The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 15: Mattel Darius .All in all, Regina grows nearly drunk with all the excitement of the market.By the time the two of them head back to their waiting carriage, Regina’s arms are laden with too many packages to count (she’d even purchased things for the lovely head maid, Maria, and her purse considerably lighter. Mattel even has to graciously carry a heavy portion of her bags, as they are too numerable for any one person to carry.Regina is so delighted, still simmering with unbridled energy, that she babbles happily away about all the trinkets she’d purchased and stalls she’d enjoyed, at Mattel, who merely listens with that half-smile on his lips.Until, suddenly, there’s a thunderous roar of hooves clopping on the floor from all sides.In seconds, their carriage comes to a screeching halt; immediately after, there’s a muffled groan and a thump from the front, where their coachmen ought to be.Regina freezes, eyes wide.Mattel’s expression h
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 16: unsavory glint .Shit.His bodyguard, Lionel is going to be very upset if he actually returns in a body bag.Mattel Darius looks up, just in time to see the unsavory glint of the moonlight off a descending blade, and grits his teeth--“Alpha!”Mattel’s eyes snap wide.As does the bandit’s, as he and the four remaining men around him freeze momentarily in shock.The pounding of hooves confirms to Mattel Darius that, yes, he hadn’t simply been hallucinating, and it is indeed the omega, Regina, riding back with a fire in her gaze that Mattel hasn’t ever seen before in those pretty doe eyes.But she doesn’t stop.Instead, she plows her horse right into the circle of bandits, and barrels straight into the one in particular that had been holding a blade to Mattel’s throat.And like the foolish, witless, naive - lovely - idiot that she is, Regina disembarks the horse and stumbles to her feet right beside Mattel. Right in the middle of four armed b
Alpha Easton’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 17: A King’s Luna.Regina cannot sleep.She stays awake, deep into the night - far later than she had ever stayed up before - staring blankly up at the ceiling.It had taken hours for the trembling to subside.She does not know what it is, that King Mattel Darius had controlled tonight.She does not think them mere shadows, because mere shadows did not have the kind of attributes that those- those things had.Because mere shadows did not summon a crushing, all-encompassing fear just by looking into their depths.Somehow, what King Mattel Darius had done- what he’d commanded- had been far, far darker than mere shadows.For from the depths of these shadows, had come surging a kind of darkness far blacker, and far more sinister, than anything Regina has ever known in this natural world.She had glanced just momentarily, into those moving shapes, and had found herself rooted to the spot, petrified with the kind of bone-deep, gut-churning terror that
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 18: moving forward .“Courage is not the absence of fear, they say. Rather, it is that which fears, but will walk through the darkest of it anyway.”Mattel taps an idle rhythm against the skin of Regina’s neck, beating in time with Regina’s pounding heart.“I guess I should hold some belief to your claim of me being your mate because a king’s Luna must possess a dragonheart, to be so brave as to walk through fear untouched.”Regina breathes.******NEXT DAY**Regina awakens to a room that is not her own.In the light of day - sunlight streaming through wide-open windows, bathing the entire floor in a warm glow - it’s almost unrecognizable.The entire room is submerged in the ghoulish, inky blackness of earlier - every inch of the four walls, the entirety of the floor, is bathed in that gruesome pitch darkness, gaping and incomprehensibly terrifying.Slowly, still caught in between consciousness and that hazy world of dreams, she sits up, the s
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 19: odd intimacy .“But I hope you realize, that Alpha Mattel is the reason I am alive today.”The maid’s eyes, wide and shocked, snap up to meet her gaze.“That sounds a tad generous,” a low voice shocks them both.Regina whirls around, hand clutched to her chest in a vain attempt to calm her pounding heart.She gapes at the sight of King Mattel, standing in her own bedroom, gazing at her with an amused little smile.Regina whirls around, hand clutched to her chest in a vain attempt to calm her pounding heart. She gapes at the sight of King Mattel, standing in her own bedroom, gazing at her with an amused little smile.“How did you- I did not hear your door opening.”“I do not need something as trivial as doors,” Mattel drawls, somehow managing to convey a sense of condescension in the word doors.Regina stares, uncomprehending.“When the shadows themselves are my domain, I do not need to walk down halls and open doors.”Behind her, Regina hea
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 20: same old-same old .She’s been sold off like a particularly undesirable cattle by her only relative, to the man they only whisper about cautiously in the safety of their own homes, as the nightmare specter in human form.She has had to leave everything - her home, her belongings, and the only family she has ever known and loved - for unfamiliar lands, in what she had long thought would be a terrifying lair fit for a monster.She has been waylaid by frightening bandits, nearly lost her life, and then witnessed other men lose theirs, in a display of the most terrifying power she has ever laid eyes upon.Regina finds that she can’t quite express any of this, and instead, clings to Mattel’s gloved hand with a desperation that likely makes little sense to the Alpha.Mattel, rather than face that heavy, searching gaze, looks instead at the pile of packages beside them, feeling his heart lift with every familiar item he sees in their midst.When M
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 21: sleep over .That night, Regina stays up late once more, organizing the truly astounding number of parcels she now has in her room.(Had she truly purchased this many things, she wonders.)She’s halfway through organizing some of the items on her vanity, when she hears it.That quiet, muffled whimper, this time all the louder for how acutely her sense are attuned to the sound.This time, she wastes little time in letting herself through the door (and realizing, then, that while she can lock her side, King Mattel cannot, and wondering what the implications are that the man had crafted a proverbial cage for himself to be locked into).When she sees the floors and walls, once more, covered in that endless blackness, she can’t help the fear that, again, rushes up inside of her like a dam had broken.But she cannot leave King Mattel as he is, in whatever pained hell he has trapped himself into-In the nights I spend in this monstrous form, I beg
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 22: birth of a star.Regina wakes first.This time, she awakens with the immediate and keen awareness of precisely where she is - that is to say, not her own bed, but the one she’d just shared with King Mattel.Alpha Mattel, who, when Regina looks to her right, is evidently still asleep.Regina can’t help but to stare.In sleep, the Alpha’s features seem impossibly young - with none of the heavy presence that bears on him like an ever-present weight when the king is awake.It’s something about his eyes, Regina thinks; those dark, fathomless depths that speak of years much, much beyond the king’s age of twenty nine.(And there’s a fascination here, too, of being permitted to observe such a feared man from up close - not unlike being permitted into a tiger’s den, when the ferocious tiger is declawed in its slumber.)“If you leaned in any closer, one would think it is my person people should worry about, rather than yours,” the low, gravelly timbe