The Cursed Alpha's Substitute Bride

I woke up screaming.

Not the quiet kind of waking. The full, tearing kind, the kind that rips you out of sleep with your heart slamming so hard you can feel it in your head.

I sat straight up in bed at three in the morning with my hands pressed to my neck and for two seconds I did not know where I was.

The dream was already dissolving the way they always did - edges first, then the middle but what stayed was my father's face.

My father's face? Why? How was that possible?

And it was close. Too close. The way it had never been in real life because he couldn't look at me directly.

In the dream he had looked at me. Full, direct, nothing averted. And he had been smiling.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and breathed and told myself it was over but my hands were still shaking so I pressed them flat on the mattress and breathed harder.

The connecting door creaked opened.

I spun around and saw Caius standing in the doorway in dark clothes, no boots, the curse markings livid in the dim light, and he was looking at me with an intensity that said he had been awake already - or that the mark had woken him the same way it had jolted me.

"What is the matter?" He asked in a deep voice.

"I'm fine, it's nothing" I replied immediately.

"You were screaming," he said.

"I said I'm fine don't worry about it.

"He didn't leave. He still stood in the doorway with his arms at his sides while I sat on the bed with my shaking hands pressed to the mattress and we looked at each other and neither of us said anything for long enough that the silence became its own kind of conversation.

Then he fully entered the room and crossed over closer to me, pulled the chair from the corner, and sat in it three feet from the bed.

He didn't say a word. He did not touch me neither did he offer comfort in words because I think he understood, somehow, that I would refuse it and we would both feel worse.

He just sat there and looked me dead in the eye with zero emotion.

I just sat on the bed, swearing and starinh at the wall wondering why I had this nightmare. My breathing slowed. The shaking in my hands eased.

"He tested me when I was four," I finally said.

I hadn't planned to say it. It just came out raw, no preparation. "He held a cursed candle near my crib and when it went out, he spent fifteen years after that making sure I thought I was worthless."

Caius said nothing. He just kept mute glancing at me.

"I used to think he just didn't care," I continued. "That would have been easier. If he just didn't care. But he was afraid. He looked at his four-year-old daughter and felt afraid. And that is- "

My voice broke.

I hated that. I pressed my lips together and refused to let anything else out and stared at

the wall until the burn behind my eyes receded.

"That is worse," Caius finally said quietly.

"You're right. It's worse."

That was all. He didn't try to fix it or frame it or make it mean something bearable. He

just confirmed it was as bad as it felt.

I don't know why that helped. But it did. He stayed in the chair with his head up and arms folded into each other until I fell back asleep.

When I eventually woke up at dawn, the chair was empty and the connecting door was closed.

But on the small table beside my bed - placed quietly, sometime in the dark was a cup of water and a lit candle.

Not a cursed one. Just light. Just the ordinary kind, burning steady and calm.

I stared at it for some time trying to bury myself in the flame before I got up.