The Alpha King's Princess
The Alpha King’s Princess – Chapter 27

After I had cried my heart out, I returned to the Estate, found something to eat in the kitchens, and retreated to my room for a hot bath. I felt calmer, steadier like I could push away the sadness if I tried hard enough. Candido wasn’t home, so it made it somewhat easier. I didn’t have to catch the scent of his cologne in the hallway and think about what I wouldn’t have with him.

I sunk into the bathtub and closed my eyes.

My feelings aside, the situation with the former Alpha King was troubling. How had vampires managed to infiltrate the estate? Weren’t their guards? Secret passageways to escape by that only pack members would know? Wasn’t the former alpha king a great warrior?

I frowned and sat up. Was Candido’s father actually the former alpha king? The title referred to the alpha of the biggest pack with the biggest territory, but the Full Moon Pack had been much smaller before Candido took over.

The Full Moon Pack was one of the oldest packs, one of the first that was mentioned in the book about the Moon Goddess, but it wasn’t the most powerful. The hierarchy had only been established after Candido took over. Had Sibyl’s father known that would happen? Was I overthinking it?

Either way, I was sure that, at the least, there was something off about the whole thing. Someone had betrayed Candido’s family from the inside. Where was that traitor now? Were they still with the pack? Had they died in the fire? Had they simply retreated to the vampire territory since the plot didn’t overturn the balance of the werewolf world as they thought it would?

Or had it?

Maybe the Alpha King title always belonged to the Full Moon Pack’s alpha, regardless of size and someone got upset about it. Maybe once the title meant full governance unlike what it meant now. If Sibyl’s father’s goal was to get the Alpha King title for himself or for his grandchild, orchestrating the invasion, forcing Candido into marriage and all the rest would serve his purpose.

Maybe he hadn’t meant for anyone to survive he just had to do damage control.

All of that was possible, but I wouldn’t know until I looked further into it.

I got out of the tub and logged into my Moon Shadow laptop. I don’t know why I never thought to look into how Candido became the alpha king, but I was going to replace out everything I could now.

Soon, I got into the police records and for the photos of the ruins of the old estate. It looked smaller than the current estate, nestled in a different forest surrounded by craggy rocks and such. The area was very different than where we currently were.

I scrolled to a photo of the place before it was burned down and frowned. The architecture was very different from the current estate. It looked old, as if it had been built long before Candido was even born. I zoomed in to get a better look. It honestly looked a bit like a Moon Goddess temple. There were no pictures of the inside of it, but there was a symbol on the top of the building that looked to be an older version of the current Full Moon Symbol. If not an older one, then an alternative one.

I think I’d seen this version somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember exactly where it was.

I scrolled through the report hoping for something of interest, until I reached the section about Candido. The police had found him several miles away, staring out into nothing as if he’d been in a trance. He’d been unresponsive when they found him, though awake and in his human form.

He’d been about seventeen at the time.

My heart clenched. I knew that Candido had been alpha for a long time, but to become alpha at seventeen in the middle of the pack’s civil war made my heart ache for him. I went on, wincing at the picture they’d taken of him when they found him. He’d been covered in ash and dirt. His clothing had been singed, but he was silent.

“Wait…” I scrolled back to the photo of him sitting on the ground in the middle of a clearing, not unlike the clearing he’d had me left in.

There was a bed of flowers and a body there. I scrolled on, looking for shots of the body, but there were none. Instead, I found what looked to be a pack photo in front of the old estate with a list of names from left to right and notes about their status. Everyone was accounted for. Most were certified as dead.

I looked at the line of Candido’s family. The woman standing beside his father looked nothing like Candido. She was pale where he had darker, ruddier tone. Candido’s father was olive toned with dark eyes. His brother looked to be in his late twenties in the photo, he looked just like his mother in father. Then, there was Candido in the photo. His green eyes were as vibrant in the photo as they were now, but neither his father nor the woman had green eyes or his coloring.

Standing with his other family members, he looked completely out of place.

I looked through the rest of the records, but I found nothing that stood out to me other than the body that had been resting on the bed of flowers.

Curious, I went looking for his brother’s birth records. Per the birth record I found, he was the son of Candido’s father and the former queen. There wasn’t much to say about the former queen. Though the former alpha king was a fearsome man, his wife was little more than a window dressing. No one said anything about her that was negative, but from what I could tell, there wasn’t anything positive about her either.

The strange thing was that when I went to replace Candido’s birth records, I couldn’t access them. There was such a tight seal on his records that it made me even more suspicious.

I had been with Candido for years. I never suspected that there was something in his past to hide.

I kept searching, trying to replace any records about the former Alpha King that might give me more information about the civil war, about why Candido looked so different. I felt like I was going in circles when I found an old photo. The picture wasn’t exactly grainy, but it had the character of having been taken with an older camera.

The woman in the photo smiled brilliantly with Candido’s dark complexion, the same waves on her head, and his brilliant green eyes. In her arms was a baby, but I couldn’t see the baby’s face or make out anything about the child.

Then, I realized that I had seen this photo before.

Once when I first started coming to Candido for help with my homework in high school, there had been a photo on his desk. The frame was old, and the photo was smaller and only had the woman’s face. Whether it had been cut down or otherwise damaged, I didn’t know.

I remembered asking who the woman was, and Candido never answered me. He placed it in a drawer of his desk and started drilling me on homework. After that, I never saw the photo again.

This woman, whoever she was, had to be Candido’s mother or some other close relative, but there were no records on her. It was as if she didn’t exist. The only record that might point me to who she is was Candido’s sealed birth records. I took note to hack into the pack’s records as soon as I had some more time on my hands.

The hair on the back of my neck lifted as I felt someone’s presence nearby. It was acute. I turned towards the door as the presence grew closer and closer. I slipped out of bed and approached the door. I could feel the presence drifting down the hall. I had never felt so intensely aware of anyone before. It was as if I could reach through the door and touch them.

Him.

I knew it was a man before I even reached the door. I placed my hand against it and could almost feel the heat of his body against my palm. Then, I heard the beating of his heart and felt a bit dazed, comforted by it like I was in Candido’s arms after a nightmare.

Then, a knock sounded on the door.

“Hedy?”

My heart lurched as I pulled the door open. All the hyper-awareness I’d felt before vanished, but as I looked up at him, a different sort of awareness stirred in me.

He was still damp from a shower wearing nothing but pajama bottoms and an open robe, holding a glass of milk.