Helanie:
"So, will you marry me, please?" he asked this time, since I took a little longer to answer than he must have expected. The fact that a smile spread across his lips made me chuckle sarcastically.
Did he really think I was still the Helanie who would start celebrating just because he finally proposed?
That used to be all I cared about. I’d wait for him to pop the question — and he knew it. There were times he even hinted at it just to get me excited and then crush my hopes. He used to enjoy playing with my feelings.
I raised an eyebrow and stepped back to get a good look at his whole body.
"Oh my goddess!" Larissa screamed from behind me. My stepbrother gasped, and my father — who had just entered the house — looked so proud and happy.
What the hell!
"No!" I hissed, and immediately heard more gasps and some people swearing under their breath.
"Please, I want you to be my mate. Helanie, let me make things right for what I did wrong," Altan continued. My father rushed to my side and grabbed my arm, but I pulled away quickly.
"Say yes — he’ll help you fix your reputation," my father whispered to me, and I turned away from him with a disgusted look.
"Really? What reputation? I never lost any. As long as I can look at myself in the mirror and be proud of who I am, I don’t see anything wrong with my reputation," I muttered angrily. I was surprised at how stunned my father looked every time I responded to him with even a bit of firmness.
"As for you," I turned to Altan, "I’m not something you can fix. I’m fine. I don’t need an alpha to live my life, and marriage is definitely not the solution to my problems. Justice is," I hissed, reminding him not to sink any lower than he already had.
"Ahhh! Stupidity stays with you no matter how many academies you attend," my father said with a dismissive wave of his hand. My stepmother came closer to Altan, staring at his face.
"I just want to know why you want to marry her. Is beauty all that men care about? I’ve seen her friends come around, and that Alpha Penn — he’s such a handsome boy, and he looked at her with those dreamy eyes—"
As my stepmother kept rambling about the men in my life treating me well, I noticed Altan react a little differently at the mention of Penn.
"Alpha Penn? Didn’t he used to be friends with those rapists? I don’t think you should be hanging around him,"
The audacity of Altan to try and tell me who I should or shouldn’t be around made me laugh out loud. The whole room went silent, and my stepmother grimaced.
"Why does everyone want her, while I had to marry an omega — and a useless one too?" she complained, as if she wasn’t the one who’d been sleeping with a married man for years.
"Altan. Kindly leave," I said, pointing at the door.
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