The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 70: ask me to stay .“We weren’t going to leave you here,” Jana says. Her voice grows dark and abhorrent on the word here, as though she were saying- “With that, with him.”Regina grows rigid.Damien’s eyes watch her carefully, as Regina extricates herself from Jana’s hug, expression scrunched up into a frown. “Don’t say that,” She says.“Don’t say what?”“Don’t- talk about him like that,” Regina hunches her shoulders, crossing her arms uncomfortably. “Don’t use that tone when talking about him.”Jana stares at her. “Don’t talk about who like that? Him?”Regina stiffens even more. “Yes,” She says sharply. “He’s- Mattel isn’t-”“Mattel?”Regina curls back, stung by the sheer incredulousness in Jana’s voice. Damien steps in. “Regina,” he says patiently. “Tell us what’s going on in your mind.”For an individual whose prodigious telepathic abilities could present to him, at a moment’s notice, all the inner thoughts and secrets of any mortal man, D
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 71: denying feelings? .So, with tears burning along her lashes, anxiety swimming in her stomach and making her fingers tremble, Regina says (pleads) again, “Ask me to stay.”Mattel looks at her, this darling, wonderful girl, who glows with sunbeams and starlights and illuminates the room she stands in, as if she carries the light with her wherever she goes. As if her presence - luminous and incandescent - is enough to bring a brilliant, dazzling light to every dark corner, even when there’s something as dark as Mattel present. At his little dragonheart.Impossibly, stupidly, beautifully brave.Mattel won’t (can’t) ask her to stay, here, in the shadowy depths of the dark where vile things like Mattel belong.Regina belongs in the light; she deserves to bask in the effervescent sunlight, like the vivacious, rosy-cheeked miracle that she is. (Mattel can already feel that treacherous beast inside of him, growing greedier and hungrier; fears tha
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 72: is it too late? .Regina’s lips part in wordless shock.Damien shrugs. “Perhaps it is foolishness,” considering just how much a man like crown Prince Damien might have to lose. “But what is love, if not tempered with some uncertainty? It is not trust, otherwise.”For Damien - who had been Gifted with the greatest telepathic abilities recorded in history, whose prodigious talents had allowed him to expertly and effortlessly assess the threat behind every smile and every kind word - his brand of love, is trust.The blind, admittedly potentially catastrophic, kind of trust, that comes with believing in a person without ascertaining their thoughts even when he can.For Damien, this has been his greatest declaration of love possible.Regina stares, lost and uncomprehending. “But that- I...I never knew.”Damien’s smile shines like diamonds, the kind of happiness that only Jana has ever been able to place on his mild expressions. “So,” he laughs.
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 73: a reconciliation, maybe ? .Regina freezes. And, as though - inexplicably - she has been jolted with more life than she’d demonstrated the entire day, she scrambles to peer out the windows with wide eyes.Jana’s eyes fly to Damien’s, before a mutinous, cold rage fills her gaze. Her jaw clenches. She snatches the sword at her side.Princess Jana, blue-blooded noble as she may be, is a talented swordsman whose skills have been hailed as second to none in their country; had she not be married to such a wealthy and illustrious family, she would have had a marked and lauded career in the military, no doubt.“Stay inside,” Jana commands, clicking the hilt of her sword out of its scabbard with an expert flick of her thumb. Fury casts her beautiful features in a strange allure, her broad shoulders moving to cover the doorway as his hand reaches out to swing it open.“Wait, no!” Regina throws herself at the princess’s arm - the one clutching the
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 74: discourtesy.“It really is very discourteous to be so late, you know,” Regina sniffs, tears steadily trickling down her cheeks.“My most heartfelt apologies,” Mattel says, and she snorts.“And what were you going to do, if you hadn’t made it in time?” Regina digs her chin into Mattel’s shoulder like a particularly petulant huff. “If you had let me go, and I had made it all the way back to the Heartlands, with an entire kingdom in between us; if you had let me go, and I had left?” Mattel’s smile is somehow both tranquil and calamitous at the same time; like the gaze of a man who, incomprehensibly, is calmly prepared to tear entire kingdoms asunder in his path. It’s a magnitude of affection Regina has never been privy to, before, and one she doesn’t quite understand, nor know how to receive.“Something as trivial as time and space, are not sufficient deterrents,” Mattel murmurs, and Regina feels her eyes prickle once more. “I would have co
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 75: boorish unpleasant man .“And? So you are going to stay here?” Jana leans forward from his seat at the table, voice incredulous.When the grand royal procession had promptly returned, right back to the gates of Mattel’s castle, the maids had come shuffling out in confusion. Before Jana even had a chance to protest, Mattel had led the head maid aside, and quietly informed her that Regina would, in fact, be staying and not go along with Jana and Damien. In the Western Plains, and the arranged betrothal as planned.To say that the people around had been exuberant, would be an understatement.An alliance forged on mutual needs is satisfactory, but just barely; in the uncertainty of wartime, shaky political alliances will not do. The permanent, immutable allegiance forged by a marriage, is infinitely preferable to that predicated by something as trivial as contemporaneous mutual need.By the time Jana had managed to disboard the carriage, mo
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 76: a continued allegiance .“Mattel” Damian interrupts, expression mild and voice calm. “On behalf of my wife, Jana, I sincerely apologize for our rudeness.”Regina looks down at the table as Jana glances stubbornly away. Damian smiles at Mattel. “If you wouldn’t mind giving us and Regina a moment to convene?”Both Damian and Jana watch as Mattel looks to Regina with an assessing gaze, as if searching for his response there, in Regina’s expression. And then Regina looks up at him with a tiny, half-anxious smile, but nods.But Mattel makes no move to leave, not yet.“I’d like to speak to them, please,” Regina adds, and it’s only then that Mattel rises from his seat. He doesn’t leave without briefly grazing Regina’s cheek with the back of his hand, a gesture that the younger girl immediately leans into for that scant second.Mattel turns to glance just once, at Jana, and the look in his eyes - like a warning, somehow, as if Jana needed any war
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 77: wedding preparations .By the time the three of them’s conversation is over, it is nearing midnight, and Regina is quite exhausted. She just barely manages to stumble to her room, where she heads immediately for one trunk in particular.After that, all Regina has the energy to do, is to change into her nightgown and dig up her sleeping mask from the bottom of her trunk.She glances at the closed door separating her and Mattel’s bedroom with a bitten lip.** Mattel is stretched along his bed, a book open in his lap, when he hears the separating door open.He looks up, and watches as it swings slowly, carefully, slender fingers visible where they’re wrapped around the edge of the door. And then, Regina’s eyes, peering at him from behind the door, before her shoulders, and half her torso comes into view.Regina stands in the doorway without moving further inside, wearing an expression so hesitant - so unsure - that it nearly breaks Mattel’