Rebirth Of The Heiress And The Tycoon's Lover (Alina) novel Chapter 2

HAPTER 2

ASTRID’S POV

The words hit me like a physical blow. My father’s voice echoed in the healing house, and I felt my whole world crumble around me in that single moment.

He was offering me to this monster. This blood-soaked Viking King who had just burned half our village and killed our people. He wanted to give me away like I was nothing more than a sack of grain or a prized cow.

I shook my head so hard it made me dizzy. No. This couldn’t be happening. This had to be some terrible nightmare that I would wake up from any moment. My father couldn’t really be doing this to me.

He loved me. He had always protected me. He used to tell me stories about brave princesses who saved themselves, not ones who got traded away like property.

But the nightmare kept going. The Viking King stood there looking at me like I was something he might buy at market.

His cold blue eyes moved over me slowly, taking in every detail. I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to disappear into the floor, to become invisible, to be anywhere but here in this moment.

I expected him to laugh. I expected him to look at my father with disgust and tell him that I wasn’t worth the trouble.

Everyone knew how feared and powerful Ragnar Thornegrim was. The stories about him were told in whispers around our fires at night.

They said he was as tall as a tree and as cruel as winter. They said he had never shown mercy to anyone. They said he took what he wanted and destroyed everything else.

Surely a man like that wouldn’t want a simple village healer as his bride. Surely he would see that I was nothing special, just a girl who knew how to mix herbs and tend wounds. I held my breath, waiting for his rejection, praying for it.

But then something terrible happened. He looked at me again, and this time something changed in his expression. His mouth curved up at one corner in a smile that made my blood turn to ice. It wasn’t a kind smile or even a cruel one. It was something worse. It was the smile of a wolf who had just spotted easy prey.

“I accept,” he said, and those two words shattered my heart into a thousand pieces.

The room started spinning around me. This couldn’t be real. This absolutely could not be happening to me. I was supposed to spend my life helping people, healing the sick, maybe someday marrying a kind man from our village who would love me for who I was. I wasn’t supposed to be given away to a monster who probably had blood permanently stained under his fingernails.

I didn’t remember deciding to run. My body just moved on its own, like it knew I had to get away from that terrible smile and those cold eyes. I pushed past my father, past the frightened children and elderly people still huddled in the corner, past everything that had just gone so horribly wrong.

My feet carried me through the village, past the burning houses and the bodies lying in the dirt. I couldn’t look at any of it. I couldn’t think about what had just happened or what was going to happen to me. I just ran until I reached our house, until I could slam my bedroom door behind me and pretend that none of this was real.

The door shut with a loud bang, and I immediately threw the wooden bar across it. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely manage it.

Then I collapsed against the door, sliding down until I was sitting on the floor with my knees pulled up to my chest.

This was my room. My safe place. The walls were covered with dried herbs hanging in bundles, filling the air with the familiar scents of lavender and chamomile.

My bed was in the corner with the quilt my mother had made before she died. My books were stacked neatly on the wooden shelf my father had built for me. Everything was exactly as it should be, exactly as it had always been.

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