Chapter 5 The wedding night part 1

Chapter 5: Chapter 5 The wedding night part 1

Talia’s POV

The servant did not speak to me.

That was fine. I was used to silence. In Cresswood, silence meant safety. Talking meant attention, and attention meant pain. So I followed without a word, matching her pace through hallways I had never seen, past doors I had never opened.

She led me to a small room with a tub of steaming water. The scent hit me first—something soft, green, alive.

Lavender.

I had smelled it once before, years ago, when a traveling merchant’s cart passed through the pack grounds and I caught a whiff of soap from under a tarp. That was the closest I had ever come to luxury.

This was different.

This was for me.

"Undress," the woman said. "I will prepare your gown."

My hands went to my collar, then stopped.

The woman noticed. Her face softened—not pity, exactly. Something quieter. Recognition, maybe. Like she had seen women flinch before and understood why.

"I have served the Shadowfang pack for twenty years," she said, her voice steady and unhurried. "I do not care what you look like. I am only here to help you."

I nodded and turned my back to her.

I removed the dress slowly, keeping my mother’s necklace against my skin. The silver chain was cold and familiar, the only anchor I had in a day that had already unmoored me from everything I knew.

The woman did not stare. She laid out a white gown on the bed and turned away to give me space.

Space.

In fifteen years at Cresswood, no one had ever given me space. No one had ever looked at me and thought she might need a moment. They only looked at me when they needed something scrubbed, carried, broken, or blamed.

I stepped into the tub.

The heat hit my skin, and I gasped. Not from pain—from shock.

Warm water.

Actual warm water, soaking into my knuckles, my shoulders, and the cracked places on my elbows that never healed because the cold never let them. My muscles loosened one by one, like knots being untied by patient fingers. My shoulders dropped. My jaw unclenched.

For one moment—one single, fragile moment—I forgot where I was.

Then I remembered.

Tonight, I would become Kaelen’s wife. Tonight, I would belong to a stranger. And the warmth of this water did not change that.

The woman helped me into the gown when I finished.

White. Simple.

Nothing like the elaborate gowns Celeste wore—layers of silk and lace that probably cost more than my entire existence was worth to the Cress family.

But it was clean.

And it was mine.

The first thing I had ever worn that was not a hand-me-down, not a punishment, and not a rag.

She brushed my hair until it dried. Long, slow strokes. No questions about my face. No questions about the necklace. No questions at all.

"You are ready," she said.

I looked in the mirror.

Nothing had changed.

The same plain face. The same dull eyes. The same brown hair that looked dead and dry even after being washed in warm water for the first time in fifteen years.

The glamour charm held, faithful and merciless, showing the world the girl they were allowed to see.

I touched the necklace beneath the collar.

Two more days.

Just two more days until my twentieth birthday.

I had survived fifteen years. What were two more days?

I told myself that every morning when I woke up. I told myself that every night before I slept.

Two more days. Just two more days.

And now I was getting married in two of them.

The ceremony was brief.

Too brief.

I stood at the front of a hall that was neither grand nor small—just there, like an afterthought, like no one had cared enough to make it beautiful. Stone walls. Torches burning in iron brackets. Wolves watching from the shadows, their faces half-lit, half-hidden.

These were not the wolves from the bonding ceremony. These were Kaelen’s wolves—Shadowfang warriors, pack members, people who would be looking at me for the rest of my life whether I wanted them to or not.

They watched me like a puzzle they were trying to solve. Like something they could not yet decide whether to fear or dismiss.

I wondered what they saw.

The ugly servant girl? The cursed child who burned her own mother?

Or something else—something they could not name, standing here in a white gown that did not smell like grease and old wood for the first time in fifteen years?

Kaelen stood beside me.

His face was unreadable. His gray eyes did not look at me. He stood the way a man stands at the edge of a cliff—perfectly still, perfectly balanced, waiting for the ground to shift.

The elder spoke words I half-heard. Something about the Moon Goddess. About duty. About a bond that could not be broken.

His robes were old and heavy, embroidered with symbols I did not recognize. A sacred flame burned in a stone bowl between us, casting strange shadows that crawled across the walls like living things.

I kept my hands clasped in front of me so no one would see them shake.

My thoughts drifted. They always drifted when I was afraid—back to the kitchen, to the pots, to the smell of grease that never left my hands no matter how hard I scrubbed.

Fifteen years of gray water and raw knuckles.

And now I stood here in a white gown, being married to a man whose voice I had heard maybe four times today, and none of it felt real.

Then Kaelen’s hand brushed mine.

Just for a second. Just his fingertips against the back of my hand—warm, deliberate, and gone.

Like a match struck in a dark room.

I felt it long after the contact ended, a ghost of warmth on skin that had forgotten what gentle touch felt like.

I did not know if it was an accident. I did not dare look at his face to find out.

The elder’s voice droned on, but I was somewhere else now.

I was thinking about my mother. About the fire. About the last time I saw her face—streaked with ash, red-eyed, pressing the necklace into my palm with trembling fingers.

She should have been here.

In whatever version of this day I had once allowed myself to imagine, she should have been the one to dress me. The one to brush my hair. The one to whisper, ’You are beautiful,’ and mean it. The one to hold my hand and tell me not to be afraid.

Instead, I was alone.

As always.

The ache rose in my throat, hot and sharp. I swallowed it down. I did not let the tears fall. I would not give this hall, these wolves, or this day the satisfaction of watching me break.

Then the elder said the words that yanked me back.

"The dowry of five hundred thousand silver coins will be transferred to the Cress family, as tradition demands."

Five hundred thousand silver coins.

My stomach dropped.

Five hundred thousand silver coins. For giving me away. For handing over the girl they had starved, locked, beaten, and blamed for fifteen years.

The Cress family—the family that had never bought me a dress, never fed me a warm meal without making me scrub for it first, and never once called me by name without venom in the syllable—would be paid for me.

Like livestock.

Like a thing sold at market.

And Vivienne would take it. She would count every coin with those long, pale fingers and smile. She would call it compensation. She would call it tradition. She would call it fair.

I added it to the list.

Entry four thousand, two hundred and twelve.

The day they put a price on me and called it a wedding.

The elder looked at me. The flame between us flickered. The hall went quiet—every wolf, every torch, every held breath, all of it waiting for one word from my mouth.

"Do you accept this bond?"