Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder
Chapter 651

Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder Chapter 651

CHAPTER 151 : THE BOOK OF MAGIC

*Maeve*

Winter Forest, One and a Half Years Later

Troy came into our room like a battering ram, his shoulders and hair dusted with a thick layer ofsnow. He gave me a boyish grin as he shook himself off and began to unwind the scarf from hisneck.

"What have you been up to?” I asked as I eyed him from the foot of the bed where I was pulling ona pair of thick socks over my wool pants.

It was another frigid day in Winter Forest. Outside our bedroom window, the stars were dense, themoon casting long icy shadows over the castle grounds below.

“I walked Luke to school,” he gruffed, hanging up his damp sweater near the fireplace.

I couldn't help but arch my brows and chuckle to myself as I eyed Troy's snow-coated pants and thedamp spots around his knees and elbows.

He caught my gaze and rolled his eyes before continuing to undress. “He fought me the wholeway."

“It almost looks like he won,” I mused, bending down to fetch my warmest boots.

We'd been living in Winter Forest for a year now, and Lucas was worse than ever. He'd been home-schooled by a private tutor when we lived in Avondale, but we thought Winter Forest would be agreat place for him to broaden his horizons and make some new friends. He was attending thesame school where Rowan and I had once been students, and at first, it had gone well.

But recently Luke had been acting out, even sneaking out of class or not showing up altogether. Hewas running with a group of boys his age, having sword fights with icicles and throwing snowballsat unsuspecting passersby while hiding behind snow berms on the way to the market square.

One of his friends was named Brady, and he was a vampire. That wouldn't have mattered much tous at all, had it not been for Brady's mother coming to the castle, dragging Brady by the ear, tocomplain about Luke's “bad influence.”

I didn't blame her in the slightest. It hadn't been the smoothest of transitions for the vampires whosettled in Winter Forest. Aside from Crimson Creek, Winter Forest was now home to the largestpopulation of vampires, all of them refugees from the Realm of Night. Most were families or womenand children who had lost their fathers and husbands during the war. Brady was one of the luckyfew to have both parents still living.

His father worked closely with Troy training young warriors. His mother was a seamstress and one ofthe matriarchs in the community of vampires who now lived amongst us. She worried about fittingin, about her safety as well as the safety of her family.

Winter Forest had been more welcoming than most packs, but there were still a few people whofeared the vampires. Having little vampires running around being menaces wasn't a good look, butneither were the prince's antics. And Luke was, I was sure, the ringleader in his little gang.

Luke had been acting out, and any attempts to help him assimilate to our new life in Winter Forestseemed to push him further into his devious behavior. He wasn't used to being an only child. Hemissed having his brothers around. We missed having his brothers around, too.

“Brady and Luke are starting warrior training today after school,” Troy said as he pulled a freshsweater over his shoulders, smoothing it over his chest. I blinked up at him, c*****g my brow. Heshrugged, striding over to me and kissing me on the forehead. “I have to wear him out somehow.Both of them. Brady's father is one of the trainers, and it was actually his idea.”

"Aren“t they a little young?”

"Brady took on four sixteen-year-olds,” he breathed, sitting down next to me on the bed. “And Lukefinished them off. I spent yesterday afternoon talking to their parents. Something has to be done.”

I blew out my breath, my eyes clouding with tears of frustration. Troy ran his hand down my back,then put his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. “It's not your fault,” he said.

“It feels like my fault. I uprooted his life-"

"He was up to the same stuff in Avondale, Maeve. He's a scrapper, always has been, and always willbe. He needs an outlet for his energy, and if he wants to fight like the big dogs, he needs to trainlike them too.”

I snorted with mirth, wiping a rogue tear from my cheek. Troy squeezed me to him for a moment,then reluctantly released me, a glimmer of longing behind his eyes. “What are you getting alldressed up for?”

I smirked, glancing down at my wool pants and clunky boots. “I have an errand to run with Claretoday,” I answered, rising from the foot of the bed and striding toward our closet. I opened thedoor, looking over my shoulder at him. “I'll be back in a few hours. We're going on a... walk.”“You're finally going to the old temple to return the book, aren’t you?” He rose from the bed as Itossed him a pair of socks, his mouth twitching into a smile that warmed me from the inside out. Ihoped to carry some of that warmth with me today while I trekked into the unforgiving chill withClare, lugging that Goddess-forsaken spell book over ice and knee-deep snow to where I hopedwould be its final resting place.

“I am,” I replied, taking a shaky breath as I turned back to the closet to finish getting dressed. “It'llbe quick.”

At least, I hoped it would be quick. The spellbook had been sitting at the bottom of a seldom usedcloset on the upper floors of the castle for months now, out of sight and out of mind. It was Clarewho came to me yesterday, telling me with a firmness that made me want to bend the knee to herthat it was time, that we'd put this off for far too long.

That kind of magic didn’t belong in our world. We had no use for it. We prayed we didn't need touse it again.

“Are you donating blood today, too?” Troy asked, his voice wavering a bit.

I turned to him, clutching my favorite purple turtleneck sweater to my chest as I huffed a long,shallow breath. “I did yesterday. I'm taking a break for a few days,” I replied, but he narrowed hiseyes at me. “Troy, it's for the children—"

"You've been doing too much,” he said, running his tongue along the inside of his lower lip. "Afteryou get back from your errand, you should take a break for the rest of the day. Eat something. Takea nap.”

"You know that's not going to happen-"

“You're burning yourself out.”

I gave him a tight-lipped smile in response. Troy was right. The past year had been the busiest yearof my life, and then some.

