by H. Q. Frost
I close my eyes and grit my teeth. This fucking asshole! Rage takes over and I jump up, shoving him so hard, his head hitting the window. I scramble for my clothes, ready to throw myself from the car just to get away from him.
"Magdelena!" his voice booms and he keeps trying to grab me. "Calm down!" He manages to restrain me after I get my pants back on. "Calm down!" he commands, looking into my face with so much anger it's like the connection I felt when he was inside me was made up in my head.
"Why do you want me to come back?" I ask feeling the emotions welling. "Why do you want me back?" I yell at him.
"Because you're my wife," he seethes. "Because you are meant to bear my male heir. Because we have a contract to fulfill." He lets my shoulders go and starts straightening his shirt as he moves away from me. "Because you're mine."
If only he meant that in the way I wish he did. Callum Carbon has many belongings. Some he cherishes, some he doesn't. But they are his and no one else will possess his belongings until he is done with them. Like me.
"Callum." My eyes fill with tears as I pull my shirt on.
"You need to put your legs up. Get on your back," he insists, checking his belt for a third time.
"Do you love me?" I whisper as the tears slip down my cheeks.
The man goes stiff enough that if I bounced a dime off him he'd shatter.
"You're a contract, Magdelena."
I nod as the tears spill and I lean back in the seat, shifting my gaze out the window, seeing the planes in the sky. We're close.
Talking is ceased and as we pull down the same path I once traveled with Lol, I smirk. At the time I thought about how it was like the VIP entrance. Private. Guarded. You were really someone if you were taken in this way. Now that I know who that someone is, there is no way in hell I will let him destroy me.
I used to think I went with the flow of everything. Was just along for the ride. Never had much to say. Well it took a man like Callum Carbon to make me realize I will not only be someone's contract. I will not be another one of Callum Carbon's un-cherished belongings.
The limo door opens and he steps out, reaching his hand for mine.
"Magdelena." His fingers wiggle and I stare at his palm a minute.
There's a scar over his thumb from my cat. He really should have gotten that stitched but he insisted he was fine. My cat…I miss my cat. I blink and let the last of my tears fall.
"Magdelena," he repeats my name and bends to look in at me.
I bare my teeth. "If you lay a hand on me, I'll have you apprehended and condemned long enough to ruin any hope of a future for you, Mr. Carbon," I repeat similar words he once told me.
"Mama," I groan and grip the bed rails as another squeezing pain takes over my body. I never thought it would be like this. Books and movies don't properly inform you. Even word of mouth doesn't compare to the real thing.
My mother holds my hand tightly and prays, "Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo. Santificado sea tu nombre. Venga tu reino. Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra como en el cielo. Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día. Perdona nuestras ofensas…"
I close my eyes and grit my teeth before letting out a growling grunt as I push. All chaos seems to stop. Everything goes silent until the precious sound of my new life wails. A baby's cry has never been more rewarding.
"One more time, Mag," my doctor says and the calmness erupts into a storm again. "On my count, push. One…two…push!"
I clamp my jaw again and push with everything I have before releasing a harrowing cry. I keep my eyes closed as I bawl, not wanting to see this life, not wanting to remember him, not wanting to love him. He's not mine. He belongs to the Carbon name and he will be taken away from me no matter how hard I fight.
"Mag, open," the doctor says with joy but I refuse.
Two distinct cries fill this room and I already know which is which. The one wailing as if it's unloved and betrayed is the son I cannot have.
This is a day divided by darkness and light. Happiness and hell. Bliss and sadness. I have brought two children into this world today but only one is mine. My son is being handed over to the woman in the corner that sports the distinctive Carbon nose. She's watching on as if she's some sort of dark angel, waiting to swoop my son away. She is, and I have to remind myself he is not my son.
My mother steps in, taking baby number two. The baby I wouldn't even acknowledge after finding out he would be taken from me. My sweet daughter has had a name for months, but baby number two has only shared a womb with my daughter and now he will be added to the Carbon's belongings. I hope they cherish him like I would have. I hope he's loved and looked after. I hope he never hears about me because if he ever wonders why I gave him up, he'll never get the truth.
Graphite-The Carbon Series Book 2 is releasing early 2019!
Sneak peak at how it started:
“Read that line again.” Callum sat in a chair across from his great grandparents while the contract was being discussed.
Lol cleared his throat. “If the female Reif is to demand release before the one year mark after the first date of marriage, you will trade your life for hers.” Lol glanced at Germaine Carbon before focusing on Callum.
“What’s that mean?” Callum wanted clarification, but he knew.
