CHAPTER NINE
I was already waiting, dressed in pale silk and my mother’s necklace. My father stood beside me, irritation coiled tight beneath the veneer of civility.
My father's jaw had tightened when I showed him. For years, all communication passed through his hands first.
Not anymore, I thought happily.
The doors swung open. Alaric entered, and the air in the room seemed to recalibrate around him. Dark suit tailored to his frame, collar open against tanned skin, no tie.
He moved with the quiet assurance of someone who had never needed to demand attention to receive it.
“Selene,” he greeted me first, his light accent turning the familiar into something exotic. He then acknowledged my father with a brief nod.
My father smiled without warmth. "Alaric. Earlier than expected."
"Punctuality is a virtue," he replied, then turned to me. "Shall we?"
My father's fingers found my elbow before I could respond, applying just enough pressure to remind me he of my place. Alaric's eyes tracked the movement of my father's hand.
"You're quite bold," Alaric remarked, his voice deceptively soft as his gaze fixed on my father's fingers still pressed into my elbow. "Did I not make it clear the last time I was here you aren’t allowed to touch her?”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. My father's grip loosened but didn't release entirely, his smile tightening at the corners.
"Old habits," my father replied with a hollow chuckle. "A father's instinct to protect his daughter."
"Is that what you call it?" Alaric stepped closer, the space between us shrinking until I could smell his cologne.
It was different than before, something woody and dark.
"Let me be clear since you misunderstood or maybe your old age has made you forgetful.
The next time your hands touch her without her explicit permission, you'll lose them. "
My breath caught in my throat. The threat wasn't delivered with rage or dramatics—just calm certainty that made it infinitely more promising.
My father's fingers fell away from my arm as though burned.
I fought to keep my expression neutral even as something warm unfurled in my chest. No one had ever challenged my father's authority over me, not once in my entire life.
"You misunderstand," my father began, but Alaric cut him off with nothing more than a slight tilt of his head.
"No, I don't think I do." Alaric's hand settled at the small of my back, warm through the thin silk of my dress, and he gently pulled me to his side.
"Selene is going to be my wife. Her safety, her comfort, her boundaries—all mine to determine.
Not yours." His thumb traced a small circle against my spine. "Isn't that right?"
The question was directed at me, and I realized with a start that he actually expected an answer. Not my father's rehearsed script, but my own words.
"Yes," I replied, the single syllable falling from my lips before I could second-guess it despite being caught off guard.
Alaric's eyes warmed with approval, his hand pressing more firmly against my back as he lowered his mouth to speak next to my ear. "Good girl."
Heat bloomed across my skin at his words, a traitorous warmth I hadn't expected.
Those two words shouldn't have affected me the way they did.
I hated that I craved his approval already, but I couldn't deny the power in being claimed so decisively by someone essentially untouchable to my father.
The sensation was foreign— being defended rather than controlled.
Not for the first time, I wondered what it was exactly Alaric gained from this marriage arrangement, and my father too that he’d allow himself to be belittled and dominated.
I was under no illusions and knew that Alaric was doing it sheerly for me.
That wasn’t how unions worked in the Dominion.
Marriages were business, bloodlines, and power.
Nothing more. It was natural for a husband to protect his wife, or in my case wife-to-be.
My father never surrendered control without calculating the advantage down to the last drop of blood.
Between these two men, I was simultaneously the trophy and the bargaining chip—a living, breathing currency in their war.
The knowledge wasn’t comforting, but I already knew who I would be siding with.
Not to the monster who'd raised me, but the one currently holding me close.
My father's face had gone rigid, the muscle in his jaw jumping. I'd never seen him so thoroughly outmaneuvered, and the sight was intoxicating.
"We should get going," Alaric prompted, turning me toward the door without waiting for my father's response
Outside, sunlight bled over a blacked-out Porsche Panamera parked at the base of the wide-spread staircase. The windows were tinted so dark they seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Alaric opened the passenger door himself.
He had come with no driver, and no guard, just him behind the wheel.
Inside, the scent of him mingled with leather, everything understated in shades of black.
He returned to the driver’s seat and waited for me to secure my seatbelt before starting the engine, which came to life with a quiet, controlled power.
I watched him navigate the streets the same way he seemed to apply to everything, as though disorder had never once breached his defenses. Everything blurred by outside the tinted glass.
The silence broke when he spoke again. "Saturday, the engagement becomes official through the proper channels. We should discuss the wedding date."
"Do you have a timeline in mind?" I asked.
"May would be ideal. Late spring suits you, and that’s enough time to select the venue, commission your gown..." His gaze slid sideways, and he flashed a sly smile "...and learn each other's secrets."
I studied his profile against the tinted window, searching for the trap beneath his words. "And I have input in these decisions?"
