Sold To The Cruel Pr Chapter 66: To Let Her Go

Chapter 66: To Let Her Go

Theron stared at Aveline, his hands trembling at his sides.

All night, his mind had run through a hundred terrible possibilities. He had imagined her hurt, cornered, broken. Worse. He had imagined the forest taking her from him before he could reach her.

And when he finally found her... She had thrown herself between him and one of those monsters.

She had protected it.

And then, as if that were not enough, she had looked at him and called herself a slave.

For a mont, his thoughts simply stopped.

He knew, even now, that he had crossed a line. The words he had thrown at her, that he had rescued her, taken vengeance for her, given her everything, had been ugly. Crass. Wrong. He knew that. He never did any of that to get sothing in return from her. He did it because he wanted to, and he turned it into sothing cheap.

But a slave?

Really?

Was that truly how she saw herself all this ti?

Every smile she had given him. Every ti she had leaned in... Every kiss...

Had she thought none of it was hers to choose? Had she believed she was only obeying him because she had to? That she owed him every soft glance, every quiet laugh, every trembling breath?

Was that why she had given away the silk dresses he had bought for her and kept only the plain ones? Because she was just a slave?

The deeper the thought sank in, the more it hurt.

His chest ached. His throat tightened. His whole body felt as though it had been struck hollow from the inside.

How could she think of him that way?

How could she think of herself that way?

To him, she had never been a possession. Never a purchase. Never sothing asured by coins or ownership.

She was everything.

Sothing so precious he would have knelt before her without question. Sothing he wanted beside him, not out of duty, but because the thought of her being anywhere else felt unbearable.

And yet she had looked at him and seen a master. She had seen soone who had bought her.

Everything between them... had reduced to that?

---

Aveline turned her face away.

She did not want to speak of it. Not now. Not ever, if she could help it.

She had buried that thought so deeply inside herself that she had almost convinced herself it no longer mattered.

Almost.

Then she had seen him and his n take the slave market with that terrible, perfect precision. The speed. The control. The brutal efficiency with which they had surrounded every buyer, every seller, every person complicit in that place.

And yet... that night...

He had been there. He had seen her dragged in. Seen her struggle. Seen her humiliation.

And he had stood at a distance, like the hero in so story too grand for her to understand, waiting until the mont was right.

Then he had bought her.

That was the part that kept gnawing at her.

He had done so much. More than she had asked for. More than she had ever expected.

But in the end, he had still bought her.

Like livestock.

Like property.

Like a slave.

And that was what had fractured everything.

Because deep down, he had thought buying her would be enough. He could have rescued her. Instead, he had chosen to own her.

-----

Theron looked at Aveline, his jaw tight, his face turned away just enough to hide the worst of what he was feeling.

Hamilton was still circling near her like a bizarre, overexcited goat, but Aveline was not even looking at it anymore. She stood there with her teeth clenched, her expression hard and wounded in a way that made her seem as though she hated everyone in sight.

"A slave?" Theron repeated, his voice rough.

Aveline stiffened, but she still would not look at him.

His temper flared. "When did I ever treat you like one? Where did that even co from?"

How could she say that to him?

How could she look at everything he had done and still reduce it to that?

Aveline pressed her lips together. He had never told her anything. He had explained nothing. And now he was acting as though she were the one who had misunderstood everything.

"I do not want anything from you," she said.

Only the dress she wore was his. And the stone.

She reached into her pocket to pull it out, the little glowing stone he had bought for her. Other stones she had picked up herself were there too, those strange, shimring ones from the forest, but when her fingers searched for the one she ant, she could not find it.

Instead, there was only a dull, ugly-looking stone in her palm.

Aveline frowned down at it.

That was not right.

That was not the one.

The stone in her hand glowed brightest of all, catching the firelight in a way that seed almost impossible.

Had she dropped the other one sowhere? Had she mistaken it?

She turned the stone over, searching for so sign she had rembered wrong. The glow was there. She saw it clearly. But it was not there anymore.

So why was Theron looking at her as though she were mad?

"Are you going to return everything I got for you?" he asked.

His tone made it sound as though that was exactly what she was doing.

Aveline blinked at him, confused all over again. She had only ant to show him the stone. Instead, she pulled it fully into view and held up the ugliest one she had found.

"Is this the stone you bought for ?" she asked.

Theron’s jaw clenched so tightly she could almost hear it. "What are you going to do with it?"

Aveline’s confusion deepened.

Was she losing her mind?

She was certain that stone had been glowing just monts ago.

She looked down at it again, squinting. "Was it the sa when you bought it?" she asked, still staring at the stone in her hand. "It was glowing."

But no one else seed to see it. No one else seed to understand what she ant.

What was happening to her?

Aveline’s fingers tightened around the stone. Then, unable to stand the sudden pressure in the air between them any longer, she tossed it back toward him.

"You can have it back," she said.

Theron caught it, stunned.

Now she was throwing things away as if none of it mattered? As if everything he had given her had ant nothing at all?

His chest tightened with a fresh wave of hurt and fury.

Aveline turned on her heel and ran.

She could not make sense of any of it. The whole world felt as though it were unraveling around her, thread by thread, and she had no footing left beneath her. She had nothing. No answers. No certainty. Not even the comfort of understanding her own thoughts.

Hamilton, not understanding why she had fled, turned and snarled at Theron before springing after her.

Theron stood there for one more beat, staring after her. She said she was not planning on escaping. And what was she doing now?

Then he muttered under his breath, "Run away all you want, Aveline. I won’t stop you! Who cares if so monster eats you?"

The words were bitter enough to taste.

But they did not feel true, not even to him. He turned and walked back toward the camp.

Kael looked up when he returned alone.

"Let us start moving," Theron said flatly.

If it had only been him and his n, they would already have reached Greenvale by now. Dragging her along had slowed everything, and now there was nothing left to show for it but distance, exhaustion, and a wound he could not na.

His eyes landed on the empty cages.

"What happened there?" he asked, his voice sharpening.

The knights bowed their heads.

"Sire," one said, "the Aurelion Lattice killed the monsters. They were already weakened."

Theron’s teeth clenched.

So that was it.

He was really going to return to Greenvale with nothing. No answer. No resolution. No monsters. No Aveline.

He had found her. And sohow... he had still lost her.

"Move," he said.

The command was tight, clipped, final.