“You are to keep your wife content, Callum,” she clarified.
“And if this woman. Who, more or less is becoming my prisoner. If she wants nothing to do with this, I’m to suffer for it? Because I want nothing to do with it!” He stood, glowering at his great grandmother. When her husband got to his feet, Callum sat with a huff. “This isn’t humane.”
“It’s tradition. You will go down in history for bringing back such a tradition.”
“Please tell me how this will work? My heir cannot mate with their sibling. So where in God’s name will we find the next heir to continue tradition? Please, Lord, please tell me you don’t intend on crossbreeding my children.”
“Never!” his great grandmother scoffed. “There are enough Carbons and enough Reifs, but your pureblooded boy will be the start again. He’ll then marry down the blood line of the Reifs…” She went on talking but Callum stopped listening. Eventually, overtime, there would be inbreeding. There was no way around the insane tradition and he hoped he’d be long dead before he saw the day.
“Fine.” He put his hand out. “Fine. So then if this woman won’t stay married to me, I’m what? To be killed?” He snickered until his great grandparents sat stoic. “You…that can’t happen. I’m a Duke. You cannot actually murder people!”
“We’re the Carbon's, we can do what we please,” her husband spoke in a strained voice. The man was not a Carbon by blood, he wasn’t even Callum’s father’s father, and nothing irked Callum more.
“This is preposterous. Mad.” Looking at Lol, he hoped for support, but he would get no camaraderie from his closest friend while the eldest living Carbon sat across from them.
“This is what is expected of you. I don’t foresee you failing, Callum. Like your father, you don’t fail at anything.”
“You expect me to brainwash a female slave who is to bear my child that she actually enjoys this life and if she doesn’t, quote unquote, get on board, I will be executed for it?”
“How hard is it to make a woman fall in love?” her husband questioned as if Callum were already a failure.
“I’m not as deceptive as other Carbons,” he hissed, locking eyes with the old man who was no one until he married into the Carbon family, taking the Carbon name.
“Silence.” Germaine tiredly sighed. “Callum, you fulfill the tradition and after a year of marriage, you can be free from the woman. So long as she bears a male child.”
“And if she doesn’t? If time after time I fill her with a female?”
“Then, after your expiry of childbearing years, it will be the female Carbon who will be expected to carry out tradition. And similar to me and your great grandfather, her mate will take the Carbon name.”
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br /> “You weren’t carrying out tradition. He was running from his family name.”
“Bite your tongue, Callum. Sign the document or be stripped of the Carbon name and have nothing.”
“I am the last pureblooded Carbon male in this family. You will not strip me of anything.” He yanked the paper toward him and before he scribbled his name, Lol’s hand landed on his forearm.
“Will he have a chance to persuade said female if she were to demand to separate?”
“There will be a period of time.” She nodded.
“It’s not in the document. Can we pen it in? This document is claiming…execution,” he said slowly, “will take place immediately after the female’s abandonment.”
“Yes. Pen it in.” She waved her hand before turning her eyes to the clock.
Lol tugged the paperwork toward him, quickly scrolling his own terms on the timeworn paper before initialing next to it, then handed the paperwork back to Callum.
“You know, Callum,” his grandmother said as she stood. “It wouldn’t tarnish you to settle down.”
“Forcing two souls together that have no business together will never be my version of settling down, Great Grandmother.”
“You wouldn’t settle down if it were an old fashioned tale of love either,” her husband grumbled while he stood.
“Because a Carbon doesn’t know how to love anyone but themselves. Haven’t you figured that out yet, Great Grandfather?”
Sneak peak at how it will end:
“Have you made your peace?” My great grandmother steps around me from behind.
“Made my peace,” I snicker, keeping my eyes from the decrepit woman.
One blow and I could end her, but she has enough family money that she’s purchased an army for protection. When she roams these halls, men that would stop at nothing to protect her and kill me surround her.
“You’ve had four years, Callum.”
“That I have, Great Grandmother. I have brought a male heir into the family as the contract stated I had to, yet I’m still being forced to make my peace.”
“But you failed the tradition by not staying married for a year.”
“Who cares?” My voice travels and the noise of sixteen men turning their heads to look at me makes a very distinct sound. It’s a warning I should heed, but what difference does it make?
“I care. You’ve forsaken our name. The Reifs will be hesitant to step forward into matrimony with a Carbon again.”
“As they should be.”
“Be quiet now, Callum.” She waves her hand and I’m forced to my knees.
Wretched hag.
Watch for: Graphite-The Carbon Series Book 2
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