Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife-Chapter 279: A Burden

Zane swiftly pulled her up and made her straddle the horse behind him, where she fearfully clutched his waist and held on to his front shirt tightly like her life depended on it.

Well, it depended on it because the journey was long. However, he didn’t think he was going to enjoy this ride back to the imperial palace with the way she held on to him, her front pressed intimately against his back and the feminine scent of jasmine that wafted from her body to reach his nose made him slightly stiffen and a bit uncomfortable.

No woman had ever held him the way she was doing now. The whores he visited in the brothels were never allowed to hold him this way, not that what he paid them to do required any holding, and never would he allow any of them, nor any woman to come close to his horse like the princess was sitting on now.

Looking down to the fair arms around his midsection where her fingers were interlocked in the front, he felt heat slowly curl its way into his body and settle at an unwanted place, which he rather not pay attention to.

Clearing his throat, he shifted, but the woman behind him shifted with him. This was a bad idea, Zane thought in frustration, but knowing he had no choice—though he could pair her up with one of the soldiers—he could not stand the idea of her holding another man the way she was holding him now.

"What are you waiting for?" came the princess’s impatient voice when she noticed the rest had snapped their reins and were leaving while he still waited for who knows what.

Sighing in irritation, Zane snapped the reins and he felt her arms tighten around him like steel, squeezing the breath out of him, but he tried not to pay attention to it because he didn’t want to start an argument or have any reason to talk to her again. If the weather stayed in their favor, they would reach Pendragon in two days. He would finally rid himself of the princess and get back his life after Lucian’s coronation was over.

But the weather was anything but kind. The first day passed smoothly enough, with only brief stops at the villages they passed by to grab food and stretch—mostly for the princess’s sake after she complained of leg cramps and demanded he make a stop when he told her they couldn’t afford to make stops because of the weather. But she kept hitting his back and threatening she would vomit on him if he didn’t stop.

Zane had never traveled with anyone as overbearing as her. She turned every moment into a trial, complaining about everything from the food to the sleeping tent made for her the first night of their journey. She acted sweetly toward the soldiers who brought her either water or food, but the moment Zane entered the resting area, she turned into a tempest, throwing tantrums and nitpicking at everything.

"This is the worst food I’ve ever tasted in my life! The soup is cold, and I can’t stomach cold food in this winter!" she cried out as she threw the bowl of soup at his feet when he came into her view. The soup spilled on his boot and soaked into the snow.

Thalia had promised to make this journey one of the worst for him. She hated that she had held on to her feelings for him, and the whole time on the horse her heart had been misbehaving from sitting so close to him.

He was being cold to her, ignoring her whenever she wanted to make casual conversation with him, and the only time she could get him to look at her or answer her was when she threw tantrums or talked to him with authority. If that was the only way to get his attention, she would make him suffer just as she was.

Zane took a deep breath to calm his rising anger. The soup was anything but cold; it was hot from the pot of the cook in the village they had just passed by—it had even steamed when she threw it at him.

"Princess, this is not the palace; you don’t get to eat whatever you want. We can’t afford to waste any more time here because I just heard in the village that a blizzard is about to hit. We need to be on our way before it meets us," he tried to reason with her, but she glared at him heatedly. Zane was more than disappointed in how she had turned out. She acted and behaved nothing like the princess he knew in Pendragon.

This woman before him was a man’s nightmare. If she wasn’t a royal, and the only means for his friend to take the thrown, he would have long ago straightened her head by making her travel without having anything. He couldn’t afford to ride with the soldiers in the blizzard when a few of them had suffered a few injuries when they attacked the minister’s mansion.

"I do not care. I am hungry, and I am not leaving here until you get me another soup," Thalia said with her chin up in the air, hating herself for being so mean to him. Perhaps she was being this way because she wanted his attention so badly, but Lord, it was his fault for ignoring her and also showing her how much he didn’t care about her. If only he could be a bit nicer to her, she wouldn’t have had to do all this.

Zane’s fist clenched at his side in anger, but knowing he couldn’t forcefully move the princess if she refused to get up, he had to satisfy her needs first. He turned on his heels and went back into the village to personally get her food like he had been doing to avoid any mischief of poisoning. He walked all the way back twice because she found something wrong with the food he bought.

Zane would have endured everything she was making him go through had the blizzard not hit them before they reached shelter.

If she hadn’t been so demanding—forcing them to stop in nearly every village to satisfy her whims—they could have been halfway to Pendragon by now. Instead, the blizzard they had desperately tried to outrun finally caught up with them.

