Forbidden Lovers

Make Another Man

Arthmael's hands were on his hair, pulling them out as he kept pacing on the long hallway outside of Evelyn's room, trying and failing to keep himself together in front of the others that had gathered to find out what would happen to their new Queen. Would she be alright? Would she survive this rogues' attack?

He was literally losing his mind as they discussed if she would survive this or not. As if she was about to die, as if that was the most usual thing in the world.

Evelyn wouldn't die, he refused to cope with that. She had confessed to him, she had told him she loved him. This meant she wouldn't leave him, would she? She couldn't.

Tears burned like poison down his throat. He wanted to cry. For the first time he wanted to close himself on a room and cry his heart out like a little baby. How had he even thought of letting her go before? Of rejecting her, of giving her up? He had been a big fool.

There wasn't a single way he could live without her, Arthmael was well aware of this now. He had just stupidly lied to himself this whole time... Every second, every minute, every day of his life meant absolutely nothing if Evelyn wasn't there with him.

And once again he pulled his hair out almost painfully. Waiting alone was agonizing on its own, as if the doubt that maybe she wasn't breathing right now wasn't enough.

"Arthmael, calm down. Evelyn is strong, she's get through this," Julian tried once again to put him together, although he looked in the verge of crying himself.

"I... I didn't protect her. She's there because of me..." His voice cracked. "What kind of a Commander I am, what kind of a..." Mate, that's what he wanted to say, what kind of a mate he was. But he stopped himself in the last second.

"Arthmael, you did all you could, I know you." Estelle cupped his face with her small hands. "You should see a doctor yourself, you're wounded—"

"No." His response, and the way he moved her hands away was a bit harsher than he intended to. And he knew if he kept doing this, someone would be able to put two and two together. He just couldn't stop. He couldn't think, all he could see behind his closed eyelids was her, her blinding smile, her bleeding tummy.

And it was a torture.

His breath got all caught up on his throat when King Robert walked out of Evelyn's room, accompanied by the elf healer he had brought to take care of her.

"Alright," Robert's strong voice draw everyone's attention instantly. "It makes me happy that you all have gathered here to look out for your Queen, but don't you worry, she'll be alright in just a few days. She's a strong young woman, nothing will happen to Evelyn."

People sighed in relief, some of them going to Robert to show him their sympathy, yet Arthmael couldn't calm down without seeing her himself. Without feeling that she would be alright for real, that he could get her in his arms in a few days as Robert had said just a few seconds ago. Screw the guilt, screw her marriage to Robert and everything else, these were now so little, so small in comparison to what really mattered the most.

Alpha King Robert looked at Arthmael as he approached him, strangely some anger buried in the depth of his eyes. "You had one job, Commander. Only one," he whispered in his ear, leaving to God alone knew where, leaving Arthmael speechlessly look at him as if he had grown another head all of the sudden.

Arthmael could easily justify what he said with the fact that Robert needed Evelyn alive for his plans, for the world to see the lie he wanted them to see, but why did it feel a bit more than that? It almost felt like Robert cared about her well-being.

Pressuring his temples with his fingertips to ease his own headache, Arthmael tried making sense of it all. Did Robert, in his own twisted way, have feelings for Evelyn that he didn't know himself he had?

If things weren't enough messed up already, Robert had to come out and actually care about her? This made everything more difficult but Arthmael didn't want to think about it right now.

He almost felt the way his heart sank inside of his chest when he entered her room and looked at her laid down on the bed almost as if she was dead. And he shook that thought out of her head immediately. His Evelyn wasn't dead.

She'd be alright. Fate couldn't hate her this much to take her away after having only sufferings on her life.

She'd live and she'd find happiness.

But right now? Right now she was unconscious, looking sick pale and dark bags were so visible under her eyes. Under those beautiful dreamy ocean eyes that she wasn't opening for him right now.

Arthmael's first urge was to run to her and gather her in his arms, but of course he couldn't do that. Of course he could only stay at the back and watch other people be there for his mate.

His mate!

Maybe she'd feel his presence if could be there and hold her hand, maybe it could make her wake up sooner. Or maybe marking her would heal her.

Yet he could do nothing. He felt like a coward that not only couldn't protect her from a bunch of rogues, but would stand and watch her in pain without doing anything in return. When had he ever deserved her?

Silently, he walked out of the room, wiping away the single tear that had fallen in his cheek, but he almost bumped into someone as fast as he closed the door from behind. "Alpha," he only said, blankly. Not letting the sudden anger that bubbled inside him in his face, however his jaw was clenched tight.

Everything was Robert's goddamn fault to begin with.

"Beta," he answered. "I see you've paid your visit to my wife."

His wife... Arthmael felt the bitterness of it on his tongue.

"I have." He nodded once.

"After you let a damn rogue almost kill her."

He didn't want to be reminded of it, the guilt in his chest was enough of its own. However, it was almost comic, coming from Robert himself.

"Or maybe because she couldn't protect herself from the damn rogue," Arthmael said in his face, looking at the way Robert's eyes narrowed deeper. "Maybe because she had a goddamn collar on her neck that her own husband put on her because that was the only way he could weaken her."

"ARTHMAEL!" Robert growled so loud, Estelle and Julian ran out of Evelyn's room to look at what was happening. "What has gotten into you, you've never behaved like this before. Does giving these much privileges to you made you a power-hungry man?"

"Power-hungry?" A chuckle full of bitterness and mocking escaped his mouth. "That's the first thing you think of me when I stand up to you? That I'm lusting over your power?"

"Father, Arthmael, what is happening?" Julian cut in, seeing the tension and anger in the air.

"What is happening is that Evelyn almost died in my arms today because your father and my King had to collar her off her powers." Arthmael's gaze never moved from Robert although he answered to Julian. "What is happening is that he still won't remove the collar although it would make her heal much faster since our Queen is a healer. Would she be able, I presume, to heal her own body if she had her magic powers?"

There was a sudden heavy silence in the hallway that for a few second no one dared to break.

"Father?" Estelle asked in her usual soft voice, wanting to hear a confirmation.

Robert's eyes had turned the blackest of blacks. "I see you've forgotten what I've done for you all these years... The person I've made you, it's all because of me."

People said words cut deeper than million of knifes... and maybe they did.

They definitely did.

"Made me?!" Arthmael couldn't hide the hurt behind his voice. Slowly, without thinking twice of his decision, he pulled out his pinky signed ring, a sign of his title as the Commander. And he gave it to Robert, who was looking at him in pure shock. "Then I'm giving you this back so you can make another man. So you can find another little homeless kid to lie to and convince him he'll be your son, because this isn't the father I wished I had my entire life."