Alpha King Kane part 14

PREVIOUSLY…

Opening my eyes, I find a tarp tossed over me. 

My family…they took me.

And there’s no doubt in my heart that Kane is already hunting us.

PRESENTLY…

ROSALIE

“No,” I groan weakly, realization dawning in the darkness.

I rise and try to blink the pain away. Reaching for my head, I search for blood.

I’m not bound, but I don’t have to glance up to find who has taken me.

“Rosalie! Lay down at once! We have yet to clear the North! ” Father shouts.

I turn glance at the back of his head as he drives the carriage. I can only make out his frame. 

We’re alone. My father and sister actually tried their insane plan, and the king will soon descend his wrath upon us. He didn’t keep me as his prisoner, but after this scheme…he just might. 

I scramble on my knees and crawl to the edge of the carriage bed, fully prepared to jump off and run to the mansion to rescue my Eryn before she secures herself an early death.

My nails scrape on the wood, and a splinter bites my palm.

“Halt!” my father shouts, pulling the horse and carriage to a stop.

It’s dark, and we’re in the middle of nowhere on a lone road. I spy some town lights in the distance.

Father jumps out of the carriage, stomping over mud as he makes his way around to confront me.

“Don’t stop me! You’ve done enough!” I roar, gripping the back of my head that feels as if it’s been split open.

My father has never struck me. For all my insolence and troublemaking, I’ve never felt the bitterness of his palm. But today, he has broken my trust.

This journey…this trip…it is clawing out the worst in us.

“Stop,” he grits, taking my arms and blocking me from hopping off the carriage.

“Or what?” I exhale shakily, struggling to see his expression in the dark. This is a fitting representation of what I feel for him at this moment. This man is a stranger.

“Or you’ll strike me down again?”

He yanks his hands away. “What do you take me for, Rosalie?!”

“You tell me! You knocked me unconscious and dragged me away, completely disregarding my wishes! What do you think that king will do to Eryn once he discovers her treachery? Must you sacrifice a daughter to save another? I won’t have this!”

“I’ve struck none of my children! I will not have you paint me a monster!” 

“Then who…” I drift off, panting, my head swimming in pain.

“She wouldn’t…” I mutter.

Eryn isn’t capable of this.

He sighs. I can already picture the wrinkles on his face deepening.

“Eryn? She lacks fire, and you expect me to believe she knocked me upside the head?”

“Ask her when you see her at home,” he grunts.

“Assuming we see her again! And what home do you speak of? We’ve never been privy to such a fucking luxury. Especially not now that we must be on the run.”

“This is what Eryn and I wanted! To protect you!”

I shake my head. “Not like this. Not while leaving her behind. How could you abandon Eryn, a gentle soul in this wretched world?”

My words are ironic given that she just injured me, but Eryn has no history of rashness. She’s afraid; afraid for her sister. It’s in her nature to care for others, and the circumstances must have pushed her over the edge.

“How long has it been? We’re turning back.”

“This is not what Eryn would want.”

“Then it’s a good thing this is all about me. Not her. Not you. It’s between me, the Goddess, and that crazy fucking Alpha King,” I snarl.

That crazy, blind, impulsive Alpha.

I’ve never been so ill-tempered with my father. Shame shadows my words, but I will not be convinced otherwise. My family has to accept that there is no saving me from this perilous situation.

Like it or not, I am mated to the Alpha King, and the only one who can free me from this life of menacing werewolves and political turmoil is him. He won’t let anyone take me. It’s implied in his green eyes. Though I’m no prisoner in his home, I am his until he tires of me or until the moon falls from the sky.

“Let’s turn back,” I repeat, laying against a wall of the carriage, exhausted. “And let’s hope they haven’t noticed my absence.”

***

We ride as fast as we can given the tired horse.

My father is so displeased that he doesn’t spare me any more words. I’ve been short with him, but I cannot be his daughter right now. I must be a sister. Eryn needs me.

We returned within hours to a quiet, dead mansion. The moon is full and high in the sky, watching closely as an unprecedented day unfolds. 

Everyone has retired to their cabins or been dismissed now that the coronation–or lack thereof–is through.

My father stops at the stables to surrender the horse, and then we make way to the entrance of the gloomy mansion glowing internally with lanterns highlighting its dark halls. 

A monster lurks in this place. An Alpha King.

As I eye the windows, I study every shadow in search of him. He’s close. I can sense it.

“Who goes there?” demands a shirtless werewolf guarding the porch.

“It–it is I, a carpenter hired by the North. I am father of Rosalie and E–”

“You may pass,” blurts the man. Eyes wide and body tense. Today’s gossip must have rattled everyone, including the king, and no one wants to anger him.

The guard can’t tell the difference between Eryn and me–a stroke of luck. 

