SCORNED

|||YASMIN|||

My grandfather always said that no matter how powerful, every creature will one day fall, and it all depends entirely on the people around them. Their downfall depends on those they know, those they love.

I never imagined one day it would somehow apply to me.

I never imagined my heart would one day harbor the same hatred that my grandfather had carried in his heart for years. Or maybe I did. All it took was a single blow. A single moment. And a decision I never should have made.

"Yasmin?"

Cassien, my husband, was standing in front of me. His familiar blue eyes were hauntingly chill as he held my gaze, his lips pressed into a thin line and his brows unevenly furrowed—a look I knew was associated with him being disgruntled. I was silent. I had been silent for the past five minutes, and I could tell he could no longer stand it.

After all, he had just confessed his infidelity to me... and I wasn't quite sure what reaction I could give in that moment. I was coming to terms with it, trying to wrap my mind around the notion. I was having a hard time believing whether he was truly being honest or perhaps it was one of his jokes that always went too far.

My canines searched for the skin inside my cheek—a bad habit my mother had once warned me against. Oh, she had warned me against a lot of things. Part of me wished I had listened.

I stared up at the man I had spent the past four years loving, a hollow feeling spreading in my chest as I realized he seemed more like a stranger to me rather than the Cassien I had left my home and family for.

He had taken one look at me and said I was his mate, the one made for him...the only one made for him.

His blue eyes never shifted from mine. They grew impatient, his foot tapped endlessly on the marble floor of our bedroom, but his gaze never wavered. He wasn't just impatient—he was nervous, scared of what my reaction would be.

Again, I was calmer than I expected.

Perhaps because I had never once practiced a reaction to such a scenario, and believe me, I manage to predict every outcome. How foolish of me to never have imagined that Cassien would get another woman pregnant.

I heard a sniffle. It seeped through the small cracks in my thoughts and made my gaze shift to the far corner of our bedroom. A young woman, her petite body shivering from what I knew wasn't cold.

Fear. I could smell it off her.

But not as much as the stench Cassien let off. It made my heart ache—no—burn with an anger I managed to rein in just in time.

"Yasmin..." Cassien called out again, this time softer, his arm reaching out to take mine, and I let him. I felt his warm fingers wrap around my skin, his familiar heat permeating through my flesh and somehow managing to seep into my bones, warming me up momentarily.

"What do you want me to say?" I sounded the same—no tremor, no shift in my tone. My eyes were back on him, and I was curious as to what it looked like from his view.

Guilt masked his perfect features, like mud being splashed on an intricate sculpture. I had only ever seen such an expression once on his face.

And now today.

"Anything... Yas," he murmured, taking another step closer, and then another until he closed the distance between us, the familiar hum of his wolf brushing against my soul rekindled.

"You should hit me, yell at me... tell me how much you hate me..." he whispered brokenly, eyes glimmering with unshed tears.

"Why should I do that?" I inhaled sharply, finding that those emotions of his really did affect me. "What is done is done, Cassien."

He shook his head. "I am sorry..." he muttered. "I don't know how it happened, but it just did." He gestured at the woman behind him. "I thought I could come clean and put it behind me, but... she got pregnant, and I couldn't just leave her, Yas."

My gaze drifted to the woman again. She had an innocent-like beauty to her. Her eyes were wide with uncertainty, like a lost doe in search of a place to belong.

"So you brought her here, to our home."

Oh. There it was.

My eyes were beginning to burn, my lips beginning to quiver. Nothing was wrong with me—it was just a delayed response. My husband... cheated, got another woman pregnant, and brought her home.

"I didn't have a choice," Cassien pressed. "Her mother would have died from the embarrassment, and her father..." Cassien shook his head. "I couldn't leave her there, Yasmin." There was a light in his eyes, one that hadn't been there before he left for his trip three months ago. "But think about it—this is an advantage... I can finally have an heir—no—we can finally have an heir!"

It knocked the breath out of me. His words twisted and curled around my neck, a harsh reminder that I could never give him children of his own.

But...

"I thought you said that didn't matter to you?" A tear slid down my cheek, one I tried to stop but couldn't.

The sight of it seemed to horrify him. Cassien had never seen me cry. Ever.

So I let it be visible, let him see how much he hurt me. He didn't deserve my tears. In that moment, I knew the best thing to do was yell, show him just how much he had messed up, and then leave.

Why did I still stand there? Why did I let him see my tears?

"Yas..." he breathed shakily, his fingers reaching up for my face, touching my tear. I let him.

"Let's be realistic," his volume dropped. "How am I supposed to succeed my father if I have no heir? How am I to become the Alpha King if I remain childless?"

Another hit.

"This child will be ours!" he insisted in that self-righteous tone I had always warned him about.

Yet, foolishly...

"Nothing, and I mean nothing, will ever change the way I feel about you. Nothing in this world can ever break or weaken what we have... you know that." Then he pulled me into his arms, flush against his chest, like he always did whenever he upset me. However, this time it felt different. Mixed with his scent, I could smell something else off him—something sugary.

Why didn't it matter to me?

Instead, I melted into his touch, too consumed by how much I missed his warmth, how much I believed his words. Because I knew what Cassien and I had was unlike any other. Our love story was one that would be told for decades to come.

"And her?" I couldn't help the uncertainty that entered my tone as I caught a glimpse of the other woman.

Cassien pulled back, his palms cupping my face in a delicate but firm grip.

"Hana means nothing to me. She just needs protection... Once the child is born, she will be sent somewhere else." He kissed me softly, his tongue brushing against my lower lip in a quick but intense moment. My heart raced, my body burned, eager to feel him once more when he pulled away.

"I love you, Yasmin. Nothing will ever change that..." he avowed. "Nothing!"

Logic and feelings battled fiercely when he said those words.

And logic lost.

I knew I should hate him, should have walked out of the room in that moment, should have thrown that woman out. Yet I stayed—and let him kiss me.

Only later would I realize what a foolish mistake that was.

He kissed me again, his tongue delving straight past my lips.

And in that moment, I had accepted it all. I didn't know what I had done.

Foolishly, I kissed him back.

Foolishly, I ruined my own life.