She Stole My Seventh Beast, I Smiled Chapter 08

She Stole My Seventh Beast, I Smiled Chapter 08

The next day was my eighteenth birthday, and the day Raymond and I were finally supposed to

bond.

By that same morning, the Vance family’s collapse was all anyone in Alveria could talk about.

The houses, the cars, the company-all of it, liquidated and transferred to me.

My parents went from the untouchable Mr. and Mrs. Vance to having absolutely nothing.

They moved out of the estate and into a run-down apartment on the rough side of town. They had to scramble for work, and they learned fast how people treat you when you have nothing left.

They came to me more than once, begging for money, playing the family card.

Every time, I had the bodyguards turn them away. I was done forgiving.

What they’d done to me didn’t come with an expiration date. The money was the smallest part of what they owed me, and I took it without a second thought.

As for Chloe and Brandon, what happened to them was far worse.

Brandon was punished for the part he’d played. The beastmen broke his legs and stripped him of his

inner beast.

He’d never bond with anyone again. He ended up on the streets, begging to survive.

There was a time when women fought over him.

Now he wore rags, half-starved, swallowing the same contempt he’d once dished out.

He’d let Chloe use him, and this was where it had gotten him.

Chloe had it worse.

They sent her to the Beast Kingdom’s penal colony.

Targeting a beastman’s bonding partner was already a serious charge. Attempting to kill the Beast King’s son’s future mate made it a capital offense.

They stripped her of every privilege and sentenced her to hard labor in the kingdom’s most remote mining camp, for life.

Nothing out there but rock, dust, and sky that seemed to go on forever.

Ten hours of hauling stone every day. Stale bread she could barely choke down. A shack that let in

the wind and the rain.

A girl who’d never lifted a finger in her life didn’t take long to break.

Within weeks, she was nothing but skin and bone. Her hair went brittle and dull. Her hands were

raw with blisters and calluses, her face caked in grime.

She looked exactly like the kind of person she’d always sneered at.

News filtered back through Raymond’s men. Chloe had been beaten by the overseers for falling

behind.

The other laborers bullied her. She couldn’t even get a full meal. Every day was nothing but pain.

I heard all of it and felt nothing.

She’d built this ending herself.

Every ounce of arrogance she’d worn like armor, she was paying for now, and the price finally matched the cruelty.

Then came the beastmen-all seven of them. Once they heard what had happened to Chloe and the

Vances, they came crawling back.

Every single one wore the same pathetic, sorry look. They begged for a second chance, swore it was all Chloe’s fault. She’d manipulated them, they’d been stupid, they never should have left.

I turned them all away.

They’d folded for a pretty face and a few sweet words. They’d betrayed me without a second thought, stood by while Chloe tormented me, and some of them had even laughed along.

Men like that weren’t worth a second of my time, much less my life.

I wouldn’t have looked back even if they’d been the last men on earth.

I had Raymond. That was more than enough.

He’d stood by me when I had nothing. He’d played the long game to protect me, never wavering, never letting go.

He loved me like I was the most precious thing in his world. And he was the only one I’d ever

choose.