Lycan King's Savior

Chapter 2: Shattered Dreams

Chapter 2: Shattered Dreams

My skull pounded relentlessly as if someone took a jackhammer to my brain. Waves of nausea crashed over me as the harsh fluorescent lights overhead seared into my eyes. Lily's frantic voice cut through the fog of pain and confusion, her words sending a jolt of panic ricocheting through my veins.

"Ma'am, please reconsider. You know the Alpha won't allow you inside in this state." Her brown eyes were wide with worry as she hovered anxiously by my side.

But I wasn't listening. Nothing else mattered except getting to my son El. The thought of that monster King taking my baby boy away from me unleashed an anguish more excruciating than any physical wound. I'd claw through the fires of hell itself to get to my child.

"You know where he took him," I accused, my voice trembling with desperation as I grabbed Lily's arm, fingers digging into her soft flesh. She flinched but didn't pull away.

Lily's hesitation spoke volumes. She glanced around nervously before relenting with a resigned sigh. "The Alpha brought El to your family's home. He's with your parents..."

Relief flooded my senses for a fleeting moment before the dread came crashing back, a massive tidal wave threatening to drown me. If King had El at my parents' place, surely they would intervene and make that egotistical, power-hungry bastard see reason about taking a mother's child. Surely blood was thicker than whatever deranged allegiance they held to that sociopathic excuse for an Alpha.

I didn't wait for Lily to call a car. Heedless of the pouring rain pounding against the pavement, I burst through the doors and flung out my arm, flagging down the first cab I saw. The driver barely had time to stomp on the brakes before I flung myself into the backseat.

"The Stanley estate, and step on it!" I ordered, my voice edged with barely contained panic.

The cabbie must have recognized me as the Luna because he didn't dare question my disheveled appearance or frantic tone. He just nodded once and peeled away from the curb with a squeal of tires.

The familiar gates of my family's sprawling villa estate soon loomed into view. I shoved a crumpled wad of bills at the driver and bolted before he could make change, my feet pounding against the puddled pavement as I raced towards the entrance.

Two burly guards materialized from the gatehouse, moving to block my path with impassive expressions.

"The Alpha has forbidden your entry, Luna. Turn back now."

A feral growl rose up from my chest as panic clawed at my throat. "Where is he? Where's my baby boy?"

The younger of the two guards glanced sidelong at his colleague before replying in a carefully measured tone. "The Alpha has already departed. But...the child remains inside the estate."

That was all I needed to hear. I started pounding on the gates with both fists, howling like a wild animal as desperation took over.

"Please! Open up! I need to see my son!"

Just when it seemed all was lost, a familiar voice suddenly rang out from the direction of the main house.

"For gods' sake, let her in before she draws more attention!"

It was my sister Jess, standing with her arms crossed in the open doorway, clad in silk pajamas with her blonde hair cascading around her shoulders. The guards mumbled a reluctant apology before pulling open the heavy wrought iron gates just wide enough for me to slip through.

I brushed past the confused men without a second glance and sprinted across the perfectly manicured lawn towards Jess, desperate for comfort and understanding, for someone—anyone—to empathize with the depth of my anguish over nearly losing my child.

"Oh Jess!" I cried out, opening my arms and preparing to fling myself at her, seeking the solace only a sister could provide.

But she stepped aside at the last moment, her face an inscrutable mask as I