The Alpha King's Princess
The Alpha King’s Princess – Chapter 37

I was running. I didn’t know where or how, but I knew on the other side was something I needed. I heard Candido speaking to me. Sometimes his voice was gentle. Sometimes I heard him growling, but I felt his presence nearby. He didn’t leave me though I didn’t know what I would be waking to. Whenever he spoke, I felt like I was drifting closer to consciousness. When silence fell around me, I sunk.

I slept for a long time. I don’t know how long, but it felt like at least a few days. I didn’t want to wake up and face what had happened. The way the world had spun and the sound of them laughing at me chased me nearly every time I started to relax.

“You’re okay, Hedy. I’m here.”

Candido’s voice kept the sounds at bay when he spoke, but he wasn’t always there. I felt disoriented and lost. My skin felt like it was burning. I felt like I was freezing and everything in me was confused. Moonlight drifted through my eyes. I swore I heard a wolf howling in the distance.

Then, for a moment, I was standing a chapel watching Sibyl walk down the aisle towards Candido, and no matter how hard I ran, I couldn’t catch up. She kept walking away from me. Candido grew further and further away. The darkness swallowed and tumbled me over until I dropped into a room I didn’t readily recognize. The scent of the Wolf Fang Pack house filled my nose and I ran to replace a door, but there wasn’t one.

Then the scent of the cellar hit me and I felt the same cold I had during that nightmare sweep over me. Then, there was Bella screaming at me.

“I’m going to make your life a living hell!”

Then, I was back on the cold floor of the locker room with that man reaching for his belt above me. I wanted to run, I wanted to turn and escape, but he held me down as someone else stripped me out of my clothes and laughed at the way I squirmed.

I didn’t want to leave the safety of the dark, but my mind cleared, and I surfaced into consciousness like drifting up from the bottom of a pool.

The ceiling was the familiar underside of my canopy bed. The scent of the room told me that I was in bed, at home at the estate I was so hot and nauseous. My stomach heaved, and I turned over, aiming over the edge of my bed, but nothing came up.

“Easy,” Candido’s voice came from beside the bed. A trash can appeared beneath my mouth, but there was still nothing coming up. My stomach cramped and trembled at every dry heave. It was as if my body was trying to get rid of something that it couldn’t. His hand fell on my shoulder, gripping my shoulder and steadying me. He pat and wiped my mouth with a moist, cool towel before coming closer and hauling me close.

“I have you. That’s it. Just keep breathing. You’re all right.”

Something cool passed over the back of my neck as I continued to shudder. It felt good, but I could barely relax in his arms. My throat felt raw. My head was spinning, but I clenched my hand in whatever part of his clothing I could manage.

He was here. He was really here. I remembered calling for him, but I hadn’t had any confidence that he would come. I hadn’t thought much about what would have happened if he hadn’t come, but I was so glad that he came.

“Can—” I choked and coughed. He pressed a glass of water towards my lips as I tried to breathe and speak.

“It’s okay. Drink some of this. You’ve been asleep for days.” He said softly. “Slowly, Hedy. Slowly.”

I managed to sip some of the water before slumping into his arms and tightening my grip on him as best as I could. I still couldn’t get the words out. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say, but I knew I didn’t want him to go anywhere.

I didn’t want him to leave me for a good long while. If I could just get the words out, he’d know. If he knew he wouldn’t leave me, I knew that. It felt selfish. With everything that was going on, he had to be busy. Was I keeping him from taking care of the pack?

“I’m not leaving you,” he said, stroking my hair. “You’ll be lucky if I let you out of my sight for at least a month.”

I tried to laugh and tell him that was ridiculous, but I couldn’t. I shuddered as clung to him, tightening my grip. I could smell the coolness of the tile in the locker room, and the scent of the showers. The man who had ben kneeling above me, holding me down. My stomach heaved again.

I heard Bella’s screeching voice again and saw the glint of my mother’s necklace again. If I could not stomach giving up on it before, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to see it again without thinking of those men and what they planned to do to me.

He hushed me and sat beside me, pulling me into his arms. My eyes burned, and I felt the tears rolling down my face as I shuddered and curled into the warm safety of his arms.

“You’re safe, now, Hedy. I’m here. I’m here, little one. I have you.”

I closed my eyes as he kept telling me I was safe. Whatever I would wake up to next didn’t matter. Candido was here, and I was home.

When I woke up again, I was pressed into Candido’s chest. His scent relaxed everything in me. My head pounded, but I curled closer, relaxed and assured that it was all over.

“You’re awake?” Candido asked. I looked up slowly. He removed something from my forehead. “How are you feeling?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t say. I was still a bit warm, dizzy and I felt sticky.

“That’s okay, you don’t need to say anything, sweetheart.”

My jaw trembled, “What… happened?”

He said nothing for a moment. I tightened my grip on him, looking up at him.

“Candido, please?”

“I killed them all,” Candido said softly. “They were…”

His jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. “They were going to, and I killed them all before they could. I brought you home.”

Before they could… the words rattled through me. I didn’t need him to say it to know what Bella had planned for me. I shuddered.

How had she come to hate me so much? How had she thought to do something like that to me after years of abusing me? How could anyone be so cruel?

“And then?” I asked.

“The police were called. Team Gamma-2 has taped off the locker room as a scene of a crime. Their packs are being contacted for statements and persecution.”

It turned out the security cameras around the locker room had caught them all coming in and Candido and Team Gamma and Gamma-2 bursting into the locker room. There had been twelve men of various ages from various classes, campuses and packs. It was turning into an Inter-Pack issue and an issue with the academy. There was a chance that they would cancel after-class activities until the locker room was repaired. They might even cancel the rugby tournament.

“You won’t be going back to school until this is all over.”

“B-Bella,” I choked out. “Bella sprayed something in my face.”

He hushed me, crushing me against his chest in a way that I couldn’t help but relax in. Still, the words kept coming as I told him about everything that had happened. How I felt after I was sprayed and how long it took to fight it off. I didn’t tell him about my powers or anything else, but I felt the terror again wash over me like I was back in the locker room.

“Don’t worry about any of that or what happened next. None of that matters,” Candido said. “I’ll take care of everything. You just focus on getting better.”

“You shifted,” I said, frowning and remembering it. I frowned.

Golden wolves were the most powerful. Their b***d had healing properties, but they also tended to need a lot of energy to shift because they were so large and more connected to their superpowers in that form.

Candido might not have used his superpowers to kill them all, but that had to have been exhausting. If a werewolf of an awakened bloodline expended too much energy, they could fall into a coma or die. It was rare, but I knew that Candido had been under a lot of stress and there was no telling how much power he’d used to save me.

“The gold… is everything okay? Are you okay?”