“The bathroom is there.” She points at the black door several feet away. “Since all your clothes will be coming tomorrow, we took it upon ourselves to provide you with all the necessities for tonight. Dinner will be served at eight, so you have enough time to rest.”
She spins around on her heel and marches back to the door, and I finally snap out of my stupor. “I’m not hungry. I’ll just sleep and grab a bite later.”
She pauses at the threshold, and a shiver runs down my spine when she looks over her shoulder at me. “Dinner will be served at eight. We wear formal attire for it, so please choose the dress provided for you.”
It’s one thing to have rules overall and quite another to try to force me into eating when I don’t want to or follow some weird-ass etiquette that she has going on around here. “I don’t think?—”
“This is nonnegotiable.” She shuts the door, but I can clearly hear what she didn’t say.
Or else.
What in the hell, once again?
Dropping on the bed with a loud huff, I wonder if maybe Orion is the sanest one around here. Isn’t that just peachy?
However, the mere thought of my husband flashes through my mind, and my breath hitches because it means we’ll have to share dinner.
An entire dinner in the company of a man who managed to confuse and awaken my body in the span of ten minutes, as pathetic as it is to admit.
“What did you get yourself into, Diana?” I mutter to myself and cover my face, exhaling a heavy breath and praying to all the gods to help me.
Because I think I just entered the cursed castle, and since I don’t intend to break any spells…
Let’s hope I can get out of here alive.
Because, for now, I feel like prey trapped in the enemy’s territory.
And what does the prey do once the hunter sets his eyes on her?
She runs.
CHAPTER SIX
“I always found it interesting that in the original French fairy tale, the Beast never kidnapped the Beauty.
He gave her a choice, and she chose to sacrifice herself in order to save her father.
And yet for generations to come, they would use this story to describe all kinds of fucked-up relationships.
How foolish, right?
To blame the one who never forced anyone to do anything.
That’s life, though.
It’s never fair. And the sooner we learn this fact?
The easier it is to bear it.”
Orion
Orion
“That’s a lot of work,” the architect says as he looks around the library and winces when something drops from the roof along with several books in the distance. “Truth be told, Orion, I’m not sure it’s even safe to be here right now.” Hetakes out a cigarette from his back pocket and lights it, inhaling the nicotine and sending the smoke flying with a loud exhale. “Based on the sketches and infrastructure, this building should have been demolished a long time ago. I’m surprised the owner managed to sell it to her. Any legit inspection would have shown all these issues.” He hunches down and knocks on the floor, and it cracks under his knuckles. “Yeah, this place is one giant hazard.”
Anger glides through my veins, infecting my blood and causing the roaring monster to awaken within me that wishes to kill whoever put my wife in such danger. I hate thinking about what might have happened to her here.
Trapped, cold, and alone in pain whenever this fucking building decides to give up…
