I Was Matched to Seven SSS Beast Husbands novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Null
At the Matching Court Alden dumps Maxine for her best friend, the High Marshal sends her to the Graveyard Seven, and she signs her own sentence; the pod opens on six cairns and a wolf.
The gauge in the Matching Court read zero, and four hundred people in the gallery drew a breath together.
Maxine Rooke kept her palms flat on the cold plate and did not move.
She had been waiting for this reading for three years.
She had not been waiting for the silence after it.
"Null," said the Court clerk, as if she were reading a price.
Behind the glass, the great screen over the dais showed the word in white letters twelve feet tall.
NULL. No element. No match.
Maxine took her hands off the plate.
Her left palm was warm and her right palm was damp, the way they had been since she was a child.
She had never told anyone why.
In her last life she had learned to hide everything useful.
Eleven winters of famine had taught her that people take what they can see.
"Max."
Alden Vexley came down the dais steps in his cream dress uniform, gold hair combed, jaw perfect for the cameras.
He was a Rank SS lion, and he was her fiance of four years.
He did not look at her face.
He looked at the cameras along the gallery rail, and then he held up the betrothal contract.
"I'm sorry," he said, in the voice he used for charity galas. "Truly. But I can't tie the Vexley name to a Null."
He tore the contract in half.
Then he tore it again, slowly, so the back rows could see.
The gallery murmured. Someone laughed.
"Alden," Maxine said. "You've known me since I was twenty."
"And I've been generous since then."
A girl in a pale blue gown slid out of the front row and took his arm.
Vesper Lorne, twenty-four, soft blonde hair, pearl pins, the friend who had held Maxine's hand at her grandmother's funeral.
Vesper's gauge had read Spring-grade that morning, and the whole hall had applauded.
"I didn't want it to be like this," Vesper whispered.
She did not let go of Alden's arm.
"You didn't want it," Maxine said. "You just took it."
Vesper's eyes filled with tears, on cue, and the cameras swung toward her.
Maxine felt something in her chest go quiet and flat and cold.
It was not heartbreak.
She had survived worse than heartbreak, and she knew the difference.
"The Court recognizes the Null clause," said a calm voice from the dais.
The High Marshal rose from his chair.
He was fifty-eight, white uniform, grey crew cut, Alden's father, and the man who ran the Matching Court and every supply line it touched.
He never raised his voice, because he had never needed to.
"A bride with no element is a burden on the Union," he said.
"The clause assigns her where the Union has no other use for one."
A clerk read from a tablet.
"The Graveyard Seven. Ghostfall."
The gallery gasped, and the sound was almost pleasure.
Maxine knew the name, because every child in the lower ring knew it.
Seven SSS beast-men, the finest officers of the Ninth Fleet, driven mad by Blood Fever and exiled to a dead moon.
Six brides had been sent to them in four years.
None had ever come back.
"A mercy," the Marshal said gently. "The Seven are always short of company."
Alden smiled into the cameras.
Two guards stepped down from the dais with restraint cuffs.
Maxine looked at the guards, and at the plate under her hands, and at the six hundred credits left in her account.
Then she did something nobody in the hall expected.
She walked up to the clerk's desk herself and picked up the stylus.
"Where do I sign?"
The clerk blinked. "Miss, the guards will..."
"I'm not going to let them drag me. Where do I sign?"
The clerk pointed with a shaking finger.
Maxine signed her name across the reassignment form, in full, in a clean hand.
Then she turned to the dais.
She pulled the engagement ring off her finger, a Vexley diamond the size of a bean, and walked up to the Marshal's table.
He watched her come with polite interest.
She dropped the ring into his wine glass.
It sank to the bottom with a small, clear sound.
"Keep it," she said. "You'll want something to remember me by."
The hall went dead silent.
Alden's smile finally slipped.
"Count the days," Maxine said, to him and to his father and to every camera in the room. "I'll be eating."
The guards took her out by the arms, but she walked.
She was walking when they put her in a star-pod with a single bag and a bolted hatch.
She was still upright when the pod fell for six hours through black and white and red.
It struck ground with a bang that rattled her teeth.
The hatch hissed.
Cold, rust-scented air rolled in, and she lifted her head.
Six low mounds of stacked scrap stood in a row on the plain outside, each one topped with a flat piece of hull.
Cairns.
Past them, in the dark between two wrecked warships, a pair of yellow eyes was watching her.
They were wolf's eyes.
They did not blink.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend