Chapter 4

ETHAN

I’m still rooted to one spot in shock and so is my twin brother. I cannot believe that Hazel just rejected us so brutally and I’m sure he doesn’t either. But it’s the truth. She rejected us and we just have to come to terms with it.

I don’t know why Hazel rejected us and I don’t think I understand why either. Try as we did, we couldn’t seem to find out what her reason was.

But the main issue is that I don’t think I can come to terms with the fact that a maid just rejected me and my twin brother. Hazel is just a mere maid, for God’s sake, so I still don’t understand why she would reject either of us when we are offering her a chance at a better life, when we just want to lift her out of the abject misery she is currently living in.

“She rejected us, Ethan,” Arnold suddenly says, cutting into the silence that has enveloped us ever since Hazel left.

“She did,” I reply in a brave tone.

He looks heartbroken about the situation and I am too, but I know that we have to square up to the situation so that we can move on. She doesn’t want us, so we can’t keep hoping on her.

“Let’s forget about her,” I tell my twin brother. “She doesn’t deserve us.”

“But I don’t want to,” he objects.

“You have to.”

I walk closer to him and place a comforting hand on his shoulder. “We tried, Arnold. We tried to give Hazel the best life she could possibly have but she rejected it. She rejected us, Arnold, and there is nothing we can do about it. Now, what we just have to do is move on.”

“Okay, brother,” he replies.

“Good. Now the first step is for us to leave this pack. We have nothing more to do here, and the only reason we came here in the first place was to save Hazel from her bullies and it’s clear that she doesn’t want us or our help.”

“Yeah, let’s leave.”

With that, we start to prepare to depart from this pack, and I pick up the phone in the room, placing a call to our advisor so that they can get our entourage ready to depart with us.

Since Hazel said her life was going just fine before we came along and we should leave her alone, that’s exactly what we will do. We will leave her alone to continue living her life in misery, serving as a maid to lesser individuals when she can have maids of her own if she desires. As I have said before, she doesn’t deserve us.

HAZEL

I leave my room, heading out of the pack house. I need a bit of fresh air to cool my brain down and gather my thoughts together so I decide to go into the woods surrounding the pack house just for that purpose.

As I step out of the pack house and into the cool evening air, I feel a moment of calm swirling around in me. Just then, I look to the right and see the entourage of cars that the two Kings came with pulling out of the parking lot.

So King Ethan and King Arnold have finally decided to leave. It’s a good thing, though. It means that they have decided not to pin their hopes on me anymore and that’s good. I don’t need a pair of kings breathing down my neck every day as I carry out my duties in this pack. I’m thankful for their departure because it means I can continue to go about my daily life now.

Finally, all the cars pull out of the parking lot one after the other, leaving behind a cloud of dust in their wake. I can’t help but heave out a sigh of relief, but little do I know that my ordeal is far from being over.

As I look to the left, I see the group of maids from earlier looking at me with the disgust still evident on their faces. I decide to ignore them, instead choosing to continue on my way to the woods.

But before I can take more than five steps forward, they start to walk in my direction, swarming around me and cutting my movement short. I begin to wonder what they are up to. I don’t want to be trifled with right now or any other time for that matter. I just want to be left alone. So I start to walk away from them.

Their leader, a girl named Cathy, steps forward, moving to my front and blocking my path. “Just where do you think you’re going? she asks.

Another girl steps forward, coming to stand beside Cathy. Her name is Gwen and she is also a leader of some sort to the maids, though Cathy has more power than she does. “Don’t you understand that you can’t leave until we are through with you?” she says in a very mean tone.

“Step away. I need to leave,” I say, not bothering to respond to any of their questions. I just want to be left alone at the moment.

Cathy and Gwen are enemies of mine and they are the ones that always lead the rest of the maids in bullying me. I tried to ignore them so many times until I finally decided to stand up to them.

I push past them, walking in between Cathy and Gwen as I begin to head for the woods. It seems like they don’t want to give up as they follow me, the rest of the maids walking behind them.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going, you witch!” Cathy calls out from behind me, and immediately, her words make me stop in my tracks as I can’t believe what I just heard. So I turn around to face them.

“A girl having two mates has never been heard of in this Kingdom before, so you’re definitely a witch since you have two mates,” Gwen says.

The rest of the maids behind them begin to murmur in agreement and I just can’t believe that such ludicrous statements are coming out of their mouths.

“That’s what I have been thinking too ever since we found out,” one of the maids voices out.

“She is a demon. I have always sensed that from the beginning,” another says.

“From the way she behaves, you will know that she is cursed.”

“That’s true. How else can we explain her having two mates?”

“She must have done something to have two of the powerful Kings in the Kingdom as her mates. She is no ordinary maid.”

“That’s why I said she is a witch. How else could she do that?”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing from them. Can they be so dumb as to think that? I don’t even want to have two mates, and it isn’t my fault that the Moon Goddess decided to give them to me. My heart sinks in anguish and I’m so devastated by the turn of events. I’m not cursed, I’m not a witch and I’m not a demon either. They are still talking and what Gwen says next sends panic swirling through my body.

“Since she’s a cursed witch, we can’t have someone like her living with us before she kills us all.”

“That’s why we have to kill her first. We should stone her to death,” Cathy adds and the terror in me rises as soon as I hear that. They can’t possibly be serious, can they?

Before I know what’s happening, they all start to surround me, picking up stones from the ground as they do so.

I’m now in their middle, helpless as I stare at them, terrified. I don’t want to die. But they can’t hear my thoughts and even if they can, they won’t care.

The next moment, Cathy raises the very big stone in her hand as she prepares to smash it on my head with a murderous look in her eyes.