The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 338

Liora’s POV

By the time I finished hitting the punching bag, it was late. My arms felt like jelly and my heart was pounding, and even then, I didn’t feel better.

If anything, I just felt worse.

During those brief moments with Callum, mixed up in a tangle of limbs and sweat on the training mat, things had felt almost… good. Like maybe, just maybe, a part of him was choosing me—regardless of duty, regardless of mistaken titles. He was choosing me.

But then, as if his conscience suddenly snapped back into place, he pushed me away and told me that we could never happen.

He told me that his parents threatened to hurt me if we got too close.

I wanted to believe him. And I did believe him. But a small part of me still felt betrayed by that confession; because it meant that, even though he clearly had feelings for me and his parents were being unreasonable, he still chose duty.

He still chose Bianca.

It stung more than I wanted to admit, serving as a bitter reminder of what we could never have, all because Callum was still so blindly bound to duty that he would choose the cruel and selfish Bianca and his hateful parents over what the Moon Goddess prepared for us.

I knew it shouldn’t matter to me, of course. I had made up my mind a long time ago that Callum and I would never work out.

Maybe that was why it hurt so much. Because, much like how Callum was a blind follower of duty, I could never fully run from the way his presence always set my heart on fire.

Especially not now. Not with the feeling of his mouth and hands on me still burning my skin, leaving behind paths of scars and bruised flesh that only I could see.

Still, I shook off the feelings, resolving to return to the training center as soon as I could tomorrow. I didn’t feel stronger quite yet, and my wolf was still quiet, but I refused to let go of hope.

Besides, imagining Bianca’s face—and now Callum’s and his parents’, admittedly—when I wailed on that punching bag was very therapeutic.

That made it slightly more terrifying.

Bianca looked at me for a moment longer, her eyes flicking up one side of my body and down the other. Then, she sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring and eyes darkening. Her nose wrinkled.

“You were with him.”

She took one step forward. I held my ground, even though my instincts told me to put some more distance between us. It pissed me off that a woman like this could cow me now, when I would have once squashed her beneath the heel of my boot like an insect, but I tried not to dwell on it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It was a lie, and we both knew it. Bianca’s eyes narrowed. Another step further. Her perfume became cloying in its intensity, like a thousand flowers all at once, all of them rotting. Sickly sweet and dizzying and completely out of place on a viper like her.