9. Humiliation

[Zeve’s POV]

The clouds roared as if they were being torn apart by the lightning. It poured heavily.

I clenched my fist underwater, looking daggers at him. Rain drops slithered into my eyes and then out of it.

My eyes fell on the hilt of his sword hung from the sword belt on his hips.

I stretched out my palm towards the hilt of his sword underwater. I always felt an icy burn beneath my skin before something strange happened.

Somehow, his sword swam into my palms as if my hand attracted it like a magnet. I slashed the sword at him, cutting through the water's surface. He swiftly glided back, feeling his empty scabbard on his waist. Rain kept running down the blade as I pointed it towards him.

His eyes remained fixed on me. His lips curled up unnoticeable inches into a smirk. I lunged, slashing the sword at him, swimming briskly.

He glided to the sides and dodged my attacks. Even though most parts of his face remained impassive, his eyes had flames burning that could set the entire lake on fire.

He was enjoying it.

Panting. Water that strewed on my lips sprayed as I exhaled forcefully. Breathing became so much easier when the only thought in my mind was of killing him. 

He plunged into the lake; I swam after him. The underwater lake was so much calmer than it was on the surface. He swam, maintaining his eye contact with me. I slashed the sword in a semicircle path. He blocked the attack with his scabbard and I recoiled. He was insanely strong.

I attacked him again. He pointed the scabbard towards me, its locket facing me. He swayed his hand, sending a wave of water in my direction. The bubbles hazed my vision, and I shut my eyes.

When the bubbles died, it became clear what he was trying to do. The sword was in the scabbard and he grabbed it with his one hand, bringing his sword under his control once again. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it out of his hand.

He yanked the sword, making me float closer to him. His other hand seized my free hand. He flipped me upside down. I had held my breath for too long. He finally snatched the sword from my hand, squeezing my body against his at the same time. 

I kicked his shin, but it didn’t affect him. I needed to breathe, but he was deliberately keeping me underwater.

The breath I was holding in escaped, creating thousands of bubbles around me. I hit his chest with my closed fingers. I wanted to breathe badly. It was suffocating and scarier than seeing his face every day.

Dying was scary.

He wrapped his arm around my waist tightly and swam to the surface. The rain had turned fiercer as I gasped for breaths. I coughed out water that had almost entered me.

“And you said you wanted to die, huh?” He said in a calm voice. He sighed and released me from his grip.

I swam to the ground and pulled my body onto the land. His words kept repeating in my head.

Dying had always been an option for me. Given the way I lived in the Enver pack, I would have chosen death long ago, yet… yet I chose to survive. It was not death that I wanted. I wanted to live and not just survive.

In no time, he was on the land, too.

His eyes locked with mine. I crawled back, facing him, while he stepped closer to me.

“This is the real you. The ‘you’ who knows to fight. At least the ‘you’ I want you to be.” He gulped.

Rain showered on us with more passion. He squatted in front of me.

“This Zeve heats even the coldest lake. Desperate to live and you say you want to end your life? I see no truth in that. Two days…” His voice was gentle. Gentler than all the times he talked to me.

He signed, displaying his two fingers.

“You have two days. Do whatever you can to kill me.”

He got up and reached out to pick me up.

“Stay away from me!” I yelled, gathering my body to myself.

In a blink of an eye, he picked me off the ground and pinned me against the truck of a tree. “Make me…” he snarled in a whispering tone.

Our breaths fought when our bodies didn’t. Our gaze pierced one another when our swords didn’t.

Thunder cracked the sky.

I shuddered and reflexively hugged him. With quick, incomplete breaths, I kept my eyes shut as the thunder cracked again and again.

I clenched his military tunic on his back into my fists. My ears were close to his heart, and I had never heard calmer beats than those, ever. It was as if he feared nothing. Neither the thunder nor death.

I tore away from him when the sky and my heart became calmer.

“I-I was… t-that…”

“A moment you ask me to stay away and another you cling on to me for your life. I wonder which one is the real you. Anyway, you are yours for the next two days because after that, you will be mine. So, stop with this drama and get serious, to become Zeve Amor Blaze.”

My whole body became stiff with rage at hearing him call me that.

“Don’t blame me for what happens from now on to you…”

He glanced at my belly. I looked at it and my gown had turned sheer because of the rain. I immediately covered my belly and chest with my arms and turned around.

Why? Why do my clothes always malfunction around him? Unbelievable! I thought, shutting my eyes.

