The Alpha's Silent Bride: Seventh Time's The Charm novel Chapter 12

Chapter 12: 012: Meeting The Mistress

~ ROSELLE ~

Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire.

The word tears through my throat so violently, as the fire won’t stop and keeps expanding from the lantern. I had expected it to be like the usual time, just the way it always caught when I lit it every night before Father would pull me onto his lap and tell me stories until my eyes grew heavy with sleep.

Instead, this time, it’s expanding through the curtains, climbing the walls, and I’m standing in the middle of Father’s study watching it happen, and my legs won’t move and my voice is...

Dad.

I’m screaming. I can hear myself screaming, my voice as loud as a quake, bouncing off walls that are already beginning to blacken at the edges. I reach for him — he’s at his desk, slumped forward, and when he lifts his head, his eyes are wrong, bloodshot as though he is ill.

"Dad. Dad. DAD."

I keep screaming his name. My hands are shaking so badly I can barely see them through the smoke and the heat and the way my vision keeps blurring at the edges because I’m crying, I’m crying and screaming and reaching and he’s right there.

He’s right there and he won’t move and he won’t...

The door suddenly bursts open behind me. Beta Noah, Warren’s father, his face masked with panic, grabs me tightly.

"No!"

I fight him, kicking and thrashing. My arms stretch forward, reaching for Father, who is finally moving now, finally, finally pushing himself up from the desk, trying to stand, trying to get to the door, his legs barely holding him.

"Dad... DAD..."

Noah drags me backward through the doorway and the heat follows us out. My fingers grasp at empty burning air.

Father’s eyes find mine for a second across the smoke and the flames. His bloodshot eyes lock onto my face and something moves through them, and suddenly the explosion swallows everything.

The force of it throws us backward, Noah’s grip the only thing keeping me upright, and the sound of it is enormous and total, and then there is nothing.

"No!!!!" My voice screams his name into a silence that gives nothing back.

’I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what the fire would do. I just lit the lantern. I always lit the lantern. That’s all I did. That’s all I did. I didn’t mean...’

Noah’s hand comes to my shoulder, and when I look up at him, tear-blinded, smoke-choked, six years old and completely destroyed, he looks down at me with those sober looks that tell me I’m finally an orphan.

No. I shake my head. I refuse to believe that he’s dead. I refuse... no, he’s not. No, this isn’t happening. He’s going to tell me my bedtime story again. It’s just one of those fictional stories he tells me, and I wish for a good ending instead of a sad one. No!!

My voice breaks on his name one final time.

"Dad—"

My eyes fly open, and Ronan’s face is the first thing I see. My chest is heaving, my hands are clenched around the blanket, and the room is dark and completely without fire, and I’m here, I’m here, I’m...

It’s a dream, it’s my usual dream. I sign before I’m even fully conscious.

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