Chapter 6 #2
“I will handle that,” Fraser said firmly, shaking his head when Darren argued. “Everyone will be tracking you now that you’re her advisor and they’re pissed she has another ally. Let us help.”
“Why so you can try to be regent?” Darren pushed, crossing his arms over his chest when Maple snorted.
Fraser opened his mouth but then closed it and looked at me. “I’m sorry. Truly, Sagan.”
He let out a shaky breath and then turned away, but not before we saw him wiping his eyes. He moved deeper into the tomb and he stopped by his parents who I had never met.
Fraser reached out and touched the etched name of his father.
“He didn’t mean it,” Maple defended as he went over there.
“You don’t understand how—Father was complicated.
I know you haven’t had—your relationship with your parents wasn’t close, but ours was sometimes brutal.
I was a prize to be traded and mated off.
Fraser was the backup plan. It was—it wasn’t healthy. ”
“No, but I’m not a kid anymore and they’ve been dead for…
” He turned to me. “I’m sorry. I’m on your side even if I’ll say stupid shit and still fall back into that—my brother was never supposed to die.
I listened to stupid and fell into—I felt—I’m sorry, Sagan.
Whatever you want to do to look into your parents’ death, I’m with you and will handle it. ”
That was the general consensus and really helped me in that moment. I didn’t know if I completely trusted what Uncle Fraser said about his comments or if he just felt guilty after the funeral, but I wanted to hope he was being honest with me.
I simply had too much else going on for me to be able to tell right then.
That brief moment of feeling like things weren’t so bad was overshadowed by what came next.
Too many were using the grand feast to give me fake condolences but mostly to get at me first. The looks I gave several Alpha Mates or Alpha family members should have made wiser people freeze in their tracks.
But these people didn’t know me well enough to realize I wasn’t prey.
That will change. Fast.
However, the stress of it was too much for me—for anyone. Elder families trying even more, like making it clear that I needed to let go the elders I had locked up. One had the audacity to try and grab me when I finally turned from the conversation.
I moved faster than he or anyone else was ready for, blocking his wrist and pinning him against the wall.
“You ever think to lay a hand on me, anyone in my castle, or service ever again, and it will be your last moments. Clearly, you have inherited your father’s sexism where you think women are beneath you, but I am heir of this nation.
“You ride your father’s coattails like you’ve accomplished anything and I actually have.
So demand one more thing from me, instruct me on my duty one more time, and I will make sure that not even a barista will take your order.
As for your father, he will pay the price for what he did just as the others have.
The fact you did this at the funeral feast—have you no shame? ”
I let him go and stepped back. He tried to move as well and play off that nothing happened, which annoyed me, and I shoved him into the wall again, making it clear he better stay there… Or he might go out the window next to it.
“Ban him from the castle and any court events for the next month,” I told Benson when I felt him next to me.
“The whole family if there is not a formal apology by morning for this ghastly and uncouth behavior. I seriously wonder what the elder has been teaching his family if they think they are above the royal family.”
“Nothing useful it seems,” Aunt Maple purred. “I will handle it, my darling niece.”
That shocked me, but I didn’t show it. “Of course.” I met her gaze and let everyone watching see the moment. “I trust you will always protect our family and the memory of my father.”
She dipped her head to me and I turned away, needing a moment before I took things too far.
Farther than I already had which was a bit much. However, all of it had been too much already. People were not acting rationally and… I needed a moment.
Heat started to creep up my sides and I was instantly annoyed. We were better than letting stress affect us like this. We weren’t anyone normal and could let ourselves be swept away by the needs and whims of our dragons.
Fine, dragons were creatures of instinct and stress was meant to be let out. If we didn’t… Our dragons would force our hand so to speak. Sometimes it just randomly happened or dragons could find each other attractive in a way their people didn’t.
And they took matters into their own hands.
No, I didn’t expect others to understand it. They couldn’t when they didn’t share their bodies. They didn’t transform into massive fucking beasts.
So yeah, there were some things we could never explain to others—other shifters even. We were all different.
But since I hadn’t let out my stress earlier, the decision was being made for me and I was going into heat. Fine, just… Fine.
I internally smirked and decided to go find Kole. We were so annoyed with him that one look at the idiot and the heat would absolutely cool off.
Except I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t at the feast.
He wasn’t at my parents’ funeral feast.
Was he seriously out of his mind? I even went so far as to ask his father if he knew where his son was.
The Alpha frowned and looked at his watch. “He said he was going to get some air, but that was over an hour ago.” He slowly looked at me with rage in his eyes. “Are you saying you haven’t seen him this whole time?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. “I haven’t seen him since he threw a fit trying to walk with my family in the funeral procession.”
