𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄
Today is my wedding day.
The day I’m supposed to walk into a new life with the man I love, cherish, and choose for myself.
But instead… I sit here in a mandap dressed in a bridal outfit he picked for me. My husband-to-be. My captor. My nightmare.
Shariq Raichand.
I never wanted this. Not this marriage.
Not this life.
Not him.
Yet here I am, with no family, no friends, no one to fight for me. Just him, his two loyal shadows, and a priest bribed into silence. Because who needs witnesses when the bride herself has been dragged here against her will?
Irony burns in my chest. This sacred ceremony that is supposed to happen once in a lifetime is nothing more than a cage locking around me. And Shariq? He looks like a man who has already won.
“Finally,” he sighs, his face lit with satisfaction, like my silence is a gift he’s been waiting for.
I bite mine back. Not because I agree. But because my words have never mattered to him.
“Do you feel it, Shiv? The spark between us?”
That’s the cruelest part.
I don’t.
Not now. Not ever.
Every cell in my body wants to scream, to rip the garlands apart, to tell him again and again that what he calls love is nothing but possession. But my voice stays trapped in my throat.
“We’ve come so far,” he continues, his tone dripping with false tenderness. “This is the only way to make you see, Shiv. To make you mine.”
The man speaks of love, but his every word reeks of chains.
And then, like a dam breaking, the whisper escapes me.
“I don’t want to marry you, Shariq.”
The air cracks.
His smile shatters.
The priest falters.
His friends stare like I’ve committed a sin.
“What did you just say?” His voice drops into a growl, the sound of a predator cornered.
Then Shariq speaks again, his tone sharp, clipped.
“I need a moment with my future wife.”
The words freeze my blood. His gaze locks onto mine, a cold promise of violence burning there.
I tremble.
Because I know what he’s capable of.
I’ve felt it before. The sting of his hand when I tried to resist, the force he used to make me stand here dressed as his bride.
The priest slips away, paid enough to abandon me. Kabir and Vishal glance at me with pity, but pity won’t save me. Nothing will. Not from him.
Shariq steps closer, his gaze sharp, dangerous, a warning I know too well. I’ve felt his hands before, the violence hidden behind his so-called affection.
He claims he loves me. That he’s loved me since school. That the day I offered him my notes and half of my breakfast, he gave me his heart.
But love isn’t this.
Love doesn’t bruise.
Love doesn’t silence.
Love doesn’t cage.
I want to breathe. I want to live. I want to choose.
And all he wants is to consume me.
How do you love a man who doesn’t share your dreams, your beliefs, your freedom? Who talks about kitchens and women belonging to them like his grandfather’s dusty words from the 1950s are law?
The truth is simple.
You don’t.
You can’t.
Because Shariq Raichand doesn’t love me.
He only loves the idea of owning me.
And I... I just want to fly.
