Chapter 103
DARIAN’S POV
Keira.
That name hadn’t been spoken inside this palace for years.
Nothing so beautiful belonged here. The only other time I felt that was when I brought Hazel home after the Hunt.
Every step felt like it defined the turn of the world and the halls seemed longer, infinite even, when I weighed down the carpet with each step.
My office doors stood open and the demonic voices in my head and seething wheezes didn’t stop until I walked inside and shut the doors.
Keira.
The name was whispered in the angelic tone it was meant to be said and usually it stopped when I closed the doors but this time it continued. Her name echoed in my ears, it reached the high ceiling and plastered itself on the walls all around me.
“Stop!” I grabbed my hair and pulled.
I dropped my hands down on the desk and heard the crack in the thick oak wood.
It rushed up my core and filled my chest, I couldn’t contain it and the scream rippled from me in waves as I slammed my fist into the table.
“My King?”
I stood heaving, trying to control these fucking voices and the screaming but they were multiplying, screaming her name and taunting me with her tortured pleas for help.
The door closed behind her and I heard her take a careful step inside.
“You called on me,”
I turned and looked at Nora.
The robe hugged her curves and the heels clicked against the floor. Part of her hair was tied back and the rest of it fell down her back.
She scanned my face with worrisome eyes and drew a shaky breath.
“You whispered her name in the hallway,” she said bravely. Stupidly.
“A whisper isn’t meant to be repeated,” I warned.
One warning, that should be enough. She needed to stay quiet.
I needed everything to be quiet.
“Hazel knows,” she exclaimed.
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Yes, she knew, but how the fuck did she find out?
“She does,” I said.
Nora swayed her hips, her chest was pressed up and exposed and her skin was bronzed under the red robe.
“Why won’t you just be honest with her?”
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“After everything I’ve done to her?”
“She might forgive you…if you give her a chance. If you tell her the truth,”
That thought had crossed my mind at least once a day since she came here but with each day, each torment, each comment, and each scar, I found myself hoping less and less for redemption.
“I don’t think that I could ever respect her if she did. Not after what I’ve done. It’s beyond repair, all that is left is to end this. Once and for all,”
“But I think-”
My patience ran out, I grabbed her neck and pulled her in. I placed a finger on her lips and narrowed my eyes on hers.
“You’re not here to give me your opinions. Your voice isn’t what I paid for,”
She pursed her lips and nodded diligently.
I untied her robe and pulled it off her shoulders. Under the strap of her bra, in a small plastic bag was what I craved. I pinched the bag and pulled it out but couldn’t ignore the way that her eyes ran over my cut.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“It’s not healing, you know it’s because of the herbs, right?” The sass in her tone was something that Marry missed to put in her file and the money had already been cashed.
There was a stupidly brave side to Nora that was easily overlooked because of who she was and what she did. She was a whore, selling her body in exchange for money. It wasn’t a curse word around here but I saw the look on Hazel’s face every time I used it. She deeply disagreed.
“What are you smiling for?” Nora asked while taking out the blade from my bottom left drawer.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
She looked at the metal clock hanging over the bar.
“It’s almost time,”
Nora was right, I looked at the time and it clicked, then it clicked again and then time stopped.
She quickly took the robe off and folded it around the knife and the herbs before she tucked everything away under the desk.
There was a painting of a specific room in the Council on the wall in my office. It had been there since before I was born. I used to think that it was a nifty little reminder of the power we shared, us Lycans and the council but one day the truth reared its ugly head, much like it’s doing now.
The painting worked as a portal between their castle and mine but it wasn’t a pleasant surprise when I found that out.
Blue and yellow strings swirled together in an oval-shaped light that made up a tunnel through which they stepped like they had any right.
Derek and Augustine stepped out wearing their usual black fitted leather coats and the golden emblem sewn onto their chests showed just how old those fuckers were. You only got that double triangle-shaped emblem once you’d shown complete devotion and loyalty to the Council for over fifty years and they always started out as warriors. Behind them were three younger men, dressed in the uniform of the Dark Guard.
The light was swallowed behind them and the portal closed.
“Where’s the third musketeer?” I grinned.
Derek’s lips pulled back in a snarl and he growled.
Aleksei Ashbury, the unfortunate casualty at the annual Ball and coincidentally the man who put the hit out on Hazel’s family.
They may make the rules but it doesn’t mean they can’t be bent and in doing so I made enemies with the entire council. However, they made an enemy in
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me first by pulling the first move and starting the game.
“Now is not the time to be funny, Your Majesty,” Augustine rustled out in his whiskey-thick voice.
He took out an envelope from his pocket and handed it over with a glumly proud grin..
“The final piece of the game. Do this, and you’re done. Do this and you shall see that all of the horrors have been worth it,”
I wanted to gauge his glum eyes out and slit the old crow’s throat.
He knew that I wanted to kill him, they all knew that if I ever got the chance, they were all as good as ash at the bottom of my fire pit.
I grabbed the envelope and put it on the desk.
“Aren’t you going to read the rules?” Augustine coaxed. The skin around his eyes was sagging and a big wart grew just below his eye, but despite rotting like an old piece of fruit Augustine still had the audacity of a twenty-year-old Alpha with an ego too big for his head.
The Alpha’s Hunt