I felt his arms on my shoulders. I jerked him away from me, pointing my index finger at him I said, “don’t touch me! This is the last…” before I could finish my sentence, he covered my chest with his tunic.

Scowling, he grabbed my index finger, “I am not interested in touching you as well! Stop creating your fantasies! Your double face disgusts me more than anything else in this world. Women like you… something in front, then something else behind.”

I pushed him away from me. “If I disgust you, then let me go! I never asked you to carry a burden like me in your life. If you hate my double face, then just remove me from your life and you will never see my face ever again.”

He chuckled. “You like drama, don’t you? I will show you what genuine drama looks like!”

Chills ran down my skin, feeling the sudden intimidating aura around him.

He dragged me, not caring if I matched his pace, stumbled, or twisted my ankles. He kept dragging me in the hallways of the palace.

“What are you doing? Where are you taking me? Let go!”

He dragged me to the hall where other family members were present. They got on their feet seeing us. Everyone was looking at us. I dropped my gaze and covered my chest with his tunic.

“Amor, what is this?” Aunt Lozbi asked, walking close to him.  

He kept peering at me. “This is the future of the Aurora pack. Drenched and dead.” He said, and I tensed my body.

“Brother… lady Zeve…” Amor lifted his hand and Ash, Amor’s cousin, stopped speaking.

“Today, I will speak and everyone will listen. Everyone present here had a lot to say after I brought her here. Now listen. This is Zeve, who will soon be Zeve Amor Blaze. I killed her so-called mate right in front of her eyes and dragged her here. I am forcing her to marry me. Why? Because I want to. Anyone with objections can keep their opinions to themselves.”

He skimmed his glare across the hall. Everyone had a stern face, but no one said a word.

“Good. Now Zeve… why don’t you introduce yourself before them? Not just this face, but all your faces. Your fierce, fearless face that you keep in front of me, your feeble trembling face you use to gain other’s pity and sympathy and all other faces that you have.”

I held my palms tightly together and kept peering at the floor. He kept looking at me for an answer, but I couldn’t speak a word. His calm aura quickly switched to a daunting one.

“What happened? Forgot who you are or which one you should act to be? It would be confusing having so many faces, isn’t it? Or you just enjoy being double-faced like that whore!” He said and heavy silence fell in the hall.

My eyes filled with tears as I looked at him.

“This beautiful face…” he grabbed my chin and left it with a jerk. “This perfect body…”

I gulped as the tears streamed down my face.

“All of you wanted to know why I am marrying her, right? So listen! She is an exact copy of that whore who took away Alpha Diell Blaze, my father, from us and destroyed my mother’s life. Double-faced like her. Beautiful like her. Fake like her. The reason I am marrying her is to punish her for everything that whore did to my family.” He grabbed my arm and made me look into his eyes. “This is the real reason, Zeve. Blame your double face for that!”

I knit my brows, peering into his eyes. 

“No, no. Save your tears because your actual pain will begin after our marriage when I will have all rights over you, officially and legally.” He roughly cleared my tears. 

“Ah!”

“What happened? It’s hurting? I want it to…”

“Stop it, Amor!” Altan, Amor’s cousin, said. “What happened to your father and your mother is not related to her! Why are you blaming her? She wasn’t even present there…”

“Shut up! When I speak, I speak. Interrupt me again and you will be thrown out of my pack.”

He glared at him and Altan clenched his fists and walked out of the palace.

“Huh! You people call yourself my family, my foot!”

I stepped back from Amor when he was distracted.

He would hit me, definitely. My incomplete breaths were screaming for me to run away from him. But my legs had gone numb from the heavy eeriness because of Amor.

“Where do you think you are going? I am not done yet.” I gasped when he grabbed my arm.

Tears fell from my eyes, but I couldn’t feel any pain. I had crossed all the threshold of endurance. Now even pain started pitying me and hurting less.

He dragged me in the middle of the hall and pointed towards a huge painting of maybe Alpha Diell on the wall with some lady who wasn’t lady Ella.

“That is my father and the one beside him… who is she, Zeve?”

When tears cleared my vision, I could see the painting clearly.

“WHO IS SHE?” I shuddered at his scream.

“I-I… don’t… know…” I said. He brought his ear close to my lips.

