Page 22 of Forced Pregnant Bride

Klavdia turned back to me, her face resolute. “That should never come out of your mouth again, especially not when others are around. They can twist things and get you into trouble.”

I clutched my chest, her words barely registering. I was hyperventilating.

Sighing, she stepped forward until her gaze met mine directly, the weight of her words heavy between us. “Serena,” she began, calling my name as if we’d known each other longer than a few minutes. Her voice was low, almost compassionate.Almost.“You should consider yourself lucky.”

“Lucky?”

Did she say lucky? To marry a man who talked about harvesting organs like he talked about having breakfast?

“Do you know what it’s like for some girls like you? Do you know what it means to be sold off, discarded, or sent to work until they can’t work any longer?”

I tried to look away, but she caught my chin in her fingers, her grip gentle but unyielding, drawing my gaze to hers. “Youare being married—respectfully, at that—to a man of means. Look around you.” She gestured to the grand room, the rich drapes, the chandeliers casting their warm glow, the heavy scent of perfume and polished wood. “This estate—every stone of it, every acre—will be yours. And you think this is a bad fate?”

Her words slid into me, filling the hollow left by my shock with a creeping dread.

Would this really be my life?

Freeing my chin from her grip, I sank into the chair, shoulders heaving as I pressed my fingers over my mouth, stifling the sobs that clawed their way out. “That man is…. He’s a cruel man, Klavdia,” I managed, my voice trembling as I searched her face for understanding, for someone to confirm the knot of fear tightening in my chest.

But she just watched me in that measured, intense way she had, her sharp eyes softened by some long-buried warmth. She took a step forward, moving closer, and placed her hand gently on my shoulder. Her touch was steady, grounding.

“I shouldn’t be saying this, but anyone who grew up as he did….” She paused, her gaze distant, perhaps seeing something only she could know. “He’s had to turn himself to stone to survive.”

I felt a tear slip down my cheek, but I couldn’t brush it away; her words wrapped around me, drawing me back to his cold stare, the hard line of his jaw, the way his face gave nothing away. The look in her eyes said she knew him, had known him for years—far longer than I had. She’d probably seen the harsh realities that shaped him, while I only saw the man I had been bound to without a choice.

“But if he truly meant to be cruel to you,” Klavdia’s voice softened further, a quiet assurance seeping into her words, “he wouldn’t have chosen you for this.”

She took my hands in hers, her grip firm. “Whatever you fear, know that he could have done far worse. There’s a part of him—small, perhaps, but real—that wouldn’t let him harm you as you think.”

Her words flooded into the spaces of my fears like rain, filling them with something, almost like hope.

She wasn’t dismissing the reality of Timur’s hardened exterior; she knew it intimately. But she was asking me to see beyond it, to try and trust that somewhere beneath the icy exterior, there might be a man who wouldn’t break me like I thought. She wanted me to understand that maybe, just maybe, he chose me because of something else.

Maybe a higher purpose, to serve as a sacrifice for something greater in the future.

The truth was, nobody really knew except the man himself

“But marriage is supposed to be based on love.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.

The air in the room felt thick, pressing down around us as my eyes traced the floorboards. Each knot and grain felt like a promise I knew might never be kept.

This love…I hadn’t experienced it before. But I’d read about it, heard about it, and believed that it existed.

Klavdia didn’t respond right away. The silence stretched between us, settling into every corner, weighing as heavily as my doubt. I could feel the judgment in her silence, or perhaps it was sympathy—either way, her eyes stayed averted, fixed on a point just past my shoulder.

Finally, she broke the silence. Her voice was soft, the edge of regret threading through each word as though it cost her something to say it.

“You will have everything you want as his wife,” she murmured. “But you won’t have love.” She hesitated, letting thewords land, and I felt them strike somewhere deep, an ache building in the hollow of my chest. “I’m sorry,” she added, almost too quietly, as if it might soften the blow.

I could only stare at her, searching her face for something to cling to—a spark of hope, a glimmer of some secret she hadn’t revealed. But there was nothing, only the resolute certainty of a truth she couldn’t change, one that I now had to decide whether I could live with.

“I own you now. You’re stuck with me for good.”

In the end, it didn’t matter whether or not I could. I’d surrendered. I’d taken my brother’s place.

Gazing at Klavdia, I sniffled, wiping the tears from my eyes. “Help me put on the dress, will you?”

Chapter 10 – Timur

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