No Longer Fair To You Chapter 05
“Andy, that’s the second time you’ve hit me,” Clayton said, blowing out a drag of smoke.
A dark bruise marked the corner of his mouth. He flashed a faint smile, but his eyes were dead serious. “Just because I called her ugly?”
Anderson stood across from him, looking ice-cold—like a total stranger to me.
He’d been so gentle lately that I’d almost forgotten the truth.
At his core, a snow wereleopard was fundamentally cruel and brutal. Beneath it all, both he and Clayton were deeply callous men.
“If you don’t like her, you don’t have to see her,” Anderson said, putting out his cigarette.
His voice was completely flat. “But if I ever catch you mistreating her again, I’ll hit you every single time.”
Clayton looked genuinely amused and let out a real laugh. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, Andy. Who filed the joint appeal with me to reject this assignment in the first place? Now you’re suddenly acting like her sworn protector. Have you actually made a habit of faking your feelings?”
Clayton laughed until the tension finally bled out of him. “Okay, I get it,” he said. “The trial marriage is almost up. You’re just playing nice to get the plain girl to agree to the divorce, right? If we hadn’t agreed on this beforehand, you really would’ve fooled me.”
Trial marriage?
My chest tightened with a sudden spike of anxiety.
Things had been going so well lately that I’d almost entirely forgotten about it.
The allocation system wasn’t set in stone. Even couples with sky-high compatibility scores could end up despising each other.
Because of that, everyone was given a one-year trial period after being matched.
If a couple clicked, they officially stayed married. If they didn’t, they could mutually agree to walk away.
I looked down and realized my fingers were gripping my sleeve in a white-knuckle hold.
So, Anderson had only been treating me well to butter me up for a divorce.
He was no different from Clayton after all.
Cutting through my racing thoughts and the sudden ache in my chest, I heard a curt, “No.”
It was Anderson.
Clayton froze. “Are you actually going to stay married to her?” he asked, sounding genuinely stunned. “Didn’t we agree to get divorced and find new matches?
“She’s completely useless—and plain. Staying married to her is humiliating. Everyone in our circle is going to mock us.”
“Not we,” Anderson corrected him. “Just you. I never said I wanted to find someone else.”
His expression softened as a thought seemed to cross his mind. “Ellie is wonderful. She’s smart and endearing. I was prejudiced against her before, and I missed out on a lot because of it.”
Eleanor Colby was my full name.
I had no idea Anderson actually saw me that way.
He’d even called me Ellie. No one had ever used that nickname for me before.
Anderson turned back to Clayton. “Stay away from my mate from now on,” he warned.
Clayton’s chest heaved, his agitation spiking into obvious anger. “Fuck, I haven’t divorced her yet either! How is she only your mate?”
“Don’t you want a divorce?” Anderson shot back. “If your mind is made up, stop pestering my mate.”
“Is something wrong with you? I’m not pestering that plain girl,” Clayton snapped. “Do you think everyone lacks judgment as you do? Deliberately choosing something worthless over something valuable?”
Clayton dragged a hand through his hair in frustration, lowering his voice. “The rut doesn’t count. That was just a biological reaction. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Anderson scoffed, looking at him with utter clarity. “Idiot.”
Clayton ignored him, taking a long, deep drag from his cigarette. He wouldn’t meet Anderson’s eyes. “Whatever,” he muttered. “If you aren’t getting a divorce, then neither am I. A werebeast abandoning a human would completely trash my reputation.
“Besides, Eleanor always looks at me like she can’t live without me. She’s incredibly needy, and I’m not cruel enough to just leave her.
“We can make it work. You can get used to a plain face if you look at it long enough. I don’t care if she’s useless—I don’t expect anything from her anyway. If I ask for a divorce, everyone will think I’m the bad guy, and I won’t be able to land a good match.
“Keeping her as a mate is fine. Fuck it, I’m just not going to be the one to ask for the divorce.”
I slipped back to my room without making a sound.
I lay there staring up at the ceiling, lost in my own head.
Clayton had planned on divorcing me from the very beginning. He didn’t like me.
He hated my looks, and he hated my personality.
He cared way too much about his social standing, always needing to feel superior and act arrogant.
To him, being married to me was his greatest source of embarrassment.
On top of that, if he initiated the split, people would call him heartless for abandoning a human.
So, he outright refused to be the one to file.
His original plan was to let Anderson manipulate me into asking for the divorce myself.
He just never expected Anderson to flip the script and actually want to stay married to me for good.
Now, Clayton was out of options. He was going to have to reluctantly stay in the marriage and just deal with it.
He’d said it himself, “You can get used to a plain face if you look at it long enough.”
Eventually, even if he didn’t love me, he figured he could at least tolerate living with me.
But I didn’t want that.
Growing up in the orphanage, the donated clothes we got were always either way too big or way too small, and the colors were just bizarre.
The caretakers constantly told us to just make do with what we had.
If the meals they cooked turned out too salty, we were told not to waste food and to choke them down anyway.
Year after year, I wore clothes I hated and ate food I couldn’t stomach, always just settling for whatever I was handed.
But I was an adult then.
I got to make my own choices about my future.
I was done settling, and I didn’t want anyone settling for me, either.
If Clayton wanted a divorce, I was going to be the one to ask for it.