A few people cursed in interesting combinations, but I excused myself, my stress increasing now with this new mess. And with more stress, it meant my heat was getting worse.
Way worse.
Beyond anything I’d experienced before to the point I was getting worried.
And guess what? Yeah, that meant stress on my body.
I finally had to resort to asking security and trying not to act like there was a reason. No one wanted to tell me, but right as I was about to lose my temper and tear someone’s head off, one of the female guards pulled me off to the side.
“No one wants to add to your upset, Your Highness,” she said under her breath. “But I see what the stress is doing to you.” She gave me a look not to even deny it. “Someone saw Kole leave the party with a woman, complaining about his room and saying he was going to show her.”
“Thank you,” I muttered. I went to turn away but then glanced at her. “Make sure his father is informed of that, would you?”
Her eyes flashed shock, but then she smirked. “I will personally see it done.” She cleared her throat and started to turn away. “You deserve so much better, Your Highness.”
Yeah, that wasn’t something she really should have told me as a guard, but if I sort of overheard it… Gray area. Either way, I appreciated it in the moment.
I was going to have a harsh conversation with Benson though that it wasn’t the guards’ jobs to spare my feelings. How could I trust them if they wouldn’t tell me things? Even the difficult things?
Everything in my life was going to be difficult from now on. They didn’t get to make those decisions for me.
I debated just leaving the castle to go fly. Handle my stress that way even if people would talk about it and they wouldn’t be kind that I left my parents’ funeral feast because I couldn’t handle the stress.
Who could? Seriously, who didn’t deserve allowances burying both of their parents and taking over being the leader of a nation?
I felt almost a pulse though—a shake of magic, and it sounded crazy to even think, but I would have sworn it came from the castle. But that wasn’t possible.
Was it?
I didn’t have enough time to consider it. I blinked and I was down the hall from the room I thought Kole was assigned. I wasn’t even sure I knew for sure.
So how did I get here? I didn’t ask anyone, did I?
A giggle pulled me out of my thoughts. It did more than that, it made my blood run cold.
Because I knew that voice. It might sound ridiculous when it was just a giggle and I hadn’t spent much time with anyone in the castle.
But when something grated on your nerves, you remembered. When it was just the right octave that it was like claws against the wrong material—metal or something off and hit your ears wrong.
You remembered.
That was her voice.
Her giggle.
Her anything.
I turned the corner and what I thought was confirmed in the next instance.
“She’s trying her best, but Sagan just doesn’t understand people like others do with how she was raised,” Elira said in a sickly-sweet voice.
“Is she?” Kole grumbled. “I don’t know. My uncle said I’m the jerk and—”
“He’s like everyone else and programmed to do whatever a member of the royal family wants,” she interjected. “He’s not an Alpha like you are. He’s your father’s baby brother and not much older than you. Does he really have any business giving you advice?”
He was quiet a moment. “No, you’re right. I didn’t think—thanks, Elira. You’re so easy to talk to and so much more understanding than Sagan. She never listens to me and—I wish I could get through to her and she would hear me like you do.”
I was going to turn and leave, but I blinked and I was closer, almost touching the door that was mostly closed. It was enough to see what I needed to and feel one of the last threads of my feelings for Kole snap.
Namely, them sitting together on his bed.
Maybe that sounded innocent to some… But the stakes were too high for presumed innocence.
He was with me publicly and sitting on his bed with another woman in my castle when he should have been at my side at my parents’ funeral feast.
There was no world where that didn’t get turned around and people looked at that innocently. And that was only if they didn’t see the rest. Her hand on his back, head on his shoulder—probably rubbing his back.
His hand on her thigh. Her knee was folded in and partially on him, his hand on her fucking thigh. They were leaning in together and… There was nothing innocent about it.
They weren’t old friends. They weren’t relatives.
And they were talking about my failings and how he wished I was more like her.
Rage burned through me and the stress made my heat roar to life in a way that blinded me. I tried to get out of there, realizing things were too far gone and I needed help.
Needed… I wasn’t sure. It had never been like this for me.
I had never been like this. I had never felt so uncontrolled and out of my head. Too much hitting me and then it was as if it physically hit me too.
No, I ran into a wall in my confusion.
No, a person. I stumbled back and then my back bumped into the wall and I couldn’t stay standing. Maybe? I wasn’t sure.
He helped me when I asked, when I begged.
He handled the heat in a way I didn’t know possible—made me feel things I didn’t know possible.
But when I woke alone in my bed with everything a vague blur, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d made it all up. What was real and what was the heat twisting things in my head?
This was exactly what I fucking needed.