Duke of the Beast and the Vicarious Bride - Chapter 21

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※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

Battling the instinct to flee even now, Fiona took one step, then another, slowly approaching her unknown husband. The beast’s continuous growling made it easy to pinpoint his location.

‘Well, they did say he had never harmed anyone.’

Fortunately, the presence in the darkness, for all its threatening noise, did not attack her. At the same time, a realization struck her.

‘He’s bound.’

As if to confirm her guess, at that moment the sound of chains dragging across the stone floor filled the chamber. If he was restrained, perhaps this was manageable. Fueled by a tiny spark of hope and confidence, Fiona took another step forward, like a tortoise.

Crawling for what felt like an age, she eventually reached what seemed to be the centre of the chamber. Her groping fingers encountered something hard—a metal pillar as thick as her own torso. Carefully feeling her way around it, she found a protruding ring at about waist height, and connected to it, the links of a heavy chain.

Fiona’s heart plummeted, then surged violently. The presence of chains meant her husband was within arm’s reach.

‘And now I have to mate with this man.’

Provided he did not swallow her whole or tear her limb from limb first. The sheer absurdity of her situation nearly made her laugh out loud. How had things come to this? The marriage had been far from ordinary from the start, but she had never imagined the wedding night itself would be such a complete disaster.

She had not expected a splendid bridal chamber, but she had at least assumed a normal space. Instead, this marriage had been shattering every convention she knew from beginning to end. Here she was, on a stone floor without so much as a blanket, about to couple with a beast-like man bound hand and foot.

An act devoid of love, blessing, or anything else—it was, literally, no different from mating. Unbidden, an image rose in her mind of pigs being forcibly bred. Should she count herself lucky that there were no labourers watching?

With bitter self-mockery, Fiona shook off her thoughts and, gripping the chains, shuffled forward. Complaining and agonising would not change the situation. She had to get this over with, now. Only then could she escape this terrible place and plan for the future. After all, they must have judged him capable of copulation, hence all their talk of an heir. It was a disgusting thought, but she had no choice but to think that way.

Alright. Close my eyes and get it done.

She had finally steeled herself, but the next question was how.

‘But how, exactly?’

Of course, she was not entirely ignorant of the act itself. The bridal training at the Count’s manor had covered the matter of the wedding night, and even without that, she had gathered the general principle from what she had seen and heard in the village. What she had not anticipated was having to perform the deed with a man bound in such a manner, and that was the crux of her difficulty.

In any case, to join together, she would need to draw close and press her body against his… Given that he neither rose to approach nor hindered her, it was clear he could not escape the chains. She was now close enough to feel his distinct presence, the heat radiating from him, even his breathing. The chains, pulled taut, told her plainly that the man was within arm’s reach.

Drawing one last deep breath, Fiona extended her trembling fingertips into the darkness. As expected, restraints hung at the end of the chains, and there…

‘Ugh, I touched him.’

The man’s wrist was firmly secured. After groping only cold stone and iron, the touch of warm flesh was profoundly strange. Every hair on her body rose as if she were a startled cat, and she snatched her hand back, her heart hammering as if she had touched something forbidden.

‘At least it is a human hand.’

One small mercy: the texture of the skin and the shape of the bones beneath her fingertips were unmistakably human. Patting her pounding heart, she crawled on her knees along the floor until she reached what she guessed was his side. That short distance had never felt so long.