could tell she didn’t like me.
She kept referring to Silverbrook as a “sweet little pack,” making subtle remarks about my mother’s quiet nature and asking whether I had inherited her “docile tendencies.” Her words were wrapped in polite manners, but every sentence made me feel smaller.
Yet when she turned to Zachary, her face softened. She smiled at him with genuine warmth, one never offered me once during the entire hour we sat together.
“Your mother doesn’t like me,” I told Zachary in the car on the way back.
Zachary chuckled, reaching over to pat my knee.
“She doesn’t like anyone at first. It’s not personal p>
“Did you hear how she talked about my mother?” I pressed. “She looked down on us the whole time. Maybe you should find someone who meets her high standards p>
Zachary pulled the car over to the shoulder and turned to look at me.
“I am not marrying my mother. She means no harm, Veronica. If she didn’t want you here, she would have said so directly to your face. She just doesn’t smile easily. Give her time, and she’ll warm up p>
I wanted to believe him, so I let it go.
2/6
Four hungred and fifty four
+15 Bonus
Over the next few months, my mother tried everything to gain Elizabeth’s favor. She sent fruits, organic vegetables, and hand-embroidered linens from Silverbrook. Whenever our families met, my mother showered Elzabeth with compliments. But every polite word landed like a stone dropped into deep water. Elizabeth barely acknowledged any of the gestures.
“She’s just very reserved,” my mother insisted nervously on the drive home after one dinner. “She comes from highborn stock p>
My mother was highborn, too, and she had been a Luna for twenty-five years without ever treating people with such cold detachment.
The only person who openly hated the match was my sister, Haley.
“If you don’t love him, why are you doing this?” Haley confronted me in my room one night. “Why didn’t you just work things out with Julius p>
“Julius is in the past,” I said, folding my laundry. “This is my reality now p>
“They’re using you, V,” Haley snapped, her fifteen-year-old face full of anger. “What if you look at your life five years from now and hate what you see p>
“Zachary is a good man, Haley. What’s the worst that could happen p>
“He’s superficial,” Haley countered. “Who is he when nobody is watching? He doesn’t even stand up to his mother p>
“He’s just polite,” I said, turning to look at her. “What about you? You act like you have everything figured out, but you’re hiding a massive secret of your own p>
Haley groaned and covered her eyes.
“Father will literally kill me if he finds out I like girls p>
“Your secret is safe with me,” I said, walking over to wrap my arms around her shoulders. “When you’re older and out from under his roof, you can live your life however you want p>
During the first few weeks of my marriage to Zachary, I got used to Elizabeth’s silent, icy presence at the dinner table. I learned to ignore her, and we maintained a quiet distance.
Then, near the end of our first month of marriage, something strange happened.
Zachary was waiting for me downstairs so we could head out for an evening event. As I passed Elizabeth in the upper hallway, she stepped directly into my path. She took my face in both hands, and kissed my cheek.
It was the very first time she had ever touched me willingly. I was so startled that I almost thanked her.
“Give me a grandchild quickly, dear. Otherwise, what use are you in this house p>
She pulled back with a strange expression and walked away.
Two weeks later, on a rainy Tuesday morning, I sat in my bathroom, staring at two pink lines on a plastic test stick until my vision blurred.
I was pregnant.
I placed my hand flat against my stomach, laughing and crying all at once. When I showed Zachary the test, he let out a shout of joy, picked me up, and spun me around the bedroom, covering my face in kisses.
3/6
Four hundred and fifty four
+15 Bonus
“I love you, V!” he beamed, resting his forehead against mine.
stop, you’re going to make me throw up,” I giggled, holding on to his shoulders.
My mother was ecstatic when we called her. But when we broke the news to Elizabeth, she didn’t hug me. Instead, she stepped past me and held Zachary in a long, silent embrace.
Later that month, Zachary was officially sworn in as Alpha of Iron Wells. I had assumed I would stand beside him during the political ceremonies, but Elizabeth shut the idea down immediately.
“Veronica needs to give birth and nurse the child before taking on political duties,” Elizabeth announced during breakfast, her tone leaving no room for debate. “Why stress yourself? Your father is waiting for an heir anyway”
Zachary didn’t object, so I let it slide. He was exceptionally attentive to me during those early weeks. Whenever morning sickness hit, he would walk down to the kitchen himself and bring me ginger biscuits and warm milk. He started calling the baby “Bean,” talking to my stomach in ridiculous voices every night.
Then Elizabeth’s behavior shifted completely.
She knocked on my bedroom door one morning and insisted that I eat breakfast with her every day so she could personally monitor my diet. She served me dense herbal broths every evening, claiming they were rich in essential
nutrients.
She even handed me a small glass jar filled with a pale, odorless ointment.
“It’s my mother’s ancient recipe,” Elizabeth told me, her voice uncharacteristically warm. “Rub it on your belly every night before bed. It soothes the child’s spirit p>
I was relieved. I thought she had finally accepted me into the family.
When I opened the jar that night, the ointment carried a faint, sour scent, like honey left over a flame for too long. It made me slightly nauseous, but I brushed it off as a normal pregnancy sensitivity and rubbed it onto my skin.
At sixteen weeks, I woke up in the dark with a sharp, tearing pain in my abdomen.
I sat up, gasping for air as a sudden warmth soaked through the sheets beneath me. I knew instantly that the baby
was gone.
The rest of that night was a blur of shouting, blood, and emergency doctors rushing through the room. The next morning, Elizabeth stood beside my hospital bed, her face completely unreadable as she told me that these things happened and it was nobody’s fault.
Her newfound warmth disappeared the moment we returned to the estate.
There were no more breakfast invitations. She went right back to acting as though I were completely invisible. A few days later, while walking down the main corridor, I overheard her speaking to one of her senior housemaids near the linen closet.
“Weak Silverbrook stock,” Elizabeth said with cold contempt. “What else did we expect? Small packs always have fragile wombs p>
I stood frozen in the hallway, pressing my hand over my mouth to choke back a sob. I didn’t tell Zachary. He was grieving, too, slipping out of bed late at night and staying away on unnecessary border patrols.
Every morning at breakfast, he drank a small glass of thick, dark liquid that his mother prepared for him, calling it a “tonic for his nerves p>
4/6
Four hundred and fifty four
+15 Bonus
One night, unable to sleep, I sat at my vanity table and picked up the small jar of ointment Elizabeth had given me. Astrange, uneasy knot twisted in my stomach as I stared at the pale cream.
ཊཞུ་aram
Later that night, I stepped out onto the upper balcony to get some fresh air. Looking down into the private garden courtyard, I saw Elizabeth standing near one of the heavy stone pillars.
Four women dressed in dark clothing stood in a circle around her. They were chanting in low, rhythmic whispers as they poured a thick, dark liquid over the base of the stone pillar.
I backed away quietly into the shadows, my pulse racing, and slipped back inside before anyone saw me.
Comments
Support
Admins2