27

CHAPTER 27: Darkling Royale

It was not because you are soft-hearted, it’s because I will not allow what is mine, to fall for the trickery of any enemy she comes across.

I stare him down, Elder Elias must have truly lost his mind. I stare as the crowd does, when the fully healed Nicolai Darkling steps through a set of doors. He straightens, eyes directed on mine. My nostrils flare, “Quite the performance, love,” Nicolai claps, muscles branching as he raises them out. I watch Kai Torrence smirk in the corner of my eyes. The atmosphere related to Martin the way they couldn’t have done with me. I stare at him as he moves, “The voice of a true Queen, I’m so very impressed,” He had healed quicker than he should have. Moving with Robert and Reina not far behind.

Martin steps up as he studies me closely, “Someone all should listen to, there are things my mate has voiced that are issues that need to be examined in future meetings, however we have tighter matters here. Starting with the violence you all saw in my mate’s fight with me not too long ago. The aggressiveness in her stance has made a great many of you wary of the bond her and I share. Not only that, it’s made you doubt me to being affectionate, to being passionate, when what is a leader of affection. Passion is accepted when thinking about his civilians. Protection and strategy holds greater values, if it were my Mate’s way, we wouldn’t have overtaken the council.” He catches laughs in the crowd.

I stare at him, before finding the breath of no one stopping him.

A hand tightens against mine, he gripped it in his hand, “It appears my mate and I have a long discussion necessary here, we’ll return soon.” He announces, pulling me behind the throne and towards the closest set of doors, I rip my hand out of his and stare straight at him.

He narrows his eyes, “Keep walking.” He orders.

“If I can beat you once, I’ll bloody do it again.” I spit at him.

“One bite, you missed my head, love.” He says sarcastically. He grabs my arm yet again and pulls me down the hall before entering an elevator.

“How are you awake?” I question him.

He studies me, “You do know what I am, don’t you? I must admit, that fight seemed well worth its entertainment.” He didn’t sound pissed nor happy about the mess within his arms. He steps forward in the elevator, grasping my chin between his fingers, I grab his wrist and dig my fingers into muscle.

He narrows his eyes, “I wouldn’t, if anything, I want to rip out a piece of you just to return the favour, however we do have far more pressing matters than your tantrum,” He starts off with, I felt my eyes drip into into a cold, wet darkness as they regard him carefully. Like regarding a beast looking colourful for the crowd, but he’s dipped in black and red when I see him for who and what he truly is. Nothing more than animals skin.

“It’s not a tantrum if it’s justified.” I point out.

“You call that justice?” He asks me, voice dipping lower, softer. I shove him off me and give him such a dirty look. He’s unaffected, not looking away, not stepping down. Elias wouldn’t seen to step down either, not until I gave him a look of disappointment. If he had truly understood what was going on, why he had first been urging for this, rooting for it and now, he’s a walking conflicted contradiction.

The doors open, Elias stands there, stoic with the Elders behind him, lingering close in the dark. Martin moves from me and steps out, Robert hands him a folder, not gracing me with even a look as they move down the hall. I’m forced to follow with Elias not far behind me, “...she should be punished for her actions.” Robert argues.

“You should be punished for breathing.” I tell him behind the both of them.

Martin turns to me and grabs me by the neck, lifting me off the floor. I croak, my eyes boring into silver ones, he stares through me, soul and body and not in a good way, “No, I’m almost too certain you should be. Step inside, now.” He orders, shoving me against the door of the room he wanted open.

I stare at him, “So much for promising change.” I mutter, hand against the thin skin of my throat, his claw scraped enough skin to feel red, but not enough to rip the surface. Robert gives me a dirty look, opening the door, I’m forced in, my hip banging against the corner of the table and I grit my teeth at the flare against my side, sitting down at the head of the table while Martin forces Elias and the others to remain outside the room.

“I would if you would,” Martin’s voice echoes against the walls.

I tighten my grip on the table, Robert looked uncomfortable, hating me being in a room with him by the looks of his tense aura and facial expression alone. Martin takes a seat, eyeing me closely, “No matter your speeches, or even that bitchy stance you believe is effective, we won’t be here for much longer. Course is set for my true kingdom.” And there it was, the reason the leash was loosened and the noise around my neck felt like freedom—it tasted like it for a single second.

Until he announced his coronation. His crowning to claim his rightful throne, “So that’s all you’ve lived for, an old piece of jewellery?” I ask him, my lips curling. Not up nor down, neither happiness or disappointment, just everyday disgust in its eerily green and cold form.

