DAHLIA:
Lina and the other servants were preoccupied for hours, dressing me, preparing me, making me beautiful enough to be served in a platter later in front of the noble houses of Talandor…
Everything made me sick - the lights, the sounds, the dresses, and most especially the compliments that made my heart sink further and further down into the bottom of despair.
“Lady Dahlia, you look truly beautiful! Congratulations,” the other attendants said in awe. They were sincere compliments, but I didn’t care. Neither Lina nor I spoke a single word while they bustled around to make me pretty for the party.
After several hours of letting them do their best work on me, I was finally allowed to look at myself in the mirror for the first time.
Indeed, I looked lovely in a royal blue party dress. My hair was curled up, and it was adorned with crystal and sapphire stones, but my eyes looked quite empty.
It was taking all
DAHLIA:There was an indescribable feeling inside of my chest. It felt like someone was looking at me deeply in a curious manner.I looked around and scanned the crowd. All eyes were on us. To be precise, all eyes were on the king and on Kaist, who was sitting to my right. No one was looking at me in particular, and yet the feeling that someone’s eyes were concentrated on me still persisted. What could this possibly mean?“Our mate,” Eva whispered to me. “I think he’s here… I can feel him.”My face colored up. Was Tristan really here, amongst the crowd? Was he here as one of the guests?That can’t be… Papa won’t make a mistake. Even Sir Raleigh had been posted as one of the guards by the gate because he was insistent in catching my mate at the very beginning. He won’t make a lapse in judgment like so…Well, that can’t happen unless he came here in a disguise&hel
DAHLIA:Before I could even speak, he scolded me harshly, “What the hell were you doing there? Did you really plan to die like that?!”I can’t believe it! Tristan was here right in front of me!I tried to say something to him, but my body was wracked in violent fits of coughs. He propped me into a sitting position and massaged my back, soothing me. I felt a tremendous amount of relief that I wanted to cry.“H-how,” I managed to finally ask him when I had gotten over my coughs.“I heard you say goodbye… I heard you say goodbye in my head just now,” he said abruptly.I can’t believe it! I was able to talk to him in my head even without trying to mind-link with him! Was that even possible?His face wore a surprised and worried look too. Perhaps he had the same questions as the ones in my mind right now…“How can I… How can I talk to you like that? Does it m
DAHLIA:“I was leaning over the lotus flowers, and it got caught and broken into pieces. I tried to recover the broken pieces, but I can’t,” I abruptly explained to Kaist as my heartbeat escalated rapidly.Before he could say something more, one of the attendants in the party approached us. “Lady Hurst, Your majesty, I am an attendant of Count Abell from Crohmwall District. He is requesting an audience from the two of you.”I had heard of the newly-installed count from my attendants earlier this week. Apparently, the original count and his family from Crohmwall District had become poor enough to sell their family title to a blossoming merchant from Linderon, an allied kingdom in the north of Talandor.This was becoming a common practice nowadays. We are slowly feeling the effects of continued rogue and vampire attack on the lands, especially in the far-flung places of the kingdom, like in the case of Crohmwall District.
DAHLIA:My own father could very well be the culprit… He must be the one who ordered the men to shoot arrows at Tristan – this was the conclusion I had come up on my own.Papa was a stern man. He would sometimes lose his temper on me and grip my arms hard, but he never did anything beyond that point… Or am I mistaken?Can it really be true? Can he order my own fated mate to be shot just so that he and the king can save face and go through with the wedding? Didn’t he care what I would feel like if I lose my mate?I gripped my chest while gliding at the hall after bolting out as I remember this. I felt a physical kind of pain seize me abruptly. I heard that when one is unfortunate enough to lose a fated mate, that person starts to perish on the inside.Even just the thought of losing Tristan, a mate I have not known for a long time, was enough to drive me crazy. I felt a great pain already started to tug so strongly at my ch
DAHLIA:“Dahlly, don’t be insane! You can never wed someone you knew for the first time!”This was papa’s first words when he saw me that day before I left for town. I didn’t eat breakfast because I had no appetite, but he did not care at all. All he cared about was the state of my arranged marriage.“Papa, would it be better then if I married someone I knew but did not love? Even you had loved my mother wholeheartedly, right? You were fated mates! How can I not do the same?”My father’s angry face contorted into a pained expression. Every time I mentioned my mother in our conversations, it would always become like this.“The love of a fated mate is not all there is in this world! How can you think like a child in times like this, Dahlia?”I felt hurt. I was nineteen – an adult – but still very much like a child too… his own child! Did he not care about me at all?
DAHLIA:What was he saying? How did Tristan knew I was lying?He inched towards me, still accusing me of telling him a lie with his beautiful eyes. I stepped some more backwards. My leg was caught at the sofa, which was right behind me. I yelped in surprise as I stumbled backwards, and that was when I felt a pair of arms coil around my waist. It was Tristan’s. He caught my body in an embrace, and we both stumbled down into the long sofa at the waiting room.I don’t know what happened, but when I fell sideways, it was soft and not painful at all. Tristan’s face had fallen into the top of my chest, and I felt his breath blowing through the exposed skin of my breast.I shivered. Moon Goddess, why are you doing this to me? Why are you tempting me like this to the extreme?I knew I wasn’t the only one tempted. I felt a lump of flesh harden somewhere at the center of Tristan’s hips where one of my legs was caug
DAHLIA:I went back home feeling more depressed that ever. I was heartbroken. I cried in the carriage all the way until I reached my own room at the mansion, and I didn’t have the strength to eat at all.“Lady Dahlia, you need to eat… How will you have the energy to stand in front of the wedding hall like this if you don’t,” Lina commented as she urged me to eat.That’s precisely what I wanted – not to stand in front of the wedding hall at all!Despite how I looked like and behaved all this time, papa did not budge. He continued with the wedding arrangements, deciding everything on my behalf, saying to people that I had been afflicted by flu, and that the doctor forbade me to go out, explaining my absence from any social functions.I actually didn’t know which was worse – that he was desperate enough to marry me off even if he had to say a blatant lie or that he didn’t care about me at al
KAIST:A strange tide of emotions was brimming in my chest, threatening to pour out all at once while I was in front of Dahlly. I tried to contain what I felt, but it was far too much that my wolf, Cruz, couldn’t even stop his whimpering. The longer I stay in Dahlly’s room, the more dangerous I might become, so I excused myself…Dahlly was my childhood friend and my closest friend. She always referred to me as her ‘best friend,’ but I always knew she was more – absolutely something more for me!I was fifteen when I started feeling something else than friendship for Dahlia. I had always loved the quiet but morose way that she would smile. Her brown hair matched her pale face perfectly. She was a little flower in a field full of green grasses – truly a beautiful and delicate thing.My father – the king – had always told me that Dahlly and I belonged to each other. When he was drunk, he’ll elaborat