Cold Devotion | ✔️

Chapter One

Today I am being shipped off by my beloved father- it's for your own good he tells me. Since when was anything he has ever done for my own good? Everything has always been for his own benefit... nothing has ever been to help me.

When you turn sixteen, you are sent to the youth provision within your sector. It's to prepare us for the threat of war between sectors. There hasn't been a war in over 500 years but they still behold this profound notion that we all must be some kind of warrior brutes.

My father decided to delay it a year because I "wasn't ready".

Ever since my mother died he has only gotten worse, only gotten more brutal as the days go by.

"You better not embarrass me today," my father says from across the room in his usual authoritative tone. I would never dare I want to say but decide against it - not wanting to face the consequences.

My father, Mikael Waterstone, is the lead commander of our sector so one could say he is a very important man.

Each sector has its own leader, its own person of power. The role of the lead commander can only be inherited, meaning when my father dies I will be the one to take over. That thought alone brings me more dread than I care to admit.

"I won't," I say gently, trying to be civil. I can't deal with his explosive temper today, I don't want to be at the receiving end of it. Especially when tensions are already so high, he is bound to break any moment.

"I will be speaking to the whole facility today, all you need to do is stay in the background and not speak Rose," my name sounds strange coming off of his tongue as if he has tasted something sour.

"Yes," I reply, I'm not in the mood to challenge him. If anything goes wrong he will blame me for it, it will be no one else's fault but mine.

When is it any other way?

"We will be leaving soon... is that what you're wearing?" he glances towards my outfit, disgust clear as day in those cold, dark eyes.

"I thought it was okay," I say and look down at my clothes. Yes, the dress is a little short, maybe too short, but I look presentable. "Do you want me to ch-" I am cut off by my father.

"No Rose, it's fine... just go wait in the car," he snaps and I do as I am told. I am seventeen but am treated like a child. That's all my father sees me as.

A child.

***

The drive was spent in silence... I did not dare talk or even breathe the wrong way. To say I am afraid of my father would be an understatement, he has done nothing but torment me for as long as I can remember. Even as a child he would stop at nothing to let me know how much I disappointed him.

"We're here," Lorenzo, our driver, announces and I clamp my hands together to stop them from shaking. I know absolutely no one, my father has kept me a secret the majority of my life. I am a disgrace he says. Unworthy, useless he tells me.

I step out of the car and follow behind my father, with my head down. Don't embarrass him, don't embarrass him, don't embarrass him. I repeat over and over again. "Mikael! How are you?" a man with piercing green eyes beams at my father. Stay in the background and don't embarrass him.

"Andrew... it's been a long time," my father says in his pretend cheery voice, that's how he fools everyone. Fools everyone into thinking he is a kind, warm-hearted man with only good intentions but they'll find out soon enough that they couldn't be further from the truth.

"Yes, it has. Is this your daughter?" Andrew asks and my father visibly tenses. I wish the ground would just open up and swallow me whole, rid me of this earth.