Chapter 195
I was in my office, the lights were off, and the door was closed as I poured myself a drink of crystal-clear vodka. The glass trembled in my hand when I raised it to my lips and downed every last drop. My mind railed around all things Hazel: how she was feeling, why she fell and screamed in pain, and how to keep her safe. Ordering Lauren and Nora to keep her in our room was the only thing I could think of, other than sending her away, but there was no one l trusted enough to go with her. I would’ve done it myself, but I was needed here. To lead my Guards and to kill that Demon fucker and his pets.
The mind link between Hazel and me was blocked, and so was the bond. I had to, or I wouldn’t be able to think.
Fuck the powers and the strength. They could take it, I would gladly hand it over to them if that meant I would get to keep Hazel alive. Part of why I never told her about her being the source of my powers was out of fear of her thinking that it was the only reason I wanted to keep her safe. I could lose everything tomorrow and still love the life I lived as long as she was in it. How do I keep a person that important safe? Safe from everything I had caused, from everyone who would wish her harm because they could never reach me.
“You’re wallowing,”
I sat the glass down and heard the door shut behind Mrs. Smith.
The keys on her belt clanged together when she walked across the office. I poured her a drink and placed it in her open palm.
“It’s allowed,” I said and poured myself another one.
“Not for you.”
“Because I’m the King?” I glared at her and downed my drink.
Mrs. Smith wiped her mouth with her apron and put the glass down.
She raised a finger at me like she did when I was a boy.
“Because you have not earned it,” her voice was grave and cold, very few people were allowed to see past het grouchy persona but every now and then it would pierce through her cranky wrinkled face,
“Your mother told me once that you would never fully become King until you met your match. Well, you met her, and then you tortured her. You ripped that girl’s will to live from her very core, and despite the hell that she lived in because of you, somehow, you won her heart. Do you know what that tells me?”
“That she serves better?”
“Oh, definitely but no. It tells me that she opened her heart to a man who would protect it, even though he shattered it. You took her life away, but in a cosmic, fucked up way, you also brought her back to life more alive than she has ever been, but the price to keep a girl like her doesn’t come cheap. You got her back, Darian, now you must earn the right to keep her,”
Earn the right to keep her. That’s what I had to do, by removing anyone who could threaten her life.
Starting with the Council and the humans. And finishing with the Demon. The glass shattered in my hand from the mere thought of him, I would feel much better when it was his heart I held.
The door burst open and slammed into the wall when a Guard rushed in.
“My King, it’s Hazel,” his eyes shifted between me and Mrs. Smith. “She’s in the hospital,”
The Alpha’s Hunt
