Her face was haggard, and her eyes were red and swollen as she cried out, “Please help me, Litha! Kael’s gone insane! He says I must give him a cub with pure lion bloodline and forces me to mate with the oldest, ugliest lions in the clan every day! It’s
disgusting!
“And the lions are dirt poor! I gave them my dowry, and it still wasn’t enough. Now, I can’t even afford meat anymore!
“Kael doesn’t lift a finger to help. All he ever does is cling to me and demands to know why I betrayed his precious love…”
I wasn’t surprised. From the moment she took that matrimony from me out of envy and hate, I’d known how it would end
Halfway through, her words abruptly cut off. Her eyes locked on my belly, which was now swollen and showing obvious signs of pregnancy.
“You’re… pregnant? No way! That can’t be! Draken might as well be just a block of wood, and there’s no way he’d touch you!
“Why do you always get everything so easily?” Her expression crumpled with ferocity, and her voice rose to a shriek, wild
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Chapter 7
+25 BONUS
and ragged with disbelief.
With that, she lunged at me, grabbing a vase from the table and aiming it at my belly.
I flinched in shock. Never had I expected Arya to lose it like this.
My arms were too weak to defend myself, so all I could do was instinctively hunch over to protect my belly. But the blow I’d
braced for never arrived.
A sharp cry rang out. Arya was hurled backward and slammed into the wooden doors with a crash that splintered them into
pieces.
Blood sprayed from her lips as she collapsed to the floor, limp and
Draken stood beside me and fixed her with a cold, icy stare. Hi dropped to their knees, unable to bear its crushing weight.
Arya forced herself up to look at him with eyes full of affection.
”
presence wa
was
So
suffocatingly terrifying that the
dragons
“I’m your mate, Draken. Litha forced the matrimonial switch because she was disgusted that the lions were too poor.
“I was the one meant to marry you from the start, so don’t let her fool you!”
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Chapter 8
