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
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 22: transfer of emotions .Mattel’s never slept so well in the twenty nine years he’s been alive, as he does now.Born with the curse of being permitted to command all those wraiths, terrors and horrors that haunt the minds of men,Mattel had learned, early on, that being able to command something did not mean the same thing as being immune to those same terrors.Most nights, ever since he’d manifested his curse side effects as a young child, he’d found his dreamless sleep plagued by the same terrible things that he can command unto others.As he’d explained to Regina, these shadows cannot kill him the way he can kill others with them. But that does not change the fact that, each night, he nearly dreads sleep with the anticipation of an endless, all-consuming despair.Even if the terrors don’t visit him every night, the nights when he is given the brief reprieve, he spends trembling in fear, anyway, teeth grit and back ramrod straight, bracing
Alpha Easton’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 24: just because .“Was it the shadows?” he asks.Regina shakes her head.Mattel glances at her with a sharp eye, as if to ascertain whether Regina is telling the truth, or simply shielding Mattel from the guilt he wears like an ever-present crown.“The bandits,” Regina murmurs simply, eyes fixed on the sheets in front of her.She feels childish for being so consumed still by a fear of something so trivial.Ashamed to even voice her trifling fear aloud, to a man who’s spent most of his nights haunted by unspeakable terrors.It reminds her, acutely, of how little use she’d ever been to her step father, as feeble and powerless as she is. Of all the things that he must have seen in her, missing and lacking in every way.She bites her lip hard enough to taste blood.Mattel, without a word, reaches over to flick on the lamp beside the bed.Regina curls her fingers into the sheets, shame curling in her stomach with that familiar pang. “I know it is foo
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 25: power of a pretty face .Except, Regina doesn’t quite let the matter rest.The next morning, with much effort, she manages to rise early enough to follow Mattel to his practice match with Lionel.She reaches the courtyard just in time to see Mattel narrowly avoid being skewered by the sharp end of Lionel’s sword, and can’t help the quiet squeak that flits from her lips at the near-miss.Mattel’s eyes snap to her, having just noticed her presence.Lionel seizes the opportunity to slam the butt end of his sword into Mattel’s side, sending him clattering to the floor.“Alpha!”Regina doesn’t think that she’s ever run so fast in her life as when she flits to Mattel’s crumpled side, worry pounding in her chest. “Are you alright?”Mattel, where he’s sitting on the ground in the middle of sending a particularly scathing look in Lionel’s direction, turns his incredulous gaze to Regina, next.Regina, who’s gingerly grasping his arm and trying (unhel
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 26: a new kind of normalcy .The moon goddess’s mind, it is said, works by creating associations - between experiences, memories, objects and ideas.Mattel, despite all signs to the contrary, would seem to be a liar if he didn’t believe that the moon goddess would always have her way with all the matchmaking she seems to be doing lately…. .For how else could he explain, the way his mind seems to have - without his permission - bridged an association between Regina, and the benediction of reprieve from his nightly terrors?Surely, the way that he finds his gaze and his attentions drawn to Regina like the subconscious weight of a gravitational pull, can only be explained by the mysterious eccentricities of the way the goddess’s mind works.She is unlike anything Mattel has ever laid eyes upon, before.She is not immune to the fears that plague all men, but unlike any person Mattel has known before, she seems impervious to the kind of paralysis
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate.Chapter 27: who’s the fraud? .“Have you seen? The king’s obsessed with the new girl.” A maid called Emma gossiped to her fellow maid as the two of them were together in the pantry.“Yeah turns out Annalise isn’t his favorite anymore.” The other maid replied her friend as they giggled in disdain at the fall of the obnoxious blonde girl.“After all the ‘oh the king is my mate’..” Emma said imitating Annalise’s words as she rolled her eyes at the ending of her sentence scoffing. “Yet he isn’t her mate, she’s just nothing to him.”“But then why was the king treating her well then?.” Emma’s friend inquired confused as she stopped in the middle of their cleaning to ask. “I mean, all the others girls who have being brought to King Mattel, they’ve left in one way or the another other in great harm except Annalise.”Emma shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe that was why the king thought that she was his mate? Or his possible mate because she was the one who survived th
The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate .Chapter 28: finally recognized .Three miles away, practicing all by himself in the grounds while the other soldiers present looked on at the skills their king was presenting, meanwhile Mattel was trying to resist destroying the entire fucking if it wasn’t filled with weapons and at risk to the other soldiers as his sword-that he’s using to train - falls from his hand. again.Mattel Darius tries desperately to calm down and focus on keeping his scent in check as much as he can. If the slightly worried but mostly fearful looks his soliders are sending him are anything to go by, he isn't doing the best job."King Mattel!".Lionel’s voice snaps the alpha out of his momentary haze and his eyes, ringed in a barely suppressed red, snap to the other wolf in a threatening glare that causes the older male to flinch slightly.Immediate regret flows through the alpha but before he can grit out an apology, his bodyguard is already waving it off and leaning in to