Page 48 of Broken Arranged Mate
But the moment I think it, she turns on me, scowling.
“If I had been there, checking on her,” she chokes, the words half anger and half devastation, “I would have hadmore timewith her.”
They hang in the air for a moment, and I find the meaning there, the real implication—if we hadn’t gotten married, if we hadn’t been focusing on the wedding, Ash might have noticed that Beth was declining.
I know it’s my fault that I led her on—that I let her think there could ever be anything more than a simple, straightforward political marriage between us—butsheagreed to it. She went through with it.
Ash said she wanted to do something for her pack. It’s not my fault that the first time that sacrifice makes itself known, becomes real, she realizes it’s more than she wanted to give.
“You agreed to this,” I growl, trying to bite back my words, but being unable to. “Or have you forgotten that you wanted to be an Ambersky martyr?”
“Oh,fuck you, Oren. You’d never understand this, because you’re the fuckingchosen one, but not all of us get to go out there and chase after our destinies. Some of us are born into roles that force us to always,alwaysbe following someone else. You havenoidea what it’s like to be me.”
“Maybe not.” I wish I could stop the words from coming out of me, but they’re flowing, spurred on by the anger, by the days and nights of not touching her, by the look on her face right now that confirms all my worst thoughts. “But I do know that you agreed to this marriage, Ash. You stood across from me in front of everyone and agreed to this union. So if you hate the situation you’re in, you have to admit that you played a part in creating it.”
When her face flips from grieving to furious, it genuinely sends a chill down the length of my back. Just as quickly, it changes back, the anger receding, something only bitter and vague left behind, the hollow shell of an emotion.
Ash laughs, tears in her eyes, “I saidI do, Oren, but it’s not my fault I didn’t know I was marrying amonster.”
With that, she turns and makes her way up the stairs, not looking back at me once. My heart thuds in my chest, my ears roaring with blood as her words land, and land, and land again, sinking all the way into the core of me.
It’s not my fault, I didn’t know I was marrying a monster.
A monster.
Staggering backward, I hit the table and slide into one of the chairs, my breath coming hard and fast, my hands shaking, fingers trembling with the strength of the adrenaline and blood pumping through my veins.
A monster.
After all this, after everything. Running away and living for a year in a place that wasn’t my home. The training and the sacrifice, and trying to bring my mother back to life. The death of my father and the killing of Mhairi Argent.
After more than twenty years of trying, I’ve failed.
My only goal in life has been to be nothing like my father, and yet, somehow, I’ve managed to do just that.
Ash Fields married a monster.
Ash Fields marriedme.
Chapter 28 - Ash
I regret the words the second I close the bedroom door behind me.
My body is still nothing but emotion, anger, and fear and grief rolling through in thick, tight contractions, and instead of thinking about it straight away, I take in the room around me, grounding myself in the details.
Cream-colored walls, king-sized bed with what looks like an ancient, pale pink duvet. A single plain dresser made from desert willow bark, stained a light oak color to match the bed. Functional, but unloved. Simple and without character, just like the rest of the house.
My body starts to calm when I think about how I’d turn this space into something better—a warmer, earthy color on the walls, something like home. Plants to survive the dry air, the desert heat. A thrifted chair is in the corner of the room.
Then, without warning, I picture Oren in here, a smile cutting over his face when he sees what I’ve done with the place. It hurts more than it should, a fantasy of what it would be like if we were happy.
I know I shouldn’t have said that to him. The look on his face told me that it landed, that it hurt as much as I wanted it to. Thatmonsterwas exactly the right word to shoot straight to the center of him and hit its target.
In the back of my mind, I’m aware of the fact that I don’twantto hurt him. I don’t want to cause him pain, I just want him to understand how I feel, what it was like for him to leave me in this house agonizing and alone, hurt more by the absence of him than anything my heat could have done to me.
But it feels like the two of us just can’t figure out how not to hurt one another.
I’m tired, so I start to peel my clothes off, my mind going slightly numb from the events of the day. This thing started out so simply—I would marry Oren Blacklock to help my pack—and has now become something tangled and sticky, something I don’t quite understand. A mess of emotions and intentions that are so fuzzy I can’t quite pick them out.
