Page 40 of Claimed By the Billionaires

“Where’s my daughter? I’m taking her home. Those fucking bastards are not going to touch her with their filthy paws. Where is she?”

The sound of her father’s agitated voice coming from the other side of the door drilled new holes of pain into her.

“Mr. Creer, please, calm down.” Millie’s voice reached her as well. “The Masters will be with you shortly.”

“Please don’t hurt him. I beg you. I’ll do anything you want. Please.”

“You already have. You’re wearing our brand, and your father will see it. You’ll carry our child, and your father will be reminded of who we are every day until the day he dies. That is his punishment,” Houston said.

“You’re ours now, Winter. We marked our chests with your virgin blood—the fire of the phoenix in our hearts. You’re wearing our brand. You’ll belong to us until the day we die and beyond that,” Aston said.

She watched as Konnor leisurely wiped her wetness off his hand before the three of them strolled, unbothered, out of the room to deal with her father.

Chapter Eighteen

Two days had passed since Winter learned the horrific truth. Her father had come to try to save her and himself too, but they’d laid out their demands eloquently enough.

She heard everything that was said between them; perhaps it was done so deliberately, but her father crying, saying he was on his knees begging for his daughter back, remained in her heart.

Aston, Konnor, and Houston, the Phoenix Monarch, as she now thought of them, had no sympathy in their voices when they spoke to her father. They sent him away without letting Winter see him.

They were keeping her until she was pregnant as a reminder that they’d beat her father by tainting his bloodline with their own.

She didn’t know what would happen afterward, but if this was her lot, she was going to carry it. Her father had done something criminal; burning the scrolls and their history was a heinous thing to do.

But she knew he would have done anything—even as a twenty-year-old, which was his age when he incinerated their history on the instruction of the Pegasus dynasty—for his family name to be recognized again. Something he had promised his own father he would do.

The sadness in her heart grew for many reasons, but the saddest one was that what her father had done would be unforgivable in their eyes, no matter how much she tried to repent on his behalf.

In the history books of the secret societies, the Creers would go down as a disgraced family. She would go down as the woman who had a Phoenix Monarch child without being their chosen and revered virgin. She’d have the reputation of someone infamous, notorious, and disgraceful, and her family would never live that down for every generation to come afterward. But maybe it all ended with her.

In all her father’s attempts to get reinstated, all he ended up doing was getting the Creer family completely struck off the list of the elites. If it weren’t so devastating, it would be ironic.

But this was her punishment for being a Creer, for the distasteful act of her father burning scrolls that would put the Phoenix Monarch back in power again.

Yet she could also still hear the silence from her father when they’d told him that Winter was branded with the phoenix and they’d taken her virginity. She didn’t want to think that he’d discard her because of who had touched her. Yet the thought ran her haggard with despair. Would her own family disown her because of this?

Every minute, her heart broke more and more. In a moment of weakness, she’d fallen in love with them, and these were the consequences. She just never expected it to feel like this. Total agonizing darkness. Over and over again.

Millie tended to her branding and the lashes on her back with a specially formulated cream. It shocked Winter how quickly she healed, to the point where she was taking showers already.

And if it weren’t for Millie, Winter wouldn’t have stepped foot out of the bedroom either. But the older woman made her walk around the gardens, explore the house, and come down to the kitchen for meals.

Sitting on a chair in front of the dresser while Millie brushed her hair, Winter tried hard not to wring her hands together or just start crying and never stop.

Her cycle was marked and tracked by them, and she was entering the ovulation phase of her cycle.

“There. You look beautiful, my dear,” Millie said before she hugged Winter and exited the room.

Her instruction was to wait for them naked. Gingerly, she shrugged the robe off her shoulders and folded it neatly on her chair.

Quivering too much to pace the floor and unsure how to feel, Winter stood rooted to the floor.

When the door swung open moments later, a kaleidoscope of emotions catapulted her through time and space.

These were the men she loved. She was the girl they hated.

A thick tear dripped down her face and blurred her vision.

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