Page 106 of Cruel Deception

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I looked at the door one last time.

This man was about to chain me like a dog.

I ran.

I bolted toward the door and threw it open, sprinting down the hall—but I didn’t see the stone in my path.

I slammed into it and fell hard. My head cracked against the ground, pain exploded across my skull, and before I could rise—he was already there.

Cassian towered over me.

He dragged me up like I weighed nothing, and his hand wrapped tightly around my throat.

So tight I couldn’t breathe.

“You really think—in your small, fragile mind—you can run from me?”

My vision blurred.

I tried to speak, to beg, to breathe.

Nothing.

I saw death in his eyes.

When he finally let go, I collapsed, coughing, choking, wheezing for air.

“Inside,” he ordered.

I obeyed.

I crawled back to the center of the room like the thing he now believed I was.

He crouched in front of me, locked the chains around both my ankles. The clink of metal echoed like a funeral bell.

“These will remind you of your place. Not a wife. A slave. Not a partner. A prisoner. My prisoner.”

He locked the chains.

“You will walk around this house in chains,” he hissed, “just like your mother made mine walk in chains in her husband’s house.”

I froze.

My mouth parted.

What?

“My mother made your mother... walk in chains?”

That didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

“How? When? Where? That’s not possible. My mom—she always lived with us. Then one day, she disappeared.”

I blinked.

Maybe Cassian was telling the truth.

Maybe I didn’t know anything at all.

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