He stares at me, “As I’ve repeated to you, you are Queen.” Not you are the Queen or you are a queen, just Queen. Just a word, a title, a manner of some hierarchy because that is all it will ever been in the werewolf world. A new goddamn title. A new rank, something greater than Luna, yet lower than King. Always beneath him. Goddess, was he one sickening pup.

I stare at him, leaning on the table.

Before I yawn.

Martin raises an eyebrow, “Mature.” He points out.

“Better than your antics of throwing a girl less than twice your size around like a rag doll just to look like the big man on campus. Should I tell you that every time you hurt me, it shrinks your dick?” I ask him, thinking of mentioning it now since he’s probably reached the size of a fucking peanut by now.

“Funny, I forgot to laugh.” He says flatly.

“It wasn’t aimed at making you laugh. Just a suggestion to go to the doctor...again. I’ve sent you there a couple times, you won’t get lost. On second thought, I think you should get lost.” I tell him, my mind blank now that he’s in a room sharing the same oxygenated molecules I need, his bloody cabin dioxide scented worse than a hole directed to the great underworld.

He doesn’t even blink at me, the distasteful aura around Robert was clear, “Once the coronation is complete, then your initiation must begin.” Now he looks like a grinning corpse. Robert stares me down like whatever this initiation is, it’s something I deserve. He thinks it’s all I deserve.

“What is an initiation?” An initiation into what.

“Sex in front of the region leaders. Much like the old times of the royals in the human realm.” Robert says happily.

I stare at the both of them, “I’ll pass, find another girl to ride you.” I say to Martin.

He leans forward, “While Robert’s description of it is plain, that is how it will be. I am respected, if I can dominate you in bed. And not be afraid to show it.” A darkness levels in his eyes.

I stare at him, “Are you insane?”

He shakes his head, “It’s how it’s always been. The region leaders are all mated, they merely watch, even for a moment just to ensure the purity of the female Queen and the dominance in the male. Once it is complete and your innocence is clearly broken, they leave. You’re to be impregnated within the week.” And he’s only staring this now.

I stare at him, completely speechless.

He was out of his mind.

There was nothing sane about the male in front of me. My lips part as I stare so blankly, the anger ripped out of me and an emptiness that seeped in, “I’d kill each one of them, before removing your head from those meaningless shoulders. Your crown...bathed in your blood, it would be colourful, maybe even historical.” I whisper.

Robert loses the smile quickly. I stand slowly, “Every inch of you is vulgar, but this choice...these choices you make and these rules you live by based on a disgusting tradition, especially considering the only way you could ever have me is by force.” I point out.

He stands slowly, “No need to be so blatantly visual, and paint such an exaggeration of these beautiful events.” He’s gotten sicker by the day, by the minute, the second, every moment he breathes. I step out of the room, numb and unseeing as I shoulder past Elias, electric shock shoots over my shoulder. The room was clearly soundproof, no one knew a thing, the only reaction I receive is the basis of confusion and disgust, but it’s directed to me. I stumble in the hall, before entering the room of too many names, of too many faces.

They blur into one. They blur into green, red and yellow lights in a street with traffic, with lights that circle and taunt and it makes me sick enough to stumble outside, feet on grass, hands and knees that aren’t far behind, they squish against the soil and it burns under my sling I knew no one was around, I knew no one followed because for the first time in a long time, I relied on my wolf.

I relied on the animal, the first coat that I don’t let out unless absolutely necessary because I was born a wolf, but I never wanted to walk on all four floors. It meant submission to the council, it meant submission to males because this race was more sexiest and branched, favouring those with half a brain and a dick, but all those else were ignored, were ridiculed and shoved into this kind of life.

I felt it burn at the very edge of my fingertips first, it moves up my arms and the pain grows blinding as that same sensation of living on magma engraves itself within me. I don’t think, I shoot palm out, crunched by the air around me when it grew humid and hot, when it suffered the lines of the Saharan sun. It burst out of me in a sharpness and precision that just bursts out of me. I roar, it slams against the tree and it grows like a lion on its prey. I still at the smoke that burns up to the night sky, but it’s the bright, red hot and orange deep fire burning against the tree that did nothing wrong but be in my line of sight.

I stumble back in horror.

I made that.

My fingers, in my face, that burning sensation dims as the energy I had before seeps out of me and the tree becomes illuminated in its death. Burning bright, the fire crawls around it like a vine until I’m shoved back mountains away, Elias calls upon the cold—no, it’s not Elias, because standing there in front of me, making me horrified and confused and fearful all at once is a man no one believed still exists.

Ice freezes around the tree, the humidity I created and burned against the atmosphere was gone, in its place was a pair of the most estranged and established blue I’d ever seen. He kneels down in front of me, his white blonde hair was short. His skin paler than mine.

Alastair ‘Ares’ Fawn.