Page 299 of Untamed

My chest tightens, and tears fall endlessly down my cheeks. “You don’t have to do this.”

“But I do.” His smile is thin and vacant. “Because pain is the only language he understands. And when he sees you in white, wearing my ring, taking my name… it’ll break him in all the right places.”

I shake my head, swallowing against the ever-growing lump in my throat and whisper, “You’re sick.”

He leans in, brushing his fingers over my cheek, and I flinch. “I’m in love,” he murmurs. “And love makes men do terrible things.”

Then he turns, pausing at the doorway. “Forty minutes. Be ready, or I’ll start breaking his bones for every minute you make me wait.”

The door clicks shut behind him.

And I crumble to the floor, gasping for breath, because I know he means it. Ares is still on the other side of this house, broken and bleeding… and about to be forced to watch me marry the man who’s destroying us both.

I can’t tell you how long I sit there, curled on the cold wooden floor with my arms wrapped around my knees, my body wracked with silent sobs. Time feels warped, stretched thin by dread and helplessness.

A soft knock breaks through the fog. The door opens, and two women enter without a word, silent shadows in floral dresses. One carries a garment bag, the other a silver tray laid with makeup, perfume, and hairpins. Their faces are unreadable, evidently trained for this. For obedience. For dressing up girls like me for men like him.

I don’t move. I don’t look at them. But they come anyway.

One kneels beside me and gently takes my arm. Her touch is surprisingly careful, as if she knows that if she grips too hard, I’ll fall apart.

“I don’t want this,” I whisper, my voice hoarse and broken. “Please… I don’t want this.”

They don’t respond. They just help me up, guiding me toward the vanity like I’m sleepwalking. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, red-rimmed eyes, swollen lips, tangled hair, and I barely recognise the girl staring back.

A girl who whispered forever into the mouth of the man she loves… only to be dragged away like a sacrifice.

One of women begins brushing out my hair while the other dabs at my face with a sponge, trying to cover the devastation. But I can’t stop crying. The tears won’t stop. Every time they wipe them away, new ones fall, blurring the powder, ruining the foundation. My shoulders tremble, my chest tightens with every breath I try to take.

The woman doing my makeup lets out a soft sigh and turns slightly toward the other, murmuring under her breath in Italian,“Povera ragazza… non riesco nemmeno a truccarla. Non smette di piangere.”Poor girl… I can’t even do her makeup. She won’t stop crying.

I hear it. I understand enough.

But I don’t look up. I can’t. My hands are clenched in my lap, white-knuckled, nails digging into my palms to stop the shaking. The other woman offers a quiet reply I can’t make out, and they both fall silent again... only the soft sound of a brush moving through my hair filling the room.

I want to scream. I want to run. I want to beg them for help. But I do nothing. Instead, I sit here and cry while they try to make me beautiful for a nightmare I can’t wake up from.

The woman doing my makeup keeps working—foundation, powder, blush—as if she can paint over pain.

Hot tears spill down my cheeks again, blurring the fresh layer of makeup she just finished applying. I lift a trembling hand, my voice breaking.

“Enough,” I whisper. “Please… just stop.”

The women freeze, brushes mid-air. I force myself to look up at the one holding the sponge, her expression soft but unreadable.

“I don’t want to look pretty for him,” I say, voice thick with rage and grief. “I want him to see me exactly like this. I want that bastard to remember the devastation in my eyes every time he thinks about this day. I want him to see what he ruined.”

My throat tightens as silence settles heavy in the room. Neither of them moves. And maybe they understand… because they don’t try again.

They just let me sit there, shaking, broken, and still covered in the ruins of everything he’s about to steal.

And maybe that’s the cruellest part. Because there’s no comfort here. No hope.

Only silence… and the slow, deliberate preparation for the worst day of my life.

The dress is slipped over my shoulders. White silk, delicate lace, like a lie draped in beauty. My hands shake so hard I can barely fasten the clasps. My body may be dressed like a bride, but I’ve never felt more like a prisoner.

I press my palm to my stomach, to the place where new life quietly grows… a fragile secret that belongs only to Ares and me. A small, unseen piece of him that I will guard with everything I have...until the day we’re free to be together again.

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