Called by the Dragon

The fluorescent hum of the county clerk's office was the soundtrack to my defiance.

I clutched the pen, ready to marry Liam Thorne, a man I' d run seven days and suppressed a blood-bound token for, all to rewrite a past that still haunted my reborn soul.

Before the ink could touch the paper, Liam snatched the license.

Rip.

My heart stopped.

"I have to marry Chloe first," he said, his words echoing the betrayal I remembered from a lifetime ago.

He spoke of a week, of saving Chloe' s reputation, but I remembered years in a damp root cellar, the loss of our children.

My blood-bound token throbbed as his guards abducted me, dragging me to his coastal estate.

There, Chloe, the cousin whose manipulations haunted my first life, paraded in my wedding gown, her triumph chilling.

With a staged cry and a splash of fake blood, she framed me.

Liam, blinded by her fake tears, roared, "Take her to the old root cellar!"

My nightmare was real again.