Tricia looked at Nicholas tearfully and said in a small, hurt voice, "Nicholas, according to my clan's custom, a woman only gets one bride heist in her whole life. I know ours is just for show, but could we still see the ritual through to the end?"

Her voice grew even softer as she continued, "I know it's Charlene you love. But could you just pretend I'm the bride tonight? Just this one night."

Nicholas fell silent.

Tricia lowered her head, her lashes trembling faintly.

The people around them started egging them on again.

"Time for a wedding toast! Drink up, bride and groom!"

Nicholas lifted the wine glass and intertwined his arm with Tricia's.

The torchlight illuminated both their faces.

All around was cheering and laughter, loud enough to raise the roof.

Nicholas drank the wine, yet his gaze involuntarily drifted back toward that distant mountain path, the same one he'd carried Tricia down earlier. That was where he'd crossed paths with Brad at the bend.

Brad was someone Nicholas had met at a networking mixer back in his early startup days.

They had had drinks a few times and were more acquaintances than anything.

Brad wasn't one for many words, but he was steady and reliable—the sort of man one would trust to have one's back without a second thought.

At the time, Brad had also been carrying someone on his back. A bride from the neighboring village, he'd said.

Nicholas had taken a couple of glances at me. I was slender, lying quietly against Brad's back, with only the nape of my neck exposed.

The line of my nape and the angle of my bowed head had struck him as inexplicably familiar. But then Tricia had cried out in pain, and he stopped looking at me altogether.

Now that he thought about it, that bride looked like—

"Nicholas?" Tricia's voice pulled him back. "Is that a yes?"

"Sure," he replied, nodding absentmindedly.

Then, he stepped aside and pulled out his phone to call me. He figured that he owed me an explanation, just so there'd be no misunderstanding.

The phone rang for a long time before someone finally picked up.

"Hello?" It was a middle-aged woman's voice.

In the noisy background, Nicholas could faintly make out the sound of things being moved around.

He froze for a second. "Hello, can you put Charlene on?"

"Charlene?" There was a pause on the other end, as if she was saying something to someone nearby. Then, she replied, "She's not here. We're packing up her things right now to send them over to her."

He wondered where they were sending my stuff.

Nicholas tightened his grip on the phone.

"Charlene never lets her phone out of her hand. Where are you sending her things?"

The woman on the line paused, as if she hadn't expected him to ask that.

"I'm her aunt, Jenny Kirby." Her tone was casual, as if she were just making small talk. "We need to pack up Charlene's belongings and send them over to her in-laws."

"Her in-laws?" Nicholas paused slightly.

Was I planning to move back in with him?

Well, that was good!

He'd planned it that way all along anyway. After the bride heist, he'd bring me back to the city, and we would no longer be staying in the village.

Nicholas swallowed hard and said sheepishly, "Aunt Jenny, there was a mix-up in tonight's bride heist. Did Charlene say anything?"

"No, not a thing. Several bride heists were going on in our village tonight," Aunt Jenny replied breezily. "Besides, what would Charlene have to say?"

Even so, a wave of inexplicable unease rose sharply within Nicholas.

He was about to ask something else when Aunt Jenny cut him off in a hurry.

"Oh dear, I can't keep talking. We're still busy packing over here. Both Charlene and Tricia have been carried off. We've got to get their things sent over right away."

Nicholas froze.

What did she mean by that? Hadn't he only carried Tricia away? As for me, there was no way I would leave with someone I didn't like.

He clenched his phone tightly. "Aunt Jenny, are you saying that Charlene was carried off by someone?"

"That's right. The Rangel family's son from the neighboring village carried her off."