Zero Affection Behind His Vows Chapter 08

Zero Affection Behind His Vows Chapter 08 Six Years Caged

crowd muttered among themselves, some of it sympathy, some of it doubt, and plenty of it just appetite for a scene.

I pulled a dried sinew cord out from inside my robe.

A small polished piece of shell hung off the end, packed edge to edge with dozens of pressed claw prints.

“Six years ago, I broke a plague in the northern clans, and this is what they gave me. Five clans up and down that river came down with the redcough, and half of them died. I boiled herbs for 40 days straight. Everybody who lived pressed a claw into that shell and had it carried to me.

“They told me to stay and be their healer, said I could pick any land I wanted. I walked away from it.”

I dug out the second thing, a whitebelly pelt folded square, the tips of the fur still holding a soft yellow.

Callum gave it to me when we first got together and told me it was the warmest hide in Goldmane territory.

I turned it over in my hands. “I walked away because the man I loved told me he’d keep me for the rest of my life. He said the world out here was too dangerous and I should stay next to him. He said he was enough.”

My voice stayed level. “And I believed him.

“For six years, I turned away everybody who came looking for me, cut off every healer friend I had, and lived inside the patch of ground he drew for me. Ten days ago, he knelt at the fire and asked for the bond, and that was when it finally landed. That patch of ground was a pen, and he never once meant to let me out

of it.”

I raised my head and looked out at them. “He never loved me.”

The crowd came apart all at once.

“So the bond was a lie? Six years of it was an act?”

“Six years. That’s horrifying.”

“Where’s the lion king? Nothing to say for himself?”

“And when exactly did Clara come into this?”

The muttering turned into open argument. Some of them pushed forward, and others turned to watch the road into the market.

I let all of it run and kept going. “People are asking why I’m only saying this now. Four days ago, somebody told me I had ten days left.

“Three days ago, somebody held a claw against my neck and demanded to know where another female was. Two days ago, I was lying in my own blood, and he ran off to comfort her without looking back once.”

I reached up, unwound the hide from my throat, and showed them the three scabbed claw marks underneath. “I’ll carry these scars for life. I don’t regret them. They taught me one thing worth knowing.”

I paused and gave it to them one word at a time. “Loving yourself matters a thousand times more than

ating for somebody else to do it.”

More of them kept crowding into the market.

Somebody in the crowd crouched down and dragged a hand across their face, somebody else swore out loud, and a few of them put their heads together and started digging up old business.

One of them said he’d seen Callum and Clara walking side by side out here last year.

The talk came in from every direction like the night wind off the plain, and it kept building.

Then a heavy run of hoofbeats came in from the edge of the market.

Callum walked out of the middle of the pride with his mane wild and his face like stone. “Wren Frost! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

He reached to grab me. I turned out of the way and pitched my voice at the crowd. “There he is. Callum, why don’t you explain something to everybody standing here. Why were you kissing another female while I was bleeding out on a floor?”

Callum locked up where he stood and took in the wall of eyes around him. His jaw moved, but he had nothing to say.

The crowd was still boiling, and the talk churned up like a pot left on the fire too long.

A few of the younger beastkin had their sleeves shoved up and were forcing their way to the front.

A fox female selling pelts hauled one of them back by the arm. “Don’t. Can’t you see the pride is here?”

The pride had already started clearing people out.

The young ones swore the whole way back as they were shoved off, and the two on the grass roof jumped down and vanished.

The crowd split apart like ice under a thrown stone, but nobody actually went far. They gathered at the edges of the market and craned their necks toward us.

That left the slate with only Callum and me standing in front of it.

Callum stood over me breathing hard, and his eyes were shot through with red. “Satisfied? You tore the pride’s name apart in front of everybody. Are you satisfied?”

“Not even close,” I said, watching him. “This is where it starts. Callum, do you know what I regret most out of those six years?”

He stared at me.

“It isn’t that I trusted you. It’s that the day I found out the truth, I didn’t slap myself awake and walk out without looking back.”

I turned toward the lodge and stopped one step short of the door. “For the next five days, I don’t want to see you. Five days from now, if I’m still alive…”

Tik Tok Happy vibes turning moments into memories.

I looked back at him and smiled. “I’ll take all of this to every clan on the plain. How much of your standing

tele the pride do you think survives that? Will anybody out there ever take the lion king at his word again?”

He staggered back a step and caught hold of a cart frame to stay on his feet.