Page 138 of Deceit

“Hi, baby? Hi, baby. Is that really all you have to say to me? Ronan, what the fuck! One minute you were by my side, the next you were gone. I couldn’t reach you. I couldn’t see you. I was convinced you didn’t want to be with me, or you fell in love with someone else. Something! Anything, to explain why the fuck my boyfriend who professes his love daily would disappear on me like that?”

Shit. She’s torn into Griggs, me, and now Ronan all before ten in the morning. Liam better watch his back, the princess is on a warpath.

“Never, baby. You’re my everything. I just, I need to tell you some things and I’ve been fucking dreading it. I wanted to wait until the last possible minute because I didn’t want you to sit here and waste away worrying, but I couldn’t continue not being honest with you…” he says, trailing off with a shake of his head.

“Can you sit down?” he asks.

She nods, taking a seat on the couch opposite of him. Vincent takes his seat beside her, a possessive hand latched around her thigh as Ronan takes a seat on the coffee table. I sit in the armchair, in perfect view of Skyla and Ronan while Liam plops down onto the other couch.

“So, tomorrow,” Ronan begins, “Is your commitment ceremony. None of you have ever attended one, though, right?”

We all shake our heads as Ronan runs a hand through his hair.

“Traditionally, it occurs after the wedding, at midnight specifically. Though, yours has been moved up to before the wedding.”

“Yeah, we know. Get to the point,” I say.

Ronan cuts me an irritated look before turning back to Skyla.

“It’s so important that you’re a virgin on your wedding night, or in this case on your ceremony night, because there will be a doctor to verify before the ritual.”

“Ritual?” Skyla echoes.

He nods.

“It’s custom that when an Elder or Legacy takes a bride, he…deflowers her before all the Elders.”

“Deflowers?” Liam asks with a screwed up face, as Skyla’s face pales and my stomach twists.

“L-like sex?” she stutters. “In front of everyone?”

Ronan nods as she shakes her head.

“I can’t do that. I won’t do that. That’s so…disgusting! Humiliating. Embarrassing. In front of my dad?! In front of Asher’s?” she asks, her panicked eyes coming to me as if to ask, ‘Did you know about this?’. I shake my head as I continue staring at Ronan in disbelief.

“Once the…task,” he grits between clenched teeth, “has been performed, Asher will take the bloodied sheet before completing the next step. You’ll be able to go home after that. The next day you’ll be expected to move into your home, together.”

“We don’t have a home yet,” Skyla says.

“Actually, we do,” I say.

She whips around to look at me with a confused gaze.

“My father gifted it to me when he announced our official engagement,” I say, pulling out my keys and lifting up the one that goes to our new house.

“It’s not decorated yet, I wanted to leave it blank for you, so that you could make it your own,” I say with a shrug.

At least that’s the version that I go with. Truth is, it was fully decorated. I paid someone to furnish it when school began. Since that night at my father’s, the night she took care of me, I had every single piece removed and returned. She has lost so much freedom, so much say, even more than me. I wanted her to be able to control one piece of her life, at the very least.

“That was nice of you,” she says, though her voice is devoid of any emotion as she stares at her hands.

Her throat swallows roughly as she looks up to Ronan, tears brimming her eyes in a way that aches my fucking heart.

“I have to do this? There isn’t another way?”

Ronan shakes his head sadly.

“I’m sorry, baby.”

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