Page 14 of Married to the Beast

BEAR

As the luxury hovercoach he’d rented for the ceremony drove them soundlessly through the city, Bear wondered when would be a good time to tell his new bride he was going to disavow her and end the Joining after his business on Karpsian Sigma was concluded. It seemed cruel to tell her right now, after the ceremony was barely over—but it also seemed cruel to wait and let her think that he was going to keep her with him always.

He wished that he would have checked more closely into the customs and culture of Karpsian Sigma before agreeing to this Joining. But he’d been too busy pouring over the details of the trade agreement, which he had considered to be the most important part of his trip here. The short-lived Joining was supposed to take a backseat to the business he had to conduct.

But the more he got to know Aleena, the more she felt important to him. He felt especially protective of her after seeing the way her own family treated her. Her father seemed nice enough—well, except for giving him permission to beat her which was unthinkable. But her stepmother and the half-sister were awful. The less he saw of them, the better, Bear thought.

Well, he wouldn’t be on Karpsian Sigma for long, he reminded himself. So he didn’t really have to worry about his in-laws. And he would just have to be certain that Aleena was well taken care of when he left.

That shouldn’t be a problem since Commander Sylvan had given him an almost unlimited line of credit. He could buy the house he had rented and put it in her name and make sure she had some kind of allowance to live on. He would make certain she was independently wealthy and didn’t have to rely on her awful family after he went away, Bear promised himself.

In the meantime, he decided to keep the news that he was planning to end their Joining to himself. It seemed cruel to bring it up now, right after the ceremony had just taken place. He would find a better time to talk about it later.

He just hoped Aleena wouldn’t be too upset when he told her he planned to disavow her.

7

BEAR

“Well this is it—I hope you like it,” Bear said, as they stepped into the palatial mansion he had rented to live in. It was probably bigger than what they needed, but he had wanted to make a statement about how the Kindred could afford to deal with the Karpsian Sigma government even in the highest capacity.

Aleena looked around, her pale purple eyes growing wider and wider. As they had been driving in the hovercoach, she had mentioned that they were getting into the richer and more exclusive part of the city but she seemed surprised that she was actually going tolivehere.

“This area is even nicer than the neighborhood where my father’s house is located,” she’d remarked. “Muchnicer.”

“Is it?” Bear asked. “What about the place you live now? Or where you lived before we got Joined, anyway,” he added. He was curious about her and wanted to know her situation.

“Oh, I lived with my mother,” she explained. “She’s in a very modest dwelling that my father bought her after he disavowed her.”

“So men do that…they buy their wife a house after they disavow them?” Bear asked, feeling slightly relieved since that was what he was planning to do for Aleena.

She shook her head.

“Not always. Everyone always said that my father was too kind to my mother. After disavowing her, a husband has no further obligation to his wife. But he even sent her a monthly allowance for a time.”

“For a time?” Bear frowned. “You mean he doesn’t anymore?”

She shook her head and looked away.

“Not for some years now. Things have been…difficult at home. I wanted to get a job but there aren’t many occupations a female can do and…and still remain respectable, if you know what I mean.”

She looked up at him quickly and then away again, biting her lower lip.

“I think I know,” Bear murmured. Karpsian Sigma clearly was one of those places where women were expected to stay home and care for the house and have children. The problem with such a society was that a female had almost no way to make a living if their husband died or left them—or simply stopped supporting them, as seemed to be the case with Aleena and her mother.

Sir Greggor must have paid the equivalent of child and spousal support after he disavowed Aleena’s mother but he had stopped that, leaving them little to nothing to live on, Bear guessed.

“Why did your father stop sending you money?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I think maybe my stepmother found out that he was sending it. It wasn’t that much—just enough to get by. But she gets angry when my father doesn’t concentrate all his wealth and attention on her and my half-sister.”

Then she seemed to think she had said the wrong thing because she quickly changed the subject.

“You know, this neighborhood is so exclusive I’ve only been here once before?” she said, gesturing out the tinted window of the hovercoach at the grand houses passing by. “It was a long time ago when I was little. One of the girls in my class was very rich and she invited me to her nameday party. It was so exciting!”

“I hope you’ll like the house I picked out,” Bear had said, truly meaning it.

And now, watching her as they stepped into the mansion and looked around, it seemed that shedidlike it very much. The thought gave him a warm glow of satisfaction.

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