4
Fraser
“I’m going to need you to repeat that, mate,” I said to the guard at my door.
“The queen has ordered every member of the De la Rosa family be removed from the castle and not permitted to return,” he repeated. “You can pack and we’ll escort you—”
“Yeah, no, that’s not happening unless I speak with Sagan,” I told him, glancing at the other guard who looked uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry, Prince Fraser, but I was right there when Benson received the order from the queen and—”
“I’m not leaving without talking to my niece when this place still has a bunch of Alphas here and—I wasn’t here for the last coup attempt and I’m not going to be dumb if this is another one,” I said coldly.
They shared a look and the second one spoke. “I understand that, but we have our orders, Your Highness. So you can pack or—”
“Yeah, then sorry about this, mate,” I mumbled before decking him and shoulder-checking the other one to get past them. I took off for the stairs that would take me up to Sagan’s floor.
“Fuck, I figured he would do that, but he didn’t have to make it hurt so bad,” the one I hit moaned.
“It’s better he made it real,” the other one comforted.
“Yeah, then you get hit by someone of the royal bloodline. I didn’t want to know the taste of my nose.”
If it was any other day—any other situation even—that would have been too funny, but I was scared as to what crazy was going on now.
And crazy it was.
Ice filled my veins when Treena mentioned Eloise and I was a wind dragon, so that wasn’t how things went. I tried to think of anything to say while Maple called Darren for help and sent a carrier pigeon for Belinda when we learned she wasn’t in the castle.
Probably not, but the ancient was going to take the cell phone we’d gotten her if I had to get beaten by her and attach it to her somehow. The fact we couldn’t reach her when Sagan was screaming she had no family and was obviously breaking crushed a part of me.
And then I learned why my niece was dying inside.
We managed to get inside of her suite, and finding her piss drunk was already insane given how composed and put together she was. Hell, I was jealous how royal perfect she always was. I couldn’t ever pull that off and I’d had harsher training than her, my father a monster compared to Rhys.
Oh, how wrong I was about that after what I learned that night.
Darren and then Belinda arrived, and that was what I was waiting for. I couldn’t even feel bad when she used her power to remove the memory of Sagan mentioning Eloise to them. They couldn’t know it.
Especially Velle who none of us liked. She was… Fine, I guess she was better, but she was too prideful. It all stemmed from jealousy and resentment, and that was dangerous.
Treena was the heir to another country’s throne. One that was our neighbor and we’d had a shit relationship with for over a decade. Fine, it was getting better every day and they were best friends, but that could change in a flash. She would have the lives of all wolves on her shoulders one day.
Her father did now, and if he learned the truth about Sagan’s dragons?
No, never.
The only one I really trusted with it was Myriam. That woman took honor and her word like no one else I’d met, but… Information wasn’t always a blessing or gift.
A lot of times it was a fucking burden, and she clearly understood that when she glanced at Belinda and nodded. She knew what was coming.
Velle argued and said she didn’t consent, bitching it wasn’t her fault Sagan couldn’t keep her mouth shut and the royal family was fucked up.
Treena gave us a sad look of resigned disappointment. She grabbed Maple’s wrist. “If you hurt her or don’t figure out how to really help her, I will claw you all and use my diplomatic immunity the moment I become queen, even if I don’t remember why. Save her if you won’t let me.”
Maple nodded. “I swear it by royal vow. I love her like my own. We all do. We’ll—I won’t—we can’t lose her either.”
Treena’s nostrils flared. “You should have done more sooner. You might be too late. I’ve never seen her like this, and I’ve seen a lot after how her parents have abused her.
” She bared her teeth at us. “You want to know how Kole was easily able to abuse her? It’s all she’s known.
It’s her normal to be treated like trash by the ones who are supposed to care. ”
Then she turned to Belinda and basically told her to get on with it.
Talk about the best way to kick someone in the nuts when they were already upset.
But she was right. Treena was completely right and we deserved it.
Actually, so much more.
When Sagan said she was broke, all I could think was—what the fuck, Rhys? I mean, I’d noticed some weird going on and Maple had made a few comments.
I just… Well, clearly, I’d gotten it wrong, but I had noticed. I’d thought it was temporary. The elders had fucked with Sagan’s inheritance and the logistics of it all getting transferred to her on their way out the door. Holding up the probate or—fuck, I didn’t really think about it.
Was that stupid?
Yes.