But I was the White Queen now. This was my pack, my territory.

And I was the only person who could give the vampires what they needed to survive in our world.“The pill form seems to be working,” Clare said softly as we made a path through the snow towardthe mouth of the river. The river that looped around Winter Forest met the inlet not far from wherewe were now, and crossing the frozen mouth of the river was the only way to reach the sunken, icecovered island where the ancient temple stood in decay and disrepair.

“I heard as much. It requires far less blood that way,” I replied with a sigh, shifting the weight of myheavy backpack. The book weighed as much as a small child, and my thighs were beginning to acheas we broke through the ice crusted snow. “The blood is mixed with blood root, and some othervitamins and minerals.”

"Well, a weekly dose is all the mature vampires need at this point. The children who are taking thesupplement are able to handle the sun-"

“Really?” I stopped walking so I could face Clare, who was walking a few paces behind me. Sheraised her eyebrows, nodding.

“It's been tested in Crimson Creek, and successfully. One pill, once a week, and the kids can playoutside. The adults can even handle the sun in small doses now.”

“Then it's working—"

“It's working,” she said with a soft, fleeting smile. Her shoulders relaxed a bit as we caught ourbreath, our faces lifted to the first inklings of late winter sunshine that had just begun to peak overthe mountains in the distance.

I'd been donating blood for the past year and half, sometimes multiple times a week. There wereother people willing to donate the life-giving nutrients the vampires needed to survive, of course,but there was something different about my blood, even that of my mother and my niece.

We noticed it last year, the first spring I'd spent as the White Queen. After a dose of my blood, someof the vampires were able to handle an hour or so of sunlight without their skin reddening andblistering. Plus, just a taste of my blood was enough to sustain them for days.

We knew a lot more about these so-called “lower vampires” now that we'd been living in closequarters with them for a while. They could eat the same kinds of foods we did. They had a similarculture and lived in family groups like we did. They matured fully around the age of twenty andaged slowly from then on. Not immortal, so to speak, but some of the vampires I'd met who lookedelderly were several hundred years old, and even some of the young looking one were two hundredyears old, or more.

Children were far and few between, but there were enough to fill classrooms in the school in WinterForest. Two vampire babies had been born in the past year, both of them delivered by Clare, whohad spent her time in Winter Forest training to be a midwife.

There had even been a few weddings between vampires and shifters, and a few of those unions hadproduced pregnancies. One of those women was due to deliver in a few weeks.

The only hybrid shifter vampire I knew was Bethany, whose mother had been a vampire, and herfather, Henry, was a shifter. She had shifter powers but didn’t need blood to survive. Whether she'dinherit the vampire lifespan was yet to be seen.

These magic pills Clare spoke of, however... well, they were changing everything. A single pill a weekmade it possible for the vampires to live like we did, walking in the sun and not needing drops ofblood in their coffees, wine, and soup to fuel their bodies. It also meant I wasn't constantly lightheaded and drained, my arms no longer yellow and purple with bruises from constant needling.“Sasha made friends with one of the vampire children. Her name is Vanessa. I honestly wouldn'thave known she was a vampire had it not been for her mother telling me as much. She's beentaking the pill for three months now.”

Success-that's what this was. My chest felt a little lighter as we continued to make our way throughthe snow.

The deep snow gave way to ice as we reached the frozen mouth of the river. I took a ginger steponto the ice, replaceing it still thick and firm. I nodded over my shoulder at Clare, bidding her to follow."We won't get sucked into a portal, right?” she asked, half joking.

I swallowed back my own apprehension but couldn't answer.

Hanna had come here, something pulling her to this long forgotten place. We'd found it years ago,so it was known to us, but we hadn't paid it any mind until that fateful night Hanna wasn't able tosleep for whatever reason and took off in a cloak of darkness.

Inside, she'd found Oliver, Lena, and Xander, and we'd heard their harrowing tale. Somehow, thetemple was used as a bridge between our realm, and the realm of what Lena had called the witches.But the realm of the witches had been tethered to the vampire realm from what I understood. TheRealm of Night was gone now. I didn't know what that meant for the realm of those who had givenus-given me-this book of magic.

We reached the temple as the sun drifted over the tallest peaks of the far flung mountains. I crossedthrough the doorless threshold, my feet crunching on the snow that piled along the windblown andtoppled stone pews. The ceiling was barely intact, but it was enough to cover the altar from theelements.

"Are you just going to leave it on the altar?” Clare asked behind me, her voice trembling a bit as shelooked around. It was her first time here.

"Yes," I breathed, unzipping my backpack and wrapping my gloved fingers around the book, holdingit up to look at it one last time.

It had shown me my death once, and I had been angry. But what I hadn't realized then is that it hadgiven me the gift of knowing I would live a long, fulfilled life. I'd die in the arms of my mate, tuckedinto the same bed we shared now at the castle, our hair gray and our skin withered with lives longlived.

It showed me that I was meant to be here, in Winter Forest.

Most of all, it showed me that I wouldn't die with white hair. I wouldn't need to call upon theGoddess and exchange my life for a glimpse of her power. There would be peace until my dyingday.

At least, I hoped so.

I set the book down on the altar and turned my back to it.

“Thank you,” I said in a whisper, and then the hair on the back of my neck rose, a chill running downthe length of my spine as a soft gust of wind rustled through the temple. I turned back around."Are you coming?” Clare said from the doorway, her eyes wide and face flushed. She wanted to getout of here as much as I did.

“Yeah,” I breathed, blinking at the altar.

The book was gone, just like that.