It was vicious, winter’s fury unleashed with howling winds and biting cold that lashed at their faces and soaked them to the bone. Snow mixed with sleet pummeled them, blinding their path and stealing their supplies as the gale scattered anything and everything they traveled with that was not tightly secured on the horses and the wagon.

When they finally stopped to camp in a sheltered big cave and ride out the storm, Zane’s fury boiled over and his patience finally came to its end. His men scrambled around the wind to shield the horses; a few of the injured soldiers who couldn’t escape the raging blizzard were lost or buried deep down underneath the snow that hit them unexpectedly and caused them to lose their reins on the horse.

Zane had tried to secure everyone, but he couldn’t do that with a woman who he tried to shield from the wind.

Zane had no patience left when he finally dismounted his horse with the princess. With veins throbbing in his forehead and neck, he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her through the howling wind.

Snow stung Thalia’s face as she stumbled behind him, and her protests for him to slow down were drowned out by the storm.

When they reached the cover of a large tree, far from the men’s view, Zane pushed her back against its rough bark, caging her with his arms. His hazel greyish eyes darkened with rage.

"Do you see what you’ve done?" he growled through clenched teeth. "Your selfish demands—your over-demanding demands—cost us everything! Supplies, time, and the lives of a few of my men!" His voice rose, harsh and bitter. If she had for once stopped to consider what her demands were causing them, none of this would have happened, and he wouldn’t have lost two of Lucian’s soldiers in the blizzard.

"But why would you care about that? You’ve spent your whole life being spoiled, having everything handed to you on a silver platter! You’ve never had to struggle a day in your life, have you? You don’t know what it’s like for people like us—the ones beneath you—to fight tooth and nail just to survive!" he yelled furiously.

He had despised her for what she did that day on the balcony, and now he hated her to the bones for this. He didn’t know why he was surprised about her selfishness when the blood of a cold-blooded emperor runs in her veins. She was no different from her father and brother. And what pained him the most was the fact that he had almost thought she was different from them when she shed tears that day in the kitchen of the doomed palace and even apologized to him. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com

Thalia’s lips trembled as she opened her mouth to apologize, but he slammed his fist against the tree beside her head, making her flinch and duck instinctively. She had not meant to cause anybody’s life or make them lose most of their things in the blizzard. She had just wanted his attention because she knew once they returned to Pendragon, she would kill her feelings for him and live a lonely life until she grew gray and old.

"I didn’t—" she began to say, but his cold glare made her swallow her words. He then leaned closer to her, his voice dripping with contempt.

"Do you know what your selfishness has done? Injured men were killed in that blasted wind—good men—who had families back home to return to are now lost in the raging storm. Because you couldn’t go one damn day without getting exactly what you wanted!"

Tears filled her eyes as the weight of his words crushed her, her chest heaving with guilt. She whispered, "I’m sorry..."

"Sorry?" Zane spat in disbelief, his voice mocking. "Sorry doesn’t give them back their lives nor will it get back the supplies we’ll never see again. Sorry doesn’t save the men who had died because of you!"

Thalia’s shoulders shook as she bowed her head, the cold wind biting through her cloak and tangling her hair. His words were harsh and mean, but she didn’t blame him. It was her fault. She wanted to run away and die somewhere so he would leave her alone and stop talking. But Zane wasn’t done. His voice dropped to a lethal whisper, cold as the storm around them.

"You are nothing but a spoiled little girl who’s never faced the consequences of her actions. But out here, Princess, I will make sure the rest of the journey back to the palace is nothing less than hell, and I do not care if I will lose my position for it! I will make you pay for the lives lost here today!"

Glaring at her with pure hate, he turned abruptly, leaving her trembling against the tree as the storm howled around her, her tears freezing against her cheeks as she sank to the ground, clutching her arms around herself as if to protect herself from the harshness of his words.

Was she really everything he claimed she was? She had not meant to make the rest suffer or cause anyone’s death. She had just wanted him to notice her and see just how much she had suffered in the past month. Lord, she had caused the death of two men! She was selfish and heartless and a spoiled princess, no wonder no one wanted her. No wonder her own family didn’t remember her when they escaped.

The look he gave her before walking away would forever haunt her. Nobody had looked at her with so much hate before. And if only he knew how much she loathed herself, if only he knew how much she wished years ago that she had been the one to die instead of her mother.

But he had nothing to worry about because she would never cause him any more anger or pain. She would make everything easy for him and everyone else. She was a burden, and she would lift them of that burden before morning and get them back everything they had lost because of her and then disappear from their lives.

Thalia wiped off her cheeks and stood up after coming up with a plan in her head.