The River Bride's Revenge I Won't Save You TwiceChapter 1
I was an ordinary body collector from Millhaven Village. By chance, I pulled both the Crown Prince and the young lord Homer Rowe from the river, and I became pregnant with the Crown Prince's child.
On our wedding day, the Crown Prince never showed. He took his bridal procession to the Prime Minister's estate and married Chloe Fox instead.
I tried to confront him, but Homer Rowe stepped in my way.
He confessed that he was the one who'd gotten me pregnant that night. He said he was willing to marry me and take care of me for the rest of my life.
A month after the wedding, bandits descended on my village. All one hundred and ten households were slaughtered. Not a single soul survived.
Standing before that mountain of corpses, I collapsed under the weight of my grief. I lost the baby.
Homer never left my side, never even changed out of his bloodstained clothes. It took a long time, but slowly, he pulled me back from the edge.
Three years later, I was pregnant again. I wanted to tell Homer the good news right away, but on my way to find him, I overheard a conversation between him and a friend.
"Homer, the Crown Prince keeps undermining you at every turn. Doesn't that eat at you? Back then, you married Penelope Maxwell for his sake and even claimed a child that wasn't yours."
"I didn't do it for him. I did it for Chloe. In this kingdom, the firstborn son inherits regardless of his mother's rank. If Penelope had given birth to a prince first, how would Chloe ever secure her place in the palace?"
"We all know you're hopelessly in love with Chloe Fox, but did you really have to massacre all of Millhaven Village to keep them quiet? The body collectors have been all but wiped out since then."
"I had no choice. The people in Millhaven Village knew too much. To eliminate any future threat, every last one of them had to die."
I had always believed that falling for the Crown Prince was the greatest mistake of my life. I never imagined that falling for Homer Rowe would prove a far worse one.
……
"Just now, one of the maids from the estate came by. Your attendant turned her away, but I think I heard her say Penelope is pregnant..."
Homer's hand tightened around his teacup. It nearly slipped from his grip, but he was always composed. Within a breath, his expression smoothed over.
"I won't let her carry it to term."