As they hurried me toward the enormous Estate ahead, one of the black shoes I had been given suddenly slipped from my foot and fell onto the pavement behind me.
I instinctively stopped and turned around, wanting to retrieve it, but before I could even bend down, the guard holding my arm pulled me forward again.
“Leave it.” I stared at him in disbelief before glancing back at the abandoned shoe.
“Could you at least let me get it?” The two guards exchanged a brief glance, and one of them gave me a cold look that immediately made me regret asking.
“Who do you think you are to make demands here?” His words silenced me.
I lowered my gaze and continued walking, leaving the shoe behind as the cold pavement pressed against my exposed foot.
With every step, I became increasingly aware of just how vulnerable I was.
I had arrived in the capital as a bride, yet no one was treating me like one.
There were no welcoming words, no gentle attendants waiting to receive me, and certainly no one concerned about whether I was comfortable.
I wasn’t being welcomed into the Estate.
I was being delivered to it.
For the first time since leaving the Mills Estate, I truly understood how powerless I was.
I wasn’t being treated like a daughter, a bride, or even a person with the right to make her own decisions.
I was simply the substitute woman who had been sent to take another person’s place, and until Sylvia awakened, my only purpose was apparently to fulfill whatever demands the Supreme Alpha placed upon me.
I hated the feeling more than I could put into words.
I hated the weakness in my body, the pain that followed every step, and the fact that I couldn’t even stop to retrieve my own shoe without being reminded that I had no authority here.
Most of all, I hated being in a position where I couldn’t protect myself or make even the smallest decision about what happened to my own life.
We eventually reached the inner corridors of the Estate, and the sheer size of the place left me momentarily speechless.
The corridors seemed endless, branching into one passage after another as the guards continued leading me deeper into the palace.
I had no idea where they were taking me, and with every turn, I became increasingly disoriented until we finally stopped in front of a large wooden door.
One of the guards pushed it open and shoved me inside before immediately pulling the door shut behind me.
I stumbled forward and quickly turned around, reaching for the doorknob in an attempt to open it, but the moment I pulled, I realized it had been locked from the outside.
“Wait!” I struck the door with my palm, but no one answered.
Then, from somewhere within the darkness behind me, a cold voice suddenly broke the silence.
“You have arrived.” My entire body stiffened.
I slowly turned around, my eyes searching the darkness for the person who had spoken, but I couldn’t see anything.
The room was completely dark, leaving me unable to determine where the voice had come from or whether anyone else was inside.
There was something terrifying about standing in a dark room without knowing where the person in front of me was.
I couldn’t see him or predict his movements, and I couldn’t even tell whether he was standing across the room or somewhere much closer.
“I…
I’m not Sylvia,” I finally managed to say, my voice trembling despite my efforts to remain calm.
“My name is Frida.
I wasn’t the woman who was supposed to come here.
There has been a mistake.” For several seconds, there was nothing but silence.
Then his voice came up again, calm and frighteningly certain.
“You are the one I wanted.” A chill traveled down my spine.
I barely had time to process his words before something moved through the darkness.
A hand suddenly clamped around my neck, and I gasped as my hands flew toward the fingers tightening around my throat.
I struggled to breathe, but I still couldn’t see his face.
Not knowing who was holding me or where he was standing made the situation even more terrifying.
“But…
didn’t you say it was Sylvia?” I managed to choke out.
“Wasn’t she the one you wanted?” His grip tightened slightly.
“Your car caused an accident.” I froze.
“My car?” The words barely made sense.
“What car?” Before I could ask anything else, the lights suddenly flickered on.
The brightness was so intense that I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut and raised one hand to shield them while my vision slowly adjusted to the sudden change.
“What…?” I cautiously opened my eyes.
The room gradually came into focus, and the first thing I saw was the man standing before me.
He was tall and imposing, dressed entirely in black, with an expression so cold and unreadable that I immediately understood why people spoke about him with fear.
There was something commanding about his presence, as though he was accustomed to being obeyed without question.
Before I could properly take in his appearance, however, his hand released my neck only to seize my arm and shove me backward.
I stumbled onto the bed, and then I felt something beneath me.
Something cold.
Extremely cold.
My body stiffened as I slowly turned my head toward the other side of the bed.
A woman was lying there.
She wasn’t moving.
Her skin was pale, and when my trembling fingers accidentally brushed against her arm, an icy chill ran through me.
She wasn’t simply cold from being in a cool room.
She was ice-cold.
My heart lurched as I scrambled backward across the bed, staring at the motionless woman in horror.
A scream tore from my throat before I could stop it, my voice echoing through the room as I stared at the woman lying completely still before me.
For one terrifying moment, I couldn’t tell whether she was unconscious…
Or dead.