4 #2
“No, after they saw her use her magic,” she corrected. “It just happened to be while she stayed with me.” She filled us in and I was horrified how Rhys and Amelia behaved. Belinda had a few stories like that even.
“What do we do now?” I asked when the silence in the room was honestly deafening.
Maple snorted. “I think Sagan’s idea of getting drunk is spot-on. Our brother was a fucking monster and so was Darren’s sister, our sister-in-law. And they just broke the most wonderful, selfless, cutest little kid ever from the grave no less. So yeah, getting drunk sounds magnificent.”
It really did, but… Then what?
We opened the wine and drank, but randomly would ask a question of each other none of us could really answer.
How did we not notice? When do we think the weird theory started?
When did Amelia learn the language of the trolls?
Why that language? Why send Sagan to foreign countries where her having two dragons could be discovered easier if they didn’t want her to be Rhys’s heir?
And on and on and on.
I must have passed out at some point because I blinked awake when I heard Sagan ask something in a hollow voice.
“Do you think they care what I’m going through?” She snorted. “No, right? Just that I’m handling it wrong. I always handled everything wrong. It was never good enough—I was never good enough or up to his standards.”
I shook Maple awake since she was next to me and then reached over for Darren when I saw he was on the other chair. They both stirred and I held my finger up to my lips.
Sagan was sitting out on the balcony with Benson and he was trying to comfort her, but she was leaning away from him.
“Yesterday I would have said of course they care, but today I don’t know anything,” Benson whispered, sounding haunted.
“He didn’t care Kole was cheating on me. He didn’t even tell me, just talked to Vex. He knew it was going on for years. Do you think he knew and let it happen as a way to punish me because I’m a monster or whatever?”
“You’re not a monster, Sagan,” Benson rasped.
“I broke half the bones in your body like nothing as a child,” she chuckled darkly. “I’ve always known I was a monster, just never thought my parents thought I was actually evil.”
“It was an accident. Accidents happen and—”
“Yeah, of course they do,” she whispered. “Do you think they’d be happy if Lori had raped me?”
“Sagan, please, you have to stop—you can’t think like that,” Benson begged her.
She looked at him. “Do you think there’s any punishment I could suffer that would make them forgive me for being born?”
A part of me died inside and I saw Darren looked the same.
“They are the ones who were wrong, not you,” Benson choked out. “The gods made you different—special.”
“And hated by her parents. You have to be a special kind of fucked up to achieve that.” She focused back out on the night. “All I did to hide their mess and… I hate them.”
“No one would blame you.”
“Monsters hate their own parents.”
“No. No, monsters hate their own baby, Sagan. You were a baby when your hair changed like that. You didn’t do anything. You didn’t—none of this is your fault.”
“Yeah,” she whispered, clearly not believing it. “I understand Joris a lot better now.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he admitted.
“He doesn’t want his life. He joined the competition so he doesn’t have to be Alpha. He won’t stay. He doesn’t want to be my mate. I promised to help him escape and have a quiet life when this is all over. Now I understand what he wants.”
Oh, ouch. That was… Ouch.
“I’m sorry,” Benson whispered. “I know you like him.”
She gave a half shrug. “He likes me too but not my being queen. Funny, right? I wasn’t supposed to be queen, and that’s the one thing that will keep me from having a good man love me. And Thorn wants to fuck me while he’s here, but he’s meant to be Alpha, not downgraded to be my mate.
“Onyx wants me almost obsessively, and he’s the uncle of the abusive ex-boyfriend who took my virginity and all I knew before this crazy started.
So, I honestly think the elders won that I’ll be broken in the end.
And now my parents that I’ll be punished for being born a monster and not…
Yeah. Punished for becoming queen when he didn’t want me to. ”
All three of us were wiping our eyes and all I could think was the same thing again.
What the fuck, Rhys?
Sagan let out a pained chuckle. “You pretended not to care about me because you weren’t worthy of Father’s heir.
What he would do to you since I was going to be queen, right?
Except you were actually the perfect reason to the world for me to step aside when they had the child they wanted.
” She threw back her head and let out something between a laugh and a sob.
Benson kissed her hair and tried to comfort her, but it was clear that she didn’t want it but couldn’t risk hurting him pushing him away. I couldn’t watch that and was on my feet to stop it, annoyed I hadn’t yet, but my whole body was between shock and just… All over the fucking place.
“No, he still would have stopped it but to save you,” she choked out. “He actually loved you and wouldn’t want you with a monster. You broke my heart over bullshit because I wasn’t enough—I’m never enough for anyone. And they loved you. I hate you because of it.”
“Please don’t say that,” Benson begged, just as upset. “Don’t ever say that. I didn’t—we couldn’t—please, none of that—it’s all different now and I can—”
I reached him just in time to stop him from saying something that could have snapped her sanity completely. I yanked him off of her and snarled in his face. “She clearly doesn’t want you touching her. You know she can’t push you off.”
“I’m trying to help,” he rasped and reached for her again. “I have to comfort her and—”