Abandon You Choose Dragon Chapter 14
Halfway there, his pace slowed.
He’d swear he’d what?
This whole absurd disaster—hadn’t he started it?
He was the one who thought it would be fun. He was the one who told James to put Iris’s name on the list.
He was the one who stood beneath the choosing platform and reached for Chloe’s moonflower.
He’d assumed everything would stay under his control.
She’d make a fuss. He’d smooth it over. They’d go back to the way things were.
That was how it always went.
He thought about Chloe.
The first time he saw her, she was standing in Iris’s yard.
Thin and small. A pair of rabbit ears drooping timidly. She’d called out “Ash” in a voice like cotton—so soft it could melt.
Iris had smiled beside him and said, “This is the Bennett family’s daughter. Her name’s Chloe.”
He’d glanced at Chloe. Those red eyes like a frightened fawn. The kind that made you want to shield her from the world.
Somewhere along the way, he’d started caring for her the way he cared for Iris. Then more.
When her mother fell ill, he dropped everything and rushed back to the tribe, running errands day and night.
When her mother pressured her into the Praise Moon Festival, he stepped in without being asked and took charge of every detail, her guardian from start to finish.
She was a flower that needed constant tending.
He loved feeling needed. He loved being her hero, her answer to everything.
But Iris had never been that way.
She fell and didn’t cry out. She burned and didn’t flinch. She swallowed every grievance in silence. Her feathers could be a mess and she’d smooth them herself, never once asking for help.
He’d assumed she didn’t need him. Assumed she was strong enough—so strong that she could be set aside and never break.
Until today. Watching her kneel before the Moon God’s statue. Watching that scarred hand reach out, steady and sure, to receive the blessing. Watching her never once turn her head to look for him.
And he finally understood.
She wasn’t born unbreakable. She’d simply grown up in a home where no one ever noticed when she was hurt. She’d learned, years ago, to swallow every wound and hide every scar.
She’d believed that marriage would change things.
But in the end, her own fiancé had done exactly what her family had always done—taken her silence for granted, mistaken her endurance for indifference.
Blind to her pain. Deaf to her sorrow.
Smugly certain she’d always be standing right where he left her, waiting, no matter how long he took to look back.
He stood on the riverbank, gasping for air.