Filed To Story: Absent Luna of the Lycan King Novel (Ivy & Kyson)
“And you will do 250 of them. I see one piece of her back unmarred when I return. Not only will you receive the same, but I will also then make you kill her by the time I am done with her;” || tell Peter. Peter whimpers, and tears brim in Ester’s eyes. Her l*ps quiver but she only speaks when Peter begs not to do it.
She looks over her shoulder at him. “A punishment must be served,”
“Mum please, I can’t,”
“But you will or the king kills me, so choose Peter, which is it you prefer?” she snaps at him. He drops his head.’
“Count everyone, and call me down when he is done. I will deliver the last 250, which will be silver and wolfsbane dipped.” I tell her, and she s**ks in a shuddering breath before swallowing and looking away. She bobs her head once, accepting her punishment. Trey just stared with eyes ahead at the wall.
“You will watch her receive her punishment. If you make a move to stop it, you will be pulled from my guard and Azalea’s,” I warn him.
“No issue, my King. I told you that already. My loyalty is with Azalea,” Trey answers, and I | nod before walking out and heading up to find my matė.
Azalea POV
Rolling over, I p**ssed my face into the soft pillow. It felt like I had a hangover. My head was pounding, everything felt too bright, and my brain was sluggish as the events from earlier slowly returned to me.
My skin buzzed with an odd sensation that made my skin prickle with goosebumps. “My Queen, I feel you are awake,” a stranger’s voice said inside my head.
“Don’t be alarmed. My name is Cedric. I am part of the Landeena guard and I was your father’s Beta. I have been waiting for you to wake,” his calming voice says. How do I use the mind-link? I thought with a sigh while trying to work out how to use this newfound mind-link.
“You are using it, My Queen,” Cedric chuckles.
“You can hear me?”
“Yes, and know that your powers have awoken. You should be able to reach all of us, command all of us, and find all of us through this link. You’ll get the hang of it,”
“I remember hearing you even when l was passed out. You revoked your pledge to my mate,” I tell him. I remember the tingling sensation as their tethers linked to me.
“We were and always will belong to the Landeena Kingdom. Landeena is our home. You are home for your people, My Queen,”
“And the guards, they all agree?” I asked him. Unsure about this new tether.
“Yes. All 71 of your guards will fight, k**l and d*e for you,”
“I don’t want anyone to d*e for me,”
“But we will and you’ll understand soon enough. Your powers are awoken now, you just need to learn how to use them. So feel free to call on Trey or me, or any of us. We are your people, and you are ours. You have no idea how happy I am to hear the bloodline lives on, and what a bloodline. I can’t wait to see you at full strength. See what you can do,” I think over his words for a second when the door opens. Liam steps in.
“My guard is here. I have to go find my mate,” I tell Cedric as Liam stops, scrutinizing me.
“Very well, My Queen. We are posted around the castle. Call me through here if you need me.”
“Wait. Umm, how do I call you through here?”
“Just think of my voice. You’ll figure it out. Trey will show you. Stick close to Trey. Trust no one, My Queen, not until you know for sure they can be trusted. Landeena had a lot of enemies,”
“So I shouldn’t trust you,”
“No. But I will earn it. But I assure you, we can be trusted. We didn’t just pledge to you, My Queen. Your father assured your safety, us guards were personally picked and set aside for you. We were given no ties, just a command when we pledged. We didn’t just pledge, we tied our lives to you. We all thought Trey was mad when he said you survived. He kept insisting we look for you. We did for years,”
“I don’t understand,”
“He was your sire, and we figured he had it wrong. We even convinced him of it after a few years. Trey insisted that you were alive because he was,” Cedric tells me before cutting the link. My brows furrow in confusion.
“The King is on his way,” Liam tells me, and I nod, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
“Who were you talking to?” Liam asks curiously, and I startle.
“You knew I was talking to someone?”
“Yes. Your eyes turned white,” he says.
“Cedric,” I answered, and he nodded.
“Where is Kyson?” I ask Liam. He bites his l*p before he sighs.
“He is organizing the punishment for Ester and Peter,”
“Punishment?”
“Yes. Punishment,” Kyson says behind him, making me jump, having not heard him. I look over at him to see him standing just inside the door.
“Leave us,” Kyson says, strolling over to me and Liam quickly does as he is told. He closes the door behind him.
“You challenged me,”
“You were going to k**l him. He is a boy,” I tell him because I couldn’t bring myself to say he was my brother.
“What punishment did you give him?”
“Not the one I want, but I kept my word. I won’t k**l him,”
“And Ester?”
“Alive,” I let out a breath. I didn’t like the woman, but I didn’t believe she deserved d***h for sleeping with my father.
“What else?”
“What else?” Kyson repeats, coming to sit beside me on the edge of the bed. He drags me across his lap, turning me to face him, so my legs straddle his waist.
“We found out some information about your family. I am sure Trey will tell you more. And since I commanded him, you will have to as well. Yet Ester was forthcoming with information.”
“And you commanded her?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Yes, of course. She didn’t fight it, so l know she spoke the truth, or at least her truth. But I have to ask,”
“Ask what?”
“Do you remember Marrissa ever shifting into her wolf?” he asks, and my brows furrow. I tried to think back, sifting through any sort of memory, yet those memories were so grainy, so fractured.
“No, I don’t think so. Even when they…” I swallowed, being s**ked back to that night. That night stayed fresh in my mind. The night I watched them k**l her. We had been running for hours when they circled us. We had stumbled into another pack’s territory. Abbie and I were hidden inside a hollow tree. Abbie clutched my hands, and we both tried to remain quiet. Yet as we watched through the cracks of the broken trees, not even we could hold back our screams. Not even then did she shift. My father, I mean Jordan, moved so fast. He wouldn’t stop fighting until Marrissa called out to him. I always thought her words were odd.
“It’s the only way to keep her safe,” she said, falling to her knees. Abbie’s parents still fought. Their wolves were ripped apart, and her screams drilled into my ears when Marrissa fell to her knees and looked at our hiding spot. “Don’t fight them. Don’t run. Remember, mummy loves you,” and she let them slaughter her, almost as if she was resigned to her d***h. It was only moments later that Alpha Dean was ripping the tree trunk apart with his warriors to get to us.
“Azalea?” Kyson says, shaking me, and I snap out of where my memories took me. I blink, shaking the remnants of it away.
“No. No, I never saw her shift,” I answer him.
“And Jordan?” I shake my head again. Tears burned my eyes, and lay swallowed down the emotion that made a lump form in my throat and threatened to choke me.
How could I still love the monster who raised me? Maybe because to me, she was never a monster but a mother, it was hard to differentiate bet**en the two sorts of people she could be. But after what she did? How?
Some logical part of me knew she was the reason my real mother was d**d, yet the memories I hold closest were always her. She may not have been my real mother, but she raised me as her own. She loved and cared for me. Or at least I thought she did. And yet the woman who was my mother I had no memories of and my family were the strangers to me, or maybe she just overshadowed any memory I did share with them?
Kyson’s calling sl*ps out. Only then did I realize I was shaking, and his hands slid up my arms softly. My entire body was trembling, and I gave in to the noise, letting the calling soothe me as l calmed my nerves.
“Why do you ask?” I murmured, knowing he must have a reason.
“Ester told us Marrissa was your father’s mate and was a Lycan. Just like Trey was your mother’s.” I sat back up, startled by the news and confused.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?