Chapter 79: Chapter 79

Kyson POV I felt sick knowing Ivy wasn’t beside me where I could touch her and feel her warmth as I stalked through the halls searching for Gannon who wasn’t answering the Mindlink. Every cell in my body called out to her, telling me to go back to my mate and covet her away from the rest of the world. However, I had to remember Ivy didn’t want that. I wasn’t even sure if she wanted me after the heartache, I caused her.

One thing was becoming more evident to me, though, her instincts were growing stronger, and I knew she would soon shift. It was inevitable, and I was just waiting for it to happen.

“Where are you?” Damian rushed through the mind link, making me halt my steps in the middle of the corridor.

“Looking for Gannon, I need to speak to him about Abbie,” I told him, jogging down the steps toward his room.

“He’s with me. Come to the office; it’s important,” Damian said, cutting off the link abruptly. I growled, turning on my heel and stalking toward the front of the castle to my office. Pushing it open, Damian had boxes of files scattered all over the floor. Dustin was also rummaging through paperwork, and l spotted Gannon passed out drunk in a chair by the window. The smell of liquor hung heavily in the air, and it was so unlike Gannon to get himself into this sort of state. Clucking my tongue. I turned my attention to Damian and Dustin just as Dustin handed Damian what appeared to be a picture.

“Here’s another one,”

“How the f**k did we not figure this out?” Damian muttered under his breath. He suddenly ran his arm over my desk, swiping everything off it, and it crashed to the floor as he and Dustin started setting out documents and pictures.

“Marissa isn’t her mother; you were right,” Damian said, and I walked over to the table.

“The man pretending to be Ivy’s father Jason Clenton was King Garret and Queen Tatiana’s gardener.

Marissa was a staff member inside the castle, but everyone assumed she was a cleaner or cook. We could never find any documentation of what position she applied for,” Damian said while sliding a document over to me.

“Okay, but did you find anything on Azalea?” I asked him.

“That’s just it. Azalea never existed in any files: we don’t even have her birth certificate, but we have this,” Dustin said, handing me an application form for a job. I glanced over it, noting Jason’s name on top of the document.

“For a gardener position?” I ask, shaking my head, wondering what this was supposed to mean.

“Look in the notes, down the bottom and the date. We were so busy looking at Marissa’s files we never thought to check anyone else’s, assuming they were k****d when she opened the gates for the hunters.

My eyes scan over the document to see some handwritten notes by the King or Queen.

The applicant has a partner wishing to apply for a nanny position. It then listed Marissa’s name and her mobile number. It was dated three days after Azalea was born. Dustin hands me another document. It was our old staff applications. Inside were her identity documents, a criminal history which was squeaky clean, but down the bottom was a part saying. Applicant admits she has a 7-year- old child and can’t work weekends as her babysitter works on Saturdays and Sundays. I glanced at her records from the King and Queen and her start date. My eyes went to Damian’s and Dustin’s. “Abbie’s parents had to be watching her?” Damian nods his head.

“Azalea would have been 7 when Marissa started working here. 9, when my sister died, which wasn’t long before she ended up in the orphanage.” I told him, glancing back down at the paperwork.

“Yes, she worked for the King and Queen for two years. Azalea would have been two when she went missing, which matches everything else; your sister was k****d 7 years later, making Azalea 9 at the time. And we found something else,” Damian said. Handing me a diary that belonged to the Queen.

“Where did you get this?” I asked him.

“When we visited the Kingdom with Ivy, we found it in a shoebox in the shed. They were mainly working diaries with appointments, and that was stuffed down the bottom. Dustin and I found it today when we looked through the box.”

“My eyes scanned the page, and I gasped. A picture of a small child sitting on the Queen’s lap eating a strawberry from her mother’s fingertips was crammed between the pages. Marissa stood nearby in the background, watching them in her uniform. “That was taken two days before the a****k; look at the date.

More importantly, look at the name.” Damian said.

Azalea Ivy-Rose Landeena 2 -years old.

“Ivy is Azalea, and you’re positive?” I asked, wanting to be 100% sure this time everything. However, even her instincts, so many things clicked into place, and I couldn’t understand how I was so blinded to what was right in front of me this entire time. We assumed she was a werewolf because that’s what Ivy thought she was, what she was listed in the orphanage, and what her kidnapper parents were.

“One way to be 100% positive, though I am positive, Ivy. Is Azalea. Though you will have to check,”

Damian said while pointing to the following line in the diary, which listed Azalea’s meal plan, her feed times, and routine all inside this little diary. Along with identifying characteristics, height, weight measurements, and mentioning a birthmark. A strawberry-shaped birthmark on her inner left t***h along the crease at the apex of her legs. My brows furrow, trying to remember if I noticed any mark on her there, but I wasn’t really paying attention when I had my face down there, too busy enjoying the noise she made and the taste of her flesh.

“In the back of the diary were some things the Queen listed, complaints she had warned to her husband about Marissa,” Dustin said, turning the diary over and upside down before opening the back page.

“Marissa was warned numerous times for calling Azalea Ivy instead of using her name. She was also whipped three times on separate occasions when she was caught telling Azalea to call her mummy,”

Dustin said, pointing out the different notations made inside the diary.

“Ivy’s Lycan. She’s f*****g royalty!” I murmured, horrified. Some part of me hoped I was wrong though I also wished I was right, not wanting her to be too tied to that evil woman, but now this just made things a h**l of a lot more complicated.

“What have I done?” I whispered. Damian folded his arms, watching me before rubbing his chin. Dustin fell back in the chair he was sitting in and scrubbed both hands down his face.

“We will work it out. She’ll forgive you,” Damian said, and I shook my head.

“I blamed her!” I roared, punching the desk. The wood creaked and groaned, splitting down the middle whilst I tried to rein control over myself.

“She’ll forgive you, Kyson. You aren’t only to blame. We all should have figured it out,” Damian said, and Dustin nodded, putting his head down.

“She is a Lycan. I could have k****d her by tossing her aside, Damian. She could have f*****g died!” I yelled at him.

“You didn’t know! You just need to get her to mark you, and it will be fine. Ivy being Lycan, can go into heat any day now, Kyson, and she will mark you, which will reforge the bond completely. She won’t be able to help herself. You said it yourself. The bond wasn’t completely severed for you, so it couldn’t have been for her either.” Damian tried to reason.

“Your words are making it worse, Damian. She would have been in agony. No wonder she fretted the way she did,” I said, dropping into my chair and placing my head in my hands.

“You can’t take what you did back, but you can make it up to her, Kyson,” he replied, but I didn’t see a way possible.

“She barely lets me touch her!” I snap at him.

“Yet she is acting on instinct mostly these last couple of days. It is only a matter of time before she shifts,” Damian says, and I sighed before looking up at him and shaking my head.

“If she doesn’t mark me beforehand, her shift will be excruciating since I put stress on our bond. She would already be weakened,” I scoff, shaking my head at how badly I fucked everything up. Damian and Dustin say nothing, knowing I am right. What could they say other than I fucked up? Now I just had to hope she would forgive me for it.

We were in the middle of packing everything up when I realized something looking over at Dustin. “Wait, you should be with Ivy. She wanted to leave the room earlier,” I told him, and his head snapped up.

“You could have told me, s**t, she is probably wondering why I am not around,” Dustin says, getting to go in search of her. I shake my head.

“It’s fine; I can feel she is fine. She must still be in the room” I breathe.

“I suppose I should go see if I can find this birthmark before I tell her if she lets me touch her,” I huff before walking out of my office to go in search of her.