Chapter 65
What the hell was happening? I looked at Darian and it took every ounce of strength I had not to cower under his fear-inflicting gaze.
Everyone else stepped back they literally took a full step back and watched us like a theatre play instead of stopping their king from killing an innocent girl.
Every part of me knew that she was innocent, it wasn’t a question of innocence but rather how I could prove it. Iliana hadn’t killed anyone and she sure as hell wasn’t responsible for poisoning the king’s wine.
Her eyes met mine with the deepest fear I’d seen, the tears rolled down her cheeks and her lips quivered like the fall leaf on a wilting tree.
I swallowed a sob and tried to form the words to reason with Darian but I could barely feel my hands let alone find a way to speak without seeing the thin string on which my friend’s life hung in his hands.
What if anything I said pushed him over the edge and he killed her? How does someone become so evil that they make you afraid to even speak at all? Anything I said or didn’t say would play a part in what happened and if something were to happen to her I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Why did she come here…
This shit was excruciatingly painful and I didn’t dare turn around and look at Emanuel. He probably blamed me. Ever since he stepped inside the palace he’d been off, he looked at me differently and barely said two words that didn’t have to do with Iliana.
“Darian, please,” I said calmly. Or did it sound desperate? Maybe, I couldn’t hear my voice at this point. All I heard were Iliana’s sobs and my heart about to burst.
I was very much dependent on the fact that there were witnesses here and that Darian wouldn’t have the audacity to act out towards me in front of them.
I beg to the gods that I’m right.
‘Please what, puppet?’
Coward, can’t even take the conversation out loud. He has to send his words through the mind link, where he can privately say whatever the hell he wants.
I coiled my fingers into fists and felt the pressure against my palms.
“Think this through. Don’t just act out of anger!”
“I’m not acting out of anger,” I explained to Trixy.
“I hear your thoughts, remember? I know what you’re about to do and I employ you to think it over and maybe choose to be smart for once,”
“I am”
“How?” Trixy asked.
“Better me than her. I can’t lose her, Trixy,”
“You can kill an innocent girl but you can’t talk to your mate out loud? How royal of you,” I spat.
Whatever waited for me I could take as long as he dropped Iliana and let her leave. She and Emanuel could run as far away from here as possible and they never had to return.
I expected a threat, maybe a glare or a frustrated growl for my disobedience, and then disciplinary actions later in private where no witnesses would see.
What I didn’t expect was a laugh to rumble from his chest, a dark chuckle that echoed in my ears and forever be the sound in my nightmares.
He smiled and lifted his head.
1/2
Chapter 65
“Bring me my mate,” he ordered.
A scream let my lips before I could choke it and I grabbed the guard’s hand which fisted my hair and pulled it from my scalp.
He held my hair at the root, clenching his hand like a toddler, and forced me ahead of him.
The Alpha’s Hunt
