The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 414

Liora’s POV

My stomach sank as I heard those words.

“I could hardly keep a straight face all through dinner,” Callum’s mother said. “Seeing her sit there in my gown like she had any business wearing it.”

A soft clink of crystal followed. His father’s voice, flat and dry, responded: “What possessed you to give it to her in the first place?”

“Because it made her feel special.” There was a particular quality to the way she said it. Like the word special had quotation marks around it. “Lowborn girls always light up when you give them something expensive. Like a magpie going after something shiny.”

I stared down at the dress. Of course she thought that. I was a fool for thinking that giving me this dress and jewelry was anything other than a thinly veiled attempt to humiliate me.

“It’s almost funny,” she went on. “The dress, the jewelry, sitting at my table like she could ever be one of us.” A pause came after that, followed by a short, quiet laugh. “When I gave her the jewelry, she looked at it like she had never seen real diamonds before in her life.”

“She probably hasn’t,” his father said simply.

“I’m sure she thought she looked beautiful.” Another pause, and the sound of liquid being poured. “I suppose it’s not her fault that it just looked… sad.”

I pressed my back against the wall, keeping very still. Down the hall, I could hear Callum and Zane still arguing in the library, their voices a distant murmur. Neither of them knew I had gone, it seemed. I probably should have gone back, but I couldn’t seem to move.

“She has no wolf,” his father was saying now. “She’s nobody. Some wolfless girl Callum’s taken a fancy to because she batted her eyes at him.”

“It won’t last,” his mother said, and I could hear the smile in her words. “He’ll come to his senses and leave the little wolfless wretch. Marry Bianca like we planned.”

Wolfless wretch. I had been called a lot of things over the past year. These things were hardly new. But something about hearing it said so casually, in that tone, in this house, while I was still wearing her dress and her jewelry…

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