The Demon Lord’s Bride

“Oh my! You look so beautiful, Lady Greta!” Aria, my maid and best friend, smiles softly as she weaves the last ornament into my hair.

“You are going to be a bride soon. You must be so excited,” another maid says.

Their faces are beaming with joy, and maybe mine should be too.

Yet, I’d be betraying my family and everything I stand for if I were to smile.

After all, I am getting married to a monster.

“We’re almost done, just a little fix and you’ll be ready to meet your… husband,” the third attendant informs me, irritation and mockery obvious in her tone.

I have been the luckiest of all the slaves captured after the Great War.

Most were sold off, killed, or made to face a worse fate.

But my case is different. I had been assigned maids and taught how to be a good woman, trophy, wife.

The maid’s hostility is understandable.

I nod, sitting there like the doll Nyx has taught me to be. The air smells like petals and perfume, the dark walls of the room seeming to close in on me, as if refusing to let me go after two years of keeping me captive.

And I can’t be more glad to leave this prison, even if it means I would be thrown into another.

“It’s all done,” Aria announces after a minute. “You should check yourself in the mirror.” She helps me up and leads me to the mirror.

The sight before me catches me off guard despite my bitter judgment. No dress has ever complemented my silver-blue hair as much as the sky-blue dress I have on.

The way it flows down my waist like ripples of water, the collar forming a V-shape that reveals the ocean-wave mark on my collarbone, the sleeves long and broad.

I look ethereal, surreal, just like my marriage.

My hair is braided back in the princess style I once used to love when Mama braided it for me. At the thought of her, tears fill my eyes.

How I wish she was here.

“Where is she?” Nyx’s voice breaks me out of my trance. I blink away my tears, letting my eyes rake over my room, from the blue queen-sized bed where I had spent countless nights crying to the window where I sat by myself and read.

Everything seems perfectly arranged for a doll.

Maybe I’ll miss it, maybe not.

“She’s all dressed, Lady Nyx,” Aria replies.

“Then get her out here.” Her blazing green eyes appear at the door, then her whole body follows, wrapped in a lovely green dress that hugs her curves, with that dark hair I have always been jealous of.

At least no one calls her a siren.

“What are you doing standing there? The ceremony has begun,” she announces, making my heart thump against my rib cage as I walk toward her.

She leads me out of the room. “Remember, six months. That’s how long you have. Kill the Demon Lord or lose your head.” She repeats the instructions King Larkin gave me two months ago.

I remember how hard I shook when I stood before him in his throne room, unable to see past my feet as he told me to kill his own brother.

How ironic.

They’ve ruined so many people, yet they want each other dead. My brothers were always each other’s keepers, never betraying each other and always having my back.

Nyx stops, so do I, my fingers digging into my palm as she speaks. “Do not fail the King, or your family will be killed in front of you, right after which I will kill you myself, slowly, painfully, until you beg for your death.”

“Yes, Lady Nyx,” I whisper, not looking her in the eyes, just as I had been taught.

I can feel her burning gaze on my skin during the few minutes of silence while the soft sound of the violin from the ballroom fills the corridor, then she tugs me forward.

I enter the hall with my eyes lowered. Everyone whispers about the siren.

Ena growls inside me. I can feel her clawing at my chest, begging to be let out.

But I can’t.

Not only because the moment Nyx and King Larkin know I am not the Omega I was presumed to be, my family will lose their heads, but also because I have never shifted before.

The gazes on me are heavy, judgmental, and filled with scorn. Every instinct in me wants to count the exits, the guards, and the distance to the doors. Training has taught me that crowded rooms are dangerous, and fear is easier to survive when you know where you can run.

If it weren’t for Nyx’s cold hand wrapped around my arm, I would have turned on my heels and walked out the door.

Normally, my husband should be here now, but he isn’t.

He has to come, or I will lose everyone that matters to me.

I meet Nyx’s eyes, and she smirks, her forest-green eyes mocking me. “Cursed bitch,” I hear her mutter, and my heart sinks further.

Then the large hall door bursts open, making everyone snap their gaze toward the entrance.

A large figure appears. The moment my eyes collide with stormy silver eyes, I still. Ena, my wolf, growls from within.

And I know my life will never be the same.

The large aisle separating us doesn’t stop his intoxicating rain-and-thunder scent from rushing through my nose and clouding my judgment.

Because walking toward me in deliberate steps, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, is my mate.

Roderick Aloysius.

Prince of the Lark Kingdom.

“The Demon Lord!” someone from the crowd screams, and I hear gasps as a body flops to the floor.

But I don’t care about that, nor the rumors painting him as his parents’ killer or the instructions I have been given.

All I care about are those stormy silver eyes fixed on my sky-blue ones.

His eyes flicker, glowing white when he gets closer, but instead of claiming me as I expect, my mate turns to Nyx.

“Is this the girl my brother chose for me?”

His rough voice sends ripples of excitement through me, until his words click in my head and my heart constricts, feeling as though it is being squeezed by an invisible hand.

“Yes, my Lord,” she bows slightly.

The Demon Lord finally looks at me, his eyes raking over me, his lips downturned.

“I will not marry her,” he announces.

My body jerks backward in shock.