MARIAN.
What? No. There is no way this was actually happening. This had to be a bad dream, and I will wake up soon.
"Malcom, wh—what are you—" I could barely finish speaking, my chest and throat constricted, my body shook and my lips quivered as I looked into his eyes, but he wouldn't look at me.
"Talk to me. What is going on? Someone is pressuring you, right? Who is it? Tell me! Whatever it is we can work through it as long as we have each other, right?" The tears had already started spilling before I could stop them.
The pair of eyes on Malcolm and I made me feel exposed, my stomach was clenched tight as I took a step closer to him, but he took two steps backwards, getting away from me.
"Malcolm, what happens to all the promises we made to each other? Y—You can't—You can't do this to me, Malcolm, you can't—" I could hear the desperation in my voice.
A wave of shame and humiliation crashed over me as I reached out to touch him, but he slapped my hand away as if he would rather die than let me put a finger on him.
The bubbling festival, an event that was supposed to be a happy one, and signal the beginning of my freedom suddenly felt suffocating and crushing.
What's going on? Why wouldn't he—
Malcolm looked at me, and I whimpered, his eyes were red with rage, exactly the same as my mother's whenever she was angry. Chills snaked down my spine, and I felt the realization slowly starting to dawn on me.
"Did you really think that I was going to spend the rest of my life with someone so worthless and nothing to offer?" He asked, and my mouth hung open but no word came out.
Malcolm had never called me worthless before, he'd never even raised his voice at me, but now, he was different from the man I'd grown up with, the man I'd given my heart to.
"Wait, someone has to be—" The rest of my words got stuck in my throat as his palm hit my cheek, the resounding slap echoed in the night sky despite the noise and crowds.
"Leave me the fuck alone, you featureless pig!" He snapped, and I felt the last shred of whatever I'd been holding on to shatter as my heart sank to my stomach.
People had already started murmuring, and I knew that they were talking about Malcolm and I. My body betrayed me as the sob forced its way out of my throat, my knees weakened and before I knew it, I was on my knees on the ground.
"I'm going to be the future Alpha of our pack, and you think I want a useless mate as my Luna, you must be fucking kidding me." He laughed, the sound ringing in my head over and over again.
"Come on, wake up. I knew you were gullible, but I didn't think you were that gullible." He laughed again, and this time, everyone joined in while I remained on the floor, humiliated and in despair.
"Isn't that the worthless Marian Alford, the useless daughter of the Alford family?" I heard one of the crowd say, they'd intentionally made their voice loud so that I could hear.
"She didn't think our future Alpha would be mated to her, did she? Because that would be so funny."
"Don't look at her for too long or you might be infected with some of her misfortune."
"The moon goddess really used her existence as a punishment to us because I still don't get why she's alive and living with us when she should be dead."
I felt open, and I have never wished for the ground to open up and swallow me whole like I was desperately doing right now as tears fell freely down my cheeks.
My eyes burned, my lips quivered and my fingertips trembled as I replayed all the promises Malcolm had been making to me ever since we were kids. Had those words been a lie from the very beginning?
I felt ice spreading through my stomach, an acute sense of loss overwhelmed me, and it crushed me completely when I saw my mother walk up behind Malcolm and placed a hand on his shoulder.
He smiled at her in a way that he'd never smiled at me before, and I watched, my vision blurry as he took her in his arms, and kissed her long and hard.
My mother? Malcolm and my mother? He…. The person he found better was…. My mother?
My misery felt like steel weight as I mentally laughed at myself, recalling every moment I'd bared myself before him. I gave him the weapon he was now wielding against me. I showed him how desperately I needed him. I clung to him.
My throat ached, and when they finally broke their kiss, my mother turned to me with the kind of smile that made me shudder internally.
"You didn't think you could have him now, honey, did you?" Her voice was cold and ruthless, and no matter how much she hated me, I didn't think that she was actually going to stoop as low as taking Malcolm away from me.
My heart was completely shattered. Wretched. My mind was a mess as a terrible sense of bitterness assailed me.
"I'm making this public, and if you have any objection, you speak now or forever hold your peace," Malcolm started, his voice loud as he held my mother even tighter.
"Tonight, I will be claiming Celine Ashwood as my rightful mate." Celine Ashwood? She had even forsaken my father's name and had gone back to her maiden name.
The crowd erupted in a fit of applause that made my eyes widened, not a single person saw what was wrong with my mother being mated with someone almost half her age?
The lump in my throat became even more difficult to swallow as I just sat there and watched them kiss again, smiling and flaunting their new relationship.
"Guards!" Malcolm's bark jolted me out of a thought I didn't know I was lost in. "Throw this thing out, I don't want her tainting this special event with her presence, and the Alpha Kings we're expecting will be here soon. We can't have her here."
Limply, weak and dejected, I surrendered myself as the guards dragged me by my arm, and threw me out of the hall, slamming the door shut behind me.
Letting my tears fall, I felt the salty liquid on my lower lip as I staggered and kept walking with nowhere in mind, I just wanted to go somewhere I can forget about what had just happened.
Maybe this was still a bad dream, a fragment of my imagination born out of my deepest, darkest fear. Maybe I'll wake up and everything will be fine.
My walk was brought to an abrupt stop when I bumped into something, it was both hard and comforting. My gaze lifted, and my eyes felt as though they were going to fall out of their sockets as I stared at what was in front of me.
I hadn't bumped into something, but into… someone.
His presence alone was intimidating, he hadn't said a single word, but I could almost feel his disgust, his bloodlust, and his wish that I disappeared off the face of the earth.
"Who the fuck is this bitch? Are you blind?" A loud voice exploded, and my eyes lowered at once, I was sure that it wasn't the man I'd bumped into that had spoken.
I tried to move, I wanted to run away, but it was though I was already held hostage by nothing other than this presence. I counted the legs before me—six—there were three men standing in front of me right now.
"I'm so—"
"What do you think you're doing?" I hadn't been given the chance to speak or breathe when my face slammed into the ground. My head ached at once, the pain brutal as I felt someone pinning me to the ground.
My vision blurred, my consciousness fleeting as I kept my eyes on the six legs in front of me before one of the legs directly in front of me lifted and stomped on my forehead, lifting my face up with his feet, I stared at the faces of the men in front of me.
No. No way it's them. It couldn't be, right?
My mother had told me about the alphas coming, and even though I couldn't really recognize them, the amount of aura they emitted was insane, enough to make my nerves hurt.
"Did you, peasant, think you could apologize your way out of this?"