Chapter:Thirty-six: Belong to Leo
Each step was an eternity.
The congregation was small—just the Frosts, a few servants, a handful of Leo relatives who looked confused but willing to celebrate. No Clive. No rescue. No last-minute reprieve.
Ethan turned as she approached, and for a moment—just a moment—she saw something flicker in his green eyes. Recognition. Memory. The ghost of the boy who had once loved her.
Then it was gone, replaced by the cold mask of the man who had destroyed her.
She reached the altar. Stopped beside him. Didn't look at his face.
The priest began to speak, his words a meaningless drone.
"We are gathered here today..."
Serene's hands clenched at her sides. The dress—plain, cream, forgettable—felt like a shroud. Without Clive's necklace, without his ring, without anything of him, she was hollow. Empty. Just a body in a dress, waiting to be claimed.
"Do you, Ethan, take this woman..."
Ethan's voice rang out, clear and certain: "I do."
The word echoed in the cold chapel, bouncing off stone and stained glass. Not love. Not devotion. Just possession given a voice.
The priest turned to her.
"And do you, Serene—"
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Of course. Nothing ever came out.
A murmur passed through the congregation—confusion, pity, the awkward shifting of people who didn't understand. But Serene's gaze remained fixed on Ethan. She didn't flinch. Couldn't speak. Wouldn't give him the words he wanted.
She nodded. Slight. Almost imperceptible. But a vow without words—the only vow she could give.
Ethan's eyes flickered. For a heartbeat, she saw it—the boy she'd loved, buried beneath years of pain and revenge and terrible choices. Then it was gone, masked by the armor he'd built.
"I now pronounce you husband and wife."
Silence swallowed the chapel.
Ethan didn't move toward her. Didn't smile. Didn't touch. Didn't kiss. He stood frozen, the embodiment of his own carefully crafted wrath, while Serene lowered her gaze and let the thin veil hide the tears she couldn't shed.
She had married the man she once loved.
He had married the girl he'd destroyed.
And in the silence between them, nothing remained but ash.
---
The carriage ride to the reception was suffocating.
They sat across from each other, the space between them vast and empty. Ethan stared out the window. Serene stared at her hands—bare now, stripped of Clive's ring, wearing only the plain gold band that marked her as Ethan Leo's wife.
"You'll adjust," Ethan said finally, his voice flat. "Everyone does."
She looked at him. Just looked. Her honey-brown eyes held nothing—no anger, no pain, no hope. Just emptiness.
He shifted under that gaze, discomfort flickering across his features. "Say something."
She raised her hands and signed, slow and deliberate: I can't. You took that too.
He didn't understand the signs, but he understood her meaning. His jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
The carriage rolled on toward a future neither of them wanted.
---
The reception was a blur of faces and false smiles.
Amelia played the gracious mother-of-the-bride, her eyes glittering with triumph. Samuel toasted the happy couple with words that meant nothing. David avoided Serene's gaze, his guilt written across his face. The Leo relatives congratulated Ethan on his "surprising choice" and whispered behind their hands.
Through it all, Serene sat like a statue, accepting congratulations she hadn't earned, nodding at well-wishes that meant nothing, playing the role of happy bride for an audience that didn't care.
And then, near the end of the evening, a commotion at the door.
Clive Marcer stood in the entrance, his face a mask of fury and disbelief.
His eyes found her across the room—found her wedding band, her plain dress, her hollow face—and something in him broke.
"Serene."
Her name on his lips was a wound.
She rose, her body moving before her mind could catch up. Her hands reached toward him, forming words he could read across the distance: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
Clive started toward her, but Ethan was faster.
He stepped between them, his posture rigid, his voice cold. "You're too late, Marcer. The wedding is over. She's my wife now."
Clive's eyes never left Serene's face. "Is this what you wanted?"
She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. No. No. They forced me. Father. Amelia. Everyone. You weren't here—
"Business," Clive breathed, understanding dawning. "The meeting in Paris—they arranged it. Kept me away deliberately." He turned to Ethan, fury blazing in his whiskey-colored eyes. "You planned this. All of it."
Ethan's smile was thin and cold. "I planned to marry a Frost. I got one. Be grateful it wasn't Ava."
Clive moved—fast, faster than anyone expected—and his fist connected with Ethan's jaw.
The room erupted.
Guests screamed. Amelia shrieked. Servants rushed forward, trying to separate the two men as they grappled in the center of the reception hall.
But Serene saw none of it.
She saw only Clive—her Clive, the man who had seen her, loved her, promised her forever—fighting for her even now, even when it was too late.
And she saw the moment when Ethan's fist connected with his temple, and Clive crumpled to the ground.
---
They dragged Clive from the room.
Serene tried to follow, but hands held her back—Amelia's sharp grip, Samuel's heavy arm, servants who didn't know whose orders to follow. She fought them, silently, desperately, her eyes fixed on the door through which Clive had disappeared.
Gone.
Again.
Always gone.
The reception ended in chaos. Guests fled. The Leo family retreated in confusion. And Serene was bundled into a carriage with Ethan, headed for a destination she hadn't chosen, a life she hadn't wanted, a future that stretched before her like an endless, empty road.
---
The Leo estate loomed before them, dark and cold.
Ethan helped her from the carriage—a gentleman's gesture that meant nothing—and led her through the doors. Servants appeared, took her coat, offered food she couldn't eat, questions she couldn't answer.
And then she was alone with him.
His rooms. His territory. His wife.
He stood by the window, his back to her, his silhouette sharp against the moonlight.
"You'll have your own room," he said quietly. "I'm not a monster. I won't force you to share mine."
She said nothing. Could say nothing.
He turned, his green eyes finding her in the darkness. "But you are my wife, Serene. In name. In law. In the eyes of everyone who matters. Clive Marcer can't change that. Nothing can."
She raised her hands: You can keep my body. You can keep my name. You'll never have my heart. Clive has that. He'll always have that.
Ethan read the words—or enough of them—and something flickered in his eyes. Pain, perhaps. Or jealousy. Or the faintest trace of the boy who had once promised forever.
"Go to your room," he said finally. "We'll talk in the morning."
She went.
The room they'd given her was beautiful—soft colors, warm fire, a bed piled with blankets. Everything a bride could want.
Everything except the groom she'd chosen.
Serene sat on the edge of the bed, alone in the darkness, and pressed her hand to her chest where Clive's sapphire should have been.
Gone.
Everything was gone.
She reached for her journal—the new one, the one she'd started after meeting Clive—and wrote with shaking hands:
I'm his wife now. Ethan's wife. The man who broke me, who believed the worst, who wrote those words that killed my hope.
Clive tried to save me. He came back. He fought for me.
But it wasn't enough.
I don't know what happens now. I don't know who I am anymore. I'm not Serene Frost—that name died when I said vows I didn't mean. I'm not Mrs. Clive Marcer—that future was stolen before it could begin.
I'm Ethan Leo's wife.
And I don't know if I can survive being that.
She closed the journal and lay down, staring at the ceiling, waiting for a dawn she didn't want to see.
Tomorrow, everything would continue.
Tomorrow, she would wake up in a stranger's house, married to a stranger's ghost.
Tomorrow, she would begin the long, slow process of learning to exist without hope.
But tonight—just for tonight—she let herself remember Clive's smile, his voice, his promise.
I'll be back tonight without fail. Wait for me, my princess.
She'd waited.
He hadn't come.
And now she belonged to someone else.
The tears came then—silent, endless, washing away the last fragments of a future that would never be.
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