They Stole My Wedding to Save Her, Not Knowing They Were Sacrificing Me to the Mountain God Chapter 09

They Stole My Wedding to Save Her, Not Knowing They Were Sacrificing Me to the Mountain God Chapter 09

“Do you not understand what I’m saying? I said I’m fine here.”

“Patriarch Graham, can you hurry up and have them removed? Rowan promised to play video games with me for a while. They’re ruining my mood.”

Richard, Evelyn, and Callum all stared at me in disbelief

Richard stepped forward, already losing his temper.

“Elara, I’m your father. How can you speak to me like this?”

I gave him one glance, cold and empty of emotion.

“You’re my biological father, nothing more. My name has already been removed from your family registry.”

“Don’t shout at me. I am the Guardian’s Bride now, after all. You should show some respect.”

He froze too.

Patriarch Graham had them escorted out.

But even then, the three of them refused to leave.

They kept trying to find ways to get close to me.

When Rowan and I went fishing in the preserve, Evelyn came carrying a box of chestnut cake she had made.

“Elara, didn’t you love my chestnut cake the most? I made this especially for you today.”

I knocked the box straight out of her hands and let the cakes fall into the dirt.

You remembered wrong. I don’t like chestnut cake. Sienna does.”

Richard brought over a delicate pearl bracelet. Every pearl was round and glossy, carefully matched.

He held it out to me.

“Elara, yesterday was my fault. I brought you…”

I did not even look at it before tossing it back at him.

“Don’t give me things like this. Who knows? Maybe one day Sienna will cry again and say I stole it from her.”

Callum came to me holding two hand-carved wooden dolls.

His hands were covered in fresh cuts from the carving knife.

“Elara, you always wanted me to carve you a pair of wooden dolls. I finished them.”

I took them and threw them straight into the fire where our fish was roasting.

Then I rolled my eyes at him, feeling only that these people were out of their minds.

“You remembered wrong. On your birthday, I carved a wooden doll for you with my own hands. Then Sienna

said it looked tacky, and you threw it into the fire”

I watched their faces twist with pain one after another

Holding Rowan’s hand, I found the sight strangely entertaining

So they could feel hurt too

How rare

From that day on, the three of them only dared to watch me from far away.

Not one of them dared come close.

I was happy with that.

On the seventh day after I married Rowan, Sienna came.

Her eyes were red like a rabbit’s, and Evelyn pushed her forward to stand before Patriarch Graham.

“Patriarch Graham, let us give the Guardian a new bride,” Evelyn pleaded. “Sienna is our daughter too. Can

you let Elara come home with us?”

At the time, I was eating walnuts Rowan had shelled for me.

When I glanced at Sienna, I only found it amusing.

I did not expect Sienna to notice.

Instead of looking at me, she moved in front of Rowan and cried pitifully.

“Elara, I was wrong. I’m willing to marry the Mountain Guardian. Please don’t be angry anymore. Go home

with my parents.”

“I’ll give back everything you gave me. I’ll never fight you for anything again.”

By now, Sienna’s reputation was ruined.

Whenever she went out and ran into former followers, they pointed at her and whispered, calling her

shameless, a parasite, a walking disaster.

She had originally thought that my marriage to the Mountain Guardian would be some horrible sacrifice, the kind of backward ritual people whispered about.

She had never expected the Mountain Guardian to be such a handsome boy.

The moment Sienna saw Rowan, she fell for him.

She turned her best angle toward him, tears rolling prettily down her cheeks, clearly trying to stir his pity

“Lord Guardian,” she said softly, “please let Elara go She and Callum truly love each other.”

I picked up the fruit plate beside Rowan and threw it at her.

Watching pain wipe the act off her face made me happy.

“Why did you stop performing?”

“Don’t you love stealing what belongs to me? Go on, then. Try stealing this too.”

Rowan took out a handkerchief and gently wiped my hand, then wrapped an arm around me in comfort

“She can’t take me,” he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous chill. “And if she bothers you, we’ll have her

removed.”

With one look from Rowan, someone immediately understood and escorted Sienna out.

Richard, Evelyn, and Callum were sent out with her.

Patriarch Graham then gave an order: from that day forward, my parents’s branch of the Sutton family would

no longer be allowed into the mountains.

They were no longer welcome at Founder’s Day or any covenant rite.

In practice, it meant they had been expelled from the Sutton family.

Without them around, I felt perfectly at ease.

Without support from the senior Sutton line, my parents’s business soon began to decline.

They no longer had time to harass me.

All their energy went into trying to save their work.

After Callum returned home, he discovered that the Whitaker family’s business was shrinking too. Companies that had once worked closely with them began to pull away one after another.

The families of the groomsmen who had attended Callum’s “wedding” were also pressured, and Nolan Pierce’s family suffered the worst of it.

After investigating again and again, they finally realized there was a powerful hand behind it all.

A hand with the Sutton name.

Patriarch Graham and the others never told me about these things.

Every day, we wandered through the preserve at an easy pace.

Life was quiet and peaceful.

And I thought, a whole lifetime like this would not be bad at all.