“What? What did you say? You don’t know? Let me tell you. She is one of your kind. A whore. The one who destroyed everything for me and my mother. Because of her, we were exiled from the pack. My mother had to suffer to protect me day and night. She starved, was humiliated all because of her. She is one of you. So, before you destroy another happy family like ours, I will destroy you.”

“W-what i-is my fault?”

“This face! This personality of yours! Your entire existence is your fault!”

My face indeed resembled hers. But I was not her. My chest tightened. It started hurting, making it difficult for me to breathe again.

“I-I am… Zeve… n-not her…” 

“It will not take time for you to turn into her. Seek a man with power, allure him in your beautiful web and devour him alive.” He said with clenched teeth.

My feet had turned numb, but my body wouldn’t stop shivering.

“Stop trembling!” I flinched with gasps. He grabbed my shoulders. “I SAID STOP TREMBLING OR ELSE…” His nails grew piercing my skin.

Fearing he might rip my arms off, I pushed him with everything I could muster.

In the struggle, his nails stuck in my gown and when I pushed him, my gown tore off from my shoulders. I briskly crossed my arms over my chest, holding my gown before it fell down my body. 

“AMOR!” I lifted my frozen eyes.

Lady Ella turned him towards her and slapped him in front of everyone. Her eyes were completely red and filled with tears.

Amor held his cheek, looking at the floor on his side. I heard the ladies in the hall gasp as they covered their mouths. The kids ran down the stairs with Lucella.

Lucella ran to me.

“Zeve!” She glared at Amor, clenching her jaws. “Bring a robe, immediately!” She shouted, and a maid ran to us with a robe. Lucella covered my body with it while I kept on holding my gown.

“Are you my son? Because this person standing in front of me can never be someone I nurtured with my morals and values. Because my son would never do such a hideous thing — that too to a woman he said he’d marry.” Her anger filled eyes were moist and so were her cheeks when her tears trailed down.

She took a deep breath, and in her shaking voice; she continued.

“Is this the value of a woman’s dignity in your eyes? Something you can flash in front of the entire world? What if someone does this to your mother?”

“Mother!” He yelled, looking at her.

She glared at him, and he lowered his gaze.

“Why? It is completely fine for you to treat Zeve like that. It is acceptable as long as a lady is beautiful and has a double face. I am like that too! Every lady in this hall is like that. So is it their fault if they are beautiful and not the way you want them to be?”

Amor was breathing angrily, but didn’t say a word to his mother.

“You don’t even know what a girl needs to face in this society. She needs those faces to survive. Because her one smile is interpreted as flirting, so she can’t smile in front of everyone even when she wants to. She keeps most of her emotions buried inside from the world for her entire life. But she opens up in front of the person she trusts. Because she feels safe and not judged in front of those eyes.”

I looked around the hall and every lady standing there had lowered their eyes. Lucella gritted her teeth, still holding my shoulders.

“But how will you understand that? You are a man — an alpha — you get what you want whenever you want. You can get angry and it will be your instinct — an honour, but if a lady gets angry, she is misbehaving and needs to be tamed. She needs to know her place. You tell me… what is a girl’s place? At your feet? What is her mistake in all this? Yeah, she resembles her, so what? I never resented Dawn. For nothing, not once. From where did you get so poisoned, huh? Did I teach you all this…” she wheezed.

Lucella was about to go to her when she showed her palm and stopped her.

Amor clenched his fist and was about to leave when she held his arm.

“I am not done speaking. You ignore what you don’t want to hear. But today you will have to listen to every word I say. What you did to her right now will always be a scar in her life. She will never forget this humiliation,” she pointed towards me.

I bit my lips, holding back my tears.

“You blame Dawn for everything, don’t you? The thought never crossed your mind that your father could have been the one at fault?”

“Father…”

“This girl here… she deserves better. Not a person like you! You don’t deserve her. I barely know her. But from what I know, I can proudly say — she deserves better. You have no right to offend her. What you did to her mate was shameful enough, but not anymore. She will not marry you. Now that I know why you want to marry her, I can’t throw an innocent girl in front of a mindless beast like you. I will not let that happen.”

“Two days!” Amor yelled. “Only two days from now, mother. She will marry me. No one can stop me, not even you. So you better start preparing for the pre marriage rituals, if you want them to happen or else I can drag her to the temple and marry her on the spot.”

He turned and looked at me with his neon blue glazing eyes.

I looked at him with dry, almost lifeless eyes. He looked at me from head to toe and exited the palace with a scowl.