Did I now seriously regret that?
Abso-fucking-lutely.
There was no excuse, but there were many reasons. My grief. My own life. The other help I was giving. Managing other problems. The travel I was doing all the time now. It just never fucking ended. I didn’t think I’d had a full night’s sleep since hearing Rhys had died.
Definitely not one where I hadn’t woken up in a panic to realize the nightmare was real and my brother, whom I’d truly loved, was gone.
Except listening to Sagan, that love died. I’d been pissed at him for how he’d left her vulnerable. I’d been furious to learn she didn’t know how he’d loved her and… None of that mattered anymore.
Because apparently it was all fucking lies. Everything was.
Everything I thought I’d known.
I realized I was sitting as Sagan went into the mountains of debt and the financial mess my brother had been in and all of us were clueless. I swallowed bile as she confessed she’d been competing in illegal underground fights as Eloise to make money to cover them.
I had honestly never heard anything so fucking insane as a queen—and not just any queen, a queen of probably the most powerful country in the world—fighting to earn money. Illegally.
Maple looked ready to faint.
But Benson didn’t.
Oh, he was dead. I was going to kill him. He’d known and not told us.
Darren was wiping tears and looked destroyed, just completely wrecked.
And Belinda wasn’t surprised either.
Well, we can’t beat her, but we’re doing something to her someday.
I was glad when my dragon fully agreed.
Listening to the rest broke me. Seeing Sagan so broken and hearing her say that nothing mattered anymore because Rhys hadn’t ever planned on her being queen… There was no healing the wounds learning that caused her. It was like a piece of her soul would be forever broken.
And I knew that well. I did. Not to the extent she was suffering, but I’d been Rhys’s backup. I knew that wound and… There was no healing it ever.
The whole time, one thought just kept going through my mind over and over again—what the fuck, Rhys?
Then I vomited when Belinda read the passage from Amelia’s journal. What the fuck, both of you? Were they insane?
“I cannot like wrap my mind around any of this,” Maple whispered, her hands shaking as she pushed her hair off her face. “I knew pieces now, and you told me he wanted to replace Sagan, but some part of me thought maybe, just maybe it had been in a moment of anger or—this doesn’t make sense.”
“You are being willfully ignorant, child,” Belinda chastised.
“No, no, we’re not,” Darren snapped as he got to his feet and snatched the journal from her hand.
“You doubt my translations,” Belinda chuckled, saying it more for us.
“I don’t know you, and Amelia was my sister,” Darren chuffed.
“I saw her flaws. I wasn’t blind. I hated the way she let Rhys treat Sagan at times.
I hated the way she did, and I knew full well she loved Rhys more.
Not just that you should always put your mate first, because after the kids are grown, you only have each other kind of thing.
“She loved no one before Rhys, and it was clear Rhys would always come first. It was all-consuming and Rhys didn’t even feel the same.
It was… Unhealthy and not what a mother should have felt.
” He threw the journal on the table. “But this? She was a punishment for something by an evil god? Amelia wasn’t even devout! ”
“But they did put on an act for you,” Benson confessed as he ran his fingers through Sagan’s hair as he cuddled her. His feelings for her were an issue but one that just got pushed way, way down the priority list. “I saw it. A lot of us did who stood at their sides.”
“I can’t even blame you for not telling us,” Maple muttered as she handed me something. She waved it at me to take.
Oh right, I’d vomited. I mumbled a thank-you and took the napkin. I did one better and went to the kitchenette and rinsed out my mouth. Then I took the now-ruined basket thing and set it out in the hallway.
The guards gave me a look and I didn’t even try to explain.
Seriously, nothing else mattered right then.
At. All.
“I don’t even understand that because she would call me to brag,” Darren rasped.
“Guilt?” I offered as I sat on the arm of one of the chairs. “A chance to talk to someone not here in the crazy of the castle?”
“Someone who saw her child as not a monster and clearly her mate feeling that way drove her just as fucking insane?” Maple mocked. “Seriously, a stack of journals in a language Rhys didn’t know? I just… It’s all so insane.”
“I heard her say something once that she wasn’t his punishment and he had to stop saying that,” Benson mumbled.
“I didn’t know it was Sagan, but the context fits.
” He reached up and wiped his eyes. “I gave her such a hard time, and—how could they ever think she was evil? All she wanted was their love. That was it.” He looked at Belinda. “Then she changed after you.”