CONQUEST • Negan

I take thee...

ACT TWO

"Girl, stop squirming." Clodagh commanded, squeezing my shoulders and wrestling me still. "You keep this up and you're gonna walk down that aisle looking a hot mess."

"I'm trying. I'm just—"

"You're nervous. I know, I get it. But can you tell your nerves to chill for like—another five minutes so I can finish doing your hair?"

I'd fought against humans and animals and monsters alike, faced death more than I could count on both hands. Shit, I had stared down Carter Marlow and the wrathful disappointment he wielded over me like a flaming guillotine. And still, I don't think I had ever felt so damn nervous in my life.

No.

I wasn't nervous. I hadn't experienced anxiety or fear ever since I completed my withdrawals and recognized a change in myself. My mind had altered. My brain chemistry; permanently changed. There was an emptiness inside me where rampant panic once banged and clattered without relent, until, of course, I would seek relief from that feeling with even more drugs. And for the most part, my lack of fear had served me well during the apocalypse, allowing me to tackle high stake situations with a level-head, but now, it only filled me with dread.

Because this wasn't anxiety. This was anticipation.

It was apprehensive jitters that had me so fidgety. It was the fluttering in my chest that had me shifting in my seat... and also the fact that I absolutely despised sitting still for even a minute.

All because I was getting married tonight.

I—of all people—was getting married.

Me.

Married.

The girl I was five—no—one year ago would've cackled until her throat was raw if you'd told her that 12 months into the future, she would be preparing herself to walk down the aisle.

Better yet, the most hilariously bizarre part of it all was that I was getting married to Negan, the leader of the damn Saviours who had been oppressing the Alexandrians.

Negan: my enemy, my rival, my nemesis, my... fiancée.

The man, dramatic as ever, had spared no expense in seeing that this was the event of the post-apocalyptic new world. God, you'd think he was the bride-to-be with all the fussing over details and meticulous planning he had gone through for this thing, but I was happy enough to let him steer the reins on it all. The wedding was for his sake after all, not mine, since I knew that none of it was even genuine.

Planning the wedding, paired with his ongoing responsibilities as leader of the Sanctuary, had demanded so much of his time that he'd become kind of MIA over the last three weeks. Or at least, I knew that was the excuse he was riding off of, so he had an excuse to avoid me.

Okay, maybe he wasn't necessarily actively avoiding me. Maybe it had been a joint effort from us both.

On his part, I knew he feared I would go back on my word of marrying him. He feared saying the wrong thing, a  and pushing me over the edge. He feared that after what he'd done to the Remmington girls and I after we came back and found Daryl missing, one more wrong move or word would cause irreparable damage to the relationship he supposedly valued oh so much—not that we were anything more than cordial enemies, at best.

I had considered it ten times or more; calling quits on the whole wedding melodrama.

If it weren't for the lives depending on this, I couldn't promise that Negan wouldn't have already been dead for how he had behaved those three weeks ago. And he knew this.