"You're to be my wife, Selene. Not my puppet.”
"How progressive," I murmured.
His slight smile felt like a test, a sliver of humor meant to gauge my reaction.
"You'd be surprised," Alaric replied as he navigated a turn. "I've found that the most valuable assets in any negotiation are those with minds of their own."
I shifted in my seat, the leather cool against my bare legs where her dress had ridden up. "Is that what I am to you? An asset?"
"Among other things."
We drove in silence for several minutes, the city flowing past in a blur of steel and glass.
I watched his hands on the wheel—steady, controlled, a signet ring gleaming on his right hand.
I found myself wondering what those hands would feel like against my skin, then immediately banished the thought.
“Why don’t you tell me about you, something other than what I already know.”
A simple request delivered like a command, gentle but unyielding, as if my answer was already his by right
I looked ahead; hands folded in my lap. “There isn’t much to tell you don’t already know. I like to read. I ride when I’m allowed. I’m fluent in a few languages and can recite half the Dominion charter from memory. You know all of that, though.”
He gave a quiet laugh, the kind that filled the space between words and stripped the armor right off them, glancing at me once more, amused. “You sound like a prisoner trying to make her sentence sound productive.”
“I’m not sure there’s much different between the two. I just happen to have a better mattress and fancy food.”
He didn’t look surprised. “That will change after today.”
I turned to him. “Will it?”
“Yes.” His tone made it sound less like a promise and more like an order issued to the universe. “And as you just said, I already knew all that, remember?” He angled his head slightly, offering the edge of a smile. "Tell me something real. What books do you actually enjoy?"
I hesitated. "They're not exactly on the literary canon. I read mostly on my phone now. I enjoy..." I paused, weighing the risk of honesty versus the cost of being caught in a lie. "R.L. Mathewson. Kresley Cole. Stephen King when I need something darker."
His face remained impassive.
"Paranormal romance. Horror. The occasional thriller," I added, as if clarifying might somehow make it less revealing.
He made a sound low in his throat, the corner of his mouth curving upward and his dimple appearing. "What else?"
"Does it really matter what I read?"
"Everything about you matters," he retorted simply. "I'm familiar with King. The others I'll discover. What is your favorite?”
I averted my eyes. "I don't remember."
He made a sound between a scoff and a laugh. "We'll need to work on your deception skills."
"Teresa Denys," I admitted finally. "The Flesh and the Devil was the one I re-read most often."
His eyebrows arched slightly as he shifted gears with elegant precision. "You speak of it in past tense."
"Do I?"
"You said 'was' and 'returned to.'"
"Oh, well. I don't own a copy anymore."
What I didn't say was how my father had stormed into my room after I'd declined dinner with the son of his pervy friend, how he'd known how often I read it so he made sure each page was torn while I sat frozen, and he called me selfish and ungrateful as the fragments fluttered to the floor.
Alaric let the quiet stretch between us, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, waiting with the stillness of someone accustomed to others filling silences he created.
"Tell me more," he urged softly when I made no attempt to fill it, voice barely above the engine's purr.
I found myself describing Two-Bit, the chestnut mare that belonged to my mother and who I’d learned to ride on, with a white diamond between her eyes and one sock on her left hind leg, how she'd nicker when she saw me coming.
My father had sold her without a word. I only found out when I went for a riding lesson and was presented with a horse that belonged to the instructor.
I told him about playing Nocturnes in the hollow hours before he had the baby grand hauled away, leaving only ghost-white rectangles on the Persian rug. I confessed my revulsion for the lemon polish that saturated every surface in our house, its artificial brightness masking the rot beneath.
The way seabass made me gag despite years of being forced to eat it. That my favorite color was the distinct shade of midnight blue that appeared just before total darkness. How I'd stay up until three watching Korean Melodramas with English subtitles.
"What about you?" I asked, suddenly aware I'd been talking too long. "Don't I get to learn your secrets too?"
He smirked. "All in time. Today belongs to you." Then his tone shifted. "We're having lunch with my family. They're eager to meet my future wife.”
“Your family?" I repeated back, not expecting that, though I should have.
"Only immediate family and a close friend,” he reassured. “And before I return you home, you'll meet your new security detail."
"You okay?" Alaric asked, his eyes flicking between me and the road when I didn’t say anything else.
"Just processing."
"They'll like you," he promised, his confidence irritating and reassuring all at once.
"And if they don't?"
"They will." He offered no elaboration, as if his word was enough to guarantee my acceptance into his family.
I didn’t have any objections in the first place. I was honestly just coming to terms with it and feeling an odd sense of relief that his words weren't empty after all.
The cage my father had constructed around my life was about to have its first real door.