Fated To Three, And I Broke Them All

Verity:

I grabbed the mop and returned to the bedroom doorway, staring at him without saying anything.

”Which one of them took it?” he asked, the corner of his mouth curling into a taunting smile.

I bit my bottom lip.

I didn’t want to tell him anything about the Fox King.

”Which one do you think?” I asked instead, folding my arms across my chest.

”Has to be Theodore.”

The moment he said it, I nodded.

”You’re never wrong.”

Oswin chuckled to himself and shook his head.

”Remember, once this revenge is over, you’re going to cleanse yourself properly.” He paused. ”Anyway, we also need to do something about us. So hopefully this revenge thing will be finished soon.”

He slipped the words into the conversation so casually that, for a second, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.

What the fuck was he thinking about?

He moved from the bedroom to the living room just so he could sit there and watch me clean.

There were strange, unsettling things he did.

Sometimes, he would deliberately spill food and then tell me to clean it while he sat there watching.

That man was weird.

The sad part was that after my brother was gone, I started seeing a lot of people for who they really were.

A woman was never truly safe, no matter how bold, confident, or independent she was.

As long as she had a body, there would always be monsters who wanted to prey on it.

Sadly, that seemed to be the case with me.

I was well aware of Oswin’s intentions.

He wanted to maintain the facade of being a decent man who believed in doing the right thing, someone who supposedly didn’t want me showing my body around.

Yet at the same time, he found other ways to satisfy his twisted desires by behaving strangely around me.

Once I finished cleaning, I decided I would leave as quickly as possible.

Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy.

I had barely started putting the cleaning supplies away when Oswin suddenly got up and hurried toward me.

”You didn’t respond to me,” he said, standing so close that I felt trapped between him and the storeroom door.

”I don’t think you asked me a question,” I mumbled, trying to keep myself composed.

It wasn’t like we were truly in this mission together.

Yes, Oswin had played a huge part in it. He had helped me a lot, but I had never been completely honest with him. There were plenty of things I kept from him.

He could pretend that he cared about my brother, but that was the problem.

He cared about him.

Not about his sister.

Oswin acted as though taking care of me was some kind of duty because anything precious to my brother was supposed to be precious to him too.

But deep down, even he knew my brother would never have allowed him to speak to me the way he did.

”I was talking about us,” he reminded me.

I nodded as though the subject had simply slipped my mind.

”You don’t want to live like a slut forever, do you?”

My jaw clenched.

It was comments like that which bothered me the most.

”You know, after this revenge is over, you’re going to have to settle down. You’ll probably have to ask the Moon Goddess for forgiveness too, considering how badly you’ve used your body.”

He continued before I could respond.

”You’ll have to cleanse yourself. The way you walk around everywhere with your breasts bouncing, you know exactly how much they move. You’re aware of it, but you still do it deliberately. Right now, I understand because you have a purpose, but once this is all over, you can’t keep behaving like that.”

I kept my gaze lowered.

”And after all this, who’s going to accept you anyway?” he went on. ”You’ve already been beneath so many Alpha Kings. So, for my friend’s sake, I’ll accept you.”

I didn’t lift my head once.

I didn’t understand how Oswin could think of himself as some pure, decent man. He seemed to believe he was protective and honorable, yet the things that came out of his mouth were always so filthy.

His words made my skin crawl.

I didn’t even want to look at his face. The last thing I needed was to see it again in my nightmares.

”For now, I just hope everything keeps going the way it has been,” I said, deliberately changing the subject.

”Really? And how exactly has it been going?”

His voice dropped into something far too suggestive as he wrapped a strand of my hair around his finger.

”Pretty well. The brothers have really shaken Gigi’s confidence.”

It became difficult to speak as he tightened the strands around his finger and used them to tug me closer.

Then he leaned down and smelled my hair.

He wasn’t even listening to what I was saying.

”Anyway, I should go.”

I immediately pulled away from him.

”They could be back at any time. The brothers trust me a lot more now, so if I’m suddenly missing for too long, they’ll think it’s strange.”

I took another step away.

”Oh.” Oswin sounded disappointed. ”I was hoping you’d stay over. I really wanted someone to cuddle with.”

He paused.

”I mean, you. Just you.”

There it was.

His mask was slowly slipping.

No matter how hard he tried to present himself as the good guy, he was becoming less capable of hiding what he actually wanted.

”Oh, too bad. I can’t stay.” I moved toward the door. ”Anyway, we’ll keep in touch, and I’ll let you know what’s going on, okay?”

With that, I hurried out.

I didn’t look back even once.

Even though I always dressed modestly around him, wearing more layers than I normally would, there was still something deeply unsettling about spending time with him.

We barely even touched, yet somehow, being around him always made me feel filthy.

The moment I stepped outside, I realized I would probably need to shower two or three times before I could stop feeling the stain of his disgusting words on my skin.