Chapter 4 #2
He let out a long, heavy breath, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the fridge. “I don’t know. I knew chicks were trouble but still sat and ate with you. It seems stupid to step in deeper when we’ve both clearly got shit all over the fucking place, Aurora.”
I blinked back tears as I nodded, understanding what he was saying.
“But you made me feel special and seen in a way I don’t think anyone’s ever made me feel before,” he mumbled and moved into the kitchen more. “My life has been fucking shit. You are the first good thing in a long time and you’re pure in a way that scares me—”
I burst out laughing. It was horrible of me to do, but I did and tried to hurry to wipe the tears that had started to fall.
Which was a massive mistake given I’d been touching salt and onions. I hissed as it started to immediately burn, rinsing my hands better and then wiping my eyes.
“Tell me what you did,” he demanded. “I’ve had EMT training even if it’s still supposed to be ongoing.”
“Salt and onions and touched my eyes,” I mumbled, feeling like a moron.
“Got it.” He quickly flushed my eyes after cleaning his hands and then got some ice from the freezer. “Better?”
“Yes, thank you,” I whispered, already healing. “Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you.”
“No, you’re not the type.”
I let out a slow breath, thinking maybe this would be easier to discuss when I wasn’t looking at him. “I’m so far from pure or anything good that I know no matter what I do, I will still end up in hell when I die, Creed.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” he muttered. His body was warm against mine as he sat me on the stool. “Tell me.”
I nodded, thinking of the best place to start. “Have you ever heard men say women are for breeding, not reading?”
“Yeah, like in movies about…”
I chuckled darkly. “I’m centuries old, yes.
Supes were generally more evolved than the humans, but not my family.
Women were to be silent, but I was taught a bit because I was to be married to another coven leader and being an idiot would embarrass him.
But my family still teaches that women are trouble so—”
“So keep them ignorant so they can’t fight back?” he drawled. “Yeah, well, since they treated you so well of course you guys are trouble, not they’re assholes for treating people that way. What a bunch of fuckers.”
I frowned. I’d never thought of it that way. I’d always truly thought the men in my family had just thought of women like rebellious mares that needed to be broken. I hadn’t seen the truth as Creed framed it. “Thank you.”
“I’m confused,” he admitted.
“Sometimes—you give an outside perspective that I can hear well,” I explained. “A different view than I’ve lived with for so long if that makes sense.”
“Yeah, I feel that.”
My eyes were better by then, so I moved away and wiped them with a clean, wet paper towel one more time before focusing back on the food. I definitely needed to focus on something else to get this all out.
“You’ve never told anyone all of this before, have you?” he put together, his tone worried.
“No one who seemed to truly want to listen or I trusted enough to not use it against me,” I whispered, clearing my throat and focusing on squeezing out the water from the cucumbers and onions.
“I was a child when I started menstruating. Thirteen. That’s normal.
” Memories assaulted me of that day. “Preparations started immediately.
“By the time my cycle was done, I was packed up with very little and not of my choosing and being loaded into a carriage to be sent to my new husband.
My father actually spoke to me, which was rare.
He told me to be obedient to my husband and not shame the family or our ancestors would take me to the worst hell when I died.
“That was it. My mother told me this was why she had given me life and they had spoiled me for so many years so to do my duty as a woman should because I was now a woman.” I snorted.
“Spoiled. My brothers were given everything and—neglect. It’s called neglect now. Then, it was just called being a girl.”
“I know neglect well,” he mumbled. “Can I do something to help? I feel like I should help.”
Or keep busy too.
I told him the dishes in the sink all needed to be loaded into the dishwasher.
Might as well accept his help. “It took weeks and weeks of carriage travel to get there. The only thing worse than being young and confused on your period that isn’t explained well to you and was so shameful back then was to have to ride in a carriage during it.
“We arrived right before it was to start again and—the way they treated me. I wasn’t educated, but of course I knew their language.
My marriage had been arranged to them for years.
It would be embarrassing to my coven—it was all for show to tear me down and show me my place.
They paid a lot for me so they knew. All the games of fragile men. ”
“Yeah, I know a lot about that,” he drawled, venom in his tone as well as sarcasm.
“There wasn’t a wedding. There was no need since my father’s aide signed everything for the family.
I learned that we wouldn’t even mate.” I sighed when I heard the dishes stop, turning to face Creed and seeing his confusion.
“Vampires—well-off and still old-school vampires—buy brides to have heirs and bloodline mares to breed basically.”
“Right, and they fall in love and mate with mistresses or whatever bullshit,” he muttered. “Fuck, I thought—that’s really a thing? I thought that was just some pompous bullshit to justify having a side piece when you have an alliance mating?”
“No, unfortunately, it’s not,” I whispered as I focused back on my task. I let out a dark chuckle. “Though I suppose I’m glad now. It would be much harder to break a mating instead of a marriage. They think they’re so smart, but it helps us get free. They still think they’re better and do it.”
“Matings can’t take if they’re forced. That’s the real reason probably if they’re so pathetic they’re buying women,” he grumbled.
That was true too.
“There was a dinner. The elders and family—important people of the coven to inspect the expensive purchase basically. Kenneth—my husband still—sat like a proud—even then it disgusted me. He didn’t speak to me, just about me and for me, and nothing was remotely accurate.
He kept telling people that I didn’t know the language and he would teach me.
“So you were fucked if you didn’t tell them to embarrass your family and fucked if you disobeyed your husband since your dad said to be obedient,” he grumbled. “Yeah, I know the games rigged to fail.”
“Exactly, but I thought maybe he didn’t truly know, and I didn’t understand there wasn’t to be a wedding, so—I spoke up.
I spoke perfectly in their language and people were furious that I was so cunning that I hadn’t said something sooner and let them know.
Except I had. I had corrected that first woman.
She sat there smirking at me. She wanted me in trouble.
“It was all so horrible and toxic. I was a child and they enjoyed torturing me like that.” I shook my head as more memories assaulted me.
“Then the elders and others left. Kenneth was giddy. It was unnerving.” I used the back of my arm to wipe my eyes this time.
“His brothers, cousins, and friends were left.”
“Tell me he didn’t consummate your fucking wedding in a fucking show?” Creed growled. “Tell me you didn’t have to suffer that, Aurora.”
“Close,” I rasped. “There was a partition, but first he ordered me to undress. I couldn’t and he was furious that I disobeyed.
I argued that I wasn’t his wife yet and he said a bought mare doesn’t get a wedding, but simply fed.
I only understood then that it was over.
That was—and I was never warned what came next.
“He took off my dress and I stood there in—basically, a nightgown. A see-through nightgown was the last layer back then. He showed me off and chuckled at their drunken jeering.” I let go of what was in my hands as too many memories assaulted me.
“He moved us behind the partition, bent me over a table, and had me. I wanted to die.”
And that pain never left me. I felt it in that moment hundreds of years later. I didn’t think I could ever truly be free of it no matter how many years passed.
Maybe that was the price for the sins I’d committed after?