The word tasted like ash in my mouth.
I crossed to the sideboard and poured two fingers of whiskey, the familiar ritual steadying me in a night that felt untethered from reality.The amber liquid caught the lamplight, beautiful and warm, promising numbness I didn’t deserve.The crystal was cold against my palm.The scent rose up, smoky and sharp, burning my nostrils with a different kind of heat than the one I craved.
I set the glass down without drinking.
Pain was preferable.Pain reminded me what I had done to get here.And tonight, I deserved every ounce of it.
The platinum band on my left hand was foreign, a weight I hadn’t earned.I had put it on before the ceremony, a claim staked on a marriage that hadn’t happened yet.Like I could will it into existence by wearing the symbol.Now the marriage was real, legally binding, filed with the county clerk’s office in Paradise Peaks.
And the ring was nothing at all.
I turned it on my finger.Watched how it caught the lamplight.A beautiful, expensive band that proved I owned something I had no right to claim.
She’s here.
The thought came from deep in my chest, that other voice that was mine and not mine.My wolf, stirring at the knowledge of her proximity.At the scent of her that still lingered in my nostrils from the car ride.Apples and cream and underneath it, the salt of tears she wouldn’t let fall in front of me.
She’s ours.Why are we here?
I turned to my desk.The marriage certificate lay where I had left it.Proof of a legal transaction.Proof that Lena Hughes had ceased to exist and Lena Antonov had taken her place.
Not a partnership.Not a love match.Just paperwork that said she belonged to me in the eyes of the law.
I picked up the certificate.The paper was heavy, official, the county seal embossed in gold.Our names sat side by side.Raphael Antonov.Lena Hughes.Date of marriage.Signatures.
Hers had been steady.I had watched her sign, watched the pen move across the page without trembling, and I had been proud of her strength even as it broke me.She hadn’t given me the satisfaction of seeing her fear.Hadn’t given me anything except hatred wrapped in calm.
Her face at the courthouse flashed through my memory.I saw the fury in her blue eyes as she said the vows, heard her voice stay steady and clear even as she bound herself to a man she despised.I remembered the cold rage in her expression when I had whispered “later” against her cheek instead of kissing her properly.
I had meant it.I still did.
But later wasn’t tonight.Tonight was about proving I could wait.
Why wait?She’s wearing our ring.She said the words.She’s legally ours.
The wolf didn’t understand human concepts like consent or trust or earning back what I had destroyed.To him, the math was simple.The law said she was mine, so she was mine, and every second she spent sleeping alone in her room was an insult to be corrected.
I pressed my palm flat against the desk, letting the wood grain bite into my skin.My knuckles ached from holding them still.From not climbing those stairs and claiming what the certificate said was mine.
The contract gave me rights.The marriage gave me more.In the eyes of the law, she was my wife, bound to honor and obey, legally obligated to share my bed.I could enforce that obligation.I could march up those stairs right now and remind her what she had agreed to.
And I would lose any chance of her ever looking at me with anything but hatred.
That mattered more than the law.More than the contract.More than the wolf’s endless demands.
Hate her if she must.Just let her stay alive to do it.
I would not command her anymore.I would earn her.Or lose her trying.
But she’s ours.She’s wearing our ring.
She was wearing a shackle.That’s what she had called it, in her eyes if not her words.A chain I had put on her finger while her voice stayed steady and her hatred burned bright enough to light the room.
I remembered her face when I had pushed her away.When I had called her convenient.When I had removed the collar I had given her and let it fall to the floor like garbage, like she was garbage, like everything we’d shared in those weeks was nothing.
The contract is fulfilled.The debt is paid.We’re done.
My own words.My own cruelty, carefully calculated to make her leave.To make her hate me enough to stay away from a world that would kill her for being close to me.