“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 ofcourseI 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 alotabout that,” he drawled, venom in his tone as well as sarcasm.
“There wasn’t a wedding. There was noneedsince 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 werefuriousthat I was socunningthat 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 armto 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?
5
Creed
Listening to Aurora describe how she was raped—not marital relations or ‘duties’ as she called it, butraped—repeatedly rapedwas one of the most difficult things I’d had to do. Mostly because I felt useless. I understood now why Ms. Reed said we were a match that couldn’t happen.
Nothing about me was soft or gentle, and that was exactly what Aurora needed. She needed someone who could be patient and understanding.
I was about to explode that I couldn’t peel the skin off this fucker and piss all over his caved-in skull.
“Stop,” I growled, trying to tone it back when she flinched. “Aurora, you were raped. That’srape. You gotta stop and—say it. Say you were raped.”
She blinked at what she was working on and I saw the tear fall. “I know. I know that’s considered it now, but it wasn’t then.”
“That doesn’t change that’s what happened. You were raped. Others would have considered it rapeback then. That’s what you’re missing.”
She opened her mouth but then closed it, trying again and then frowning. “I don’t know that’s true. Human women were sold like that too. Women were property, Creed. Even shifters—witches—all of us. Maybe some rare men would have but…” She shrugged.
I racked my brain on how to handle this or what to say, annoyed I couldn’t manage this better.
“Thank you for being angry for me and upset I suffered what I did,” she whispered. “That means a lot to me. You don’t brush it off as how things were back then. I think I’ve accepted most would say that. I think I knew telling you would help because you wouldn’t. You don’t accept any nonsense.”