I walk with my head ducked, wondering where the fuck my sister could be. She couldn’t be in the Alpha’s master bedroom, could she?

Goddess, poor Eryn would faint if the man so much as stared for too long at her.

“Miss Eryn, please follow me.”

I jolt when a servant girl crosses our path, seeming to come out of nowhere. She’s tall. Her dark hair braided, and her dress loose around her frame. She’s barefoot, her steps falling quietly on the hardwood floors.

“Of course,” I whisper.

Eryn. You’re currently Eryn, not Rosalie, I remind myself.

My father and the Alpha King are the only ones who could tell the difference between my twin and me. At least, I hope so.

I’m led to the second floor of the house, past French doors with accents that sparkle under the dim lanterns. I enter, and father closes the door behind me, dismissing the servant.

I spot Eryn on the floor beside a bed, crying her eyes out. Her long white nightgown is stained with tears.

“Eryn!” I gasp, running to her. I grab her shoulders and study her swollen face. “What did he do? What the fuck did he do?” 

I’m going to kill the man. Somehow, I’ll gather the courage and not be swayed by his eyes, touch, or his suffocating aura.

“Why are you here?!” she cries out, looking between my father and me in desperation. “You should be long gone from the north by now, Rosie!”

“It takes a lot more than a fucking blow to subdue me,” I glare at her. “And not even the Goddess could convince me to accept your fucking suicide plan!”

“I’m sorry…I just wanted you home. This place…” Her innocent eyes, once sparkling with daydreams…are now bloodshot. “This place is cruel. The whispers I’ve heard about you…they said war is coming and that the Betas would kill you before they let an unshifted omega ascend to the throne,” she trembles in fear.

“Let me worry about that,” I tell her, squeezing her hands as Father sighs and paces behind us. 

“What did the king do?”

“The king?” she shakes her head. “I haven’t seen him since you left. He hasn’t come.”

I sigh with relief. We’re safe then. He never realized I had left.

She points shakily at the nightstand. “A….A servant girl brought that earlier.”

I eye the golden goblet across the room warily. “And what…is that?”

“His…his offering,” she swallows dryly.

An offering?

My face catches fire, and I hear my father’s steps falter as if he’s about to fall over.

The Alpha king...has offered me his pups. Almost every woman in this kingdom would kill for his offering: to dip their fingers into the goblet, coating them in his seed, and pleasure herself with said fingers until his seed is buried in her.

I told him to cut me loose; to send me away because I am of no benefit to his reign. And instead of choosing Lyssara over me, he has gifted me his pups in a goblet.

The man is blinded by this bond. He hardly knows me, but he wants me nonetheless. There are no reservations. No fear of judgments…no fear of me…because he is the dominant one.

My father curses behind me, because he realizes that the Alpha King is hellbent on making me his, no matter how much I warn him that I am of no use. I am no lady; no Lyssara.

Eryn sobs uncontrollably, distracting me from my thoughts.

“Hush. I will be alright.”

She keeps crying, and this makes me suspect that something else has gone on this evening.

Squeezing her hand, I ask, “Are you sure he didn’t visit you?”

She shakes her head, tears streaking down her face that’s identical to mine, and yet we couldn’t be any more different.

“No, but the Luna-to-be…”

Lyssara. The omega queen that I looked up to and pitied. 

“What the fuck did she do?”

“She came to see me, and she realized….she realized we'd switched,” Eryn sobs.

“What? How could she tell the difference between us?!”

She saw us together only once. She shouldn't be able to tell the difference between Eryn and me yet. Does she hate me so much that she burned my image into her fucking memory?

“What did she do to you, Eryn?”

“She said she wouldn’t tell the king you ran off…”

I nod. That makes sense. Lyssara wants me gone, and it wouldn’t do her any good to warn Kane that I was on my way out of this place.

“...if I…If I licked the bottom of her shoe.”

“Eryn!” I growl, reeling back. “Tell me you didn’t humiliate yourself! Tell me you didn’t kneel before that vile woman!”

That witch!

How could she look down at us? We are omegas, but so is she.

How could she defile my gentle sister?

“I had no other option! She was going to tell him, and our efforts would’ve gone to waste!”

I see red as I rise and head for the nightstand and take the goblet.

It’s full to the brim. Warm.

“What are you doing?” Asks my father, his tone cautious as if careful not to set me off.

But I’ve been burning all fucking day, and Lyssara has just beckoned me to explode. Today, she will learn why father calls Eryn his winter and me his summer.

“What else? I’m using it.”

I will not be swayed otherwise.

Just like with their little kidnapping scheme, I won’t let them stand in my way.

I will make Lyssara pay.

READ PART 15 >

A/N: What do you think she's going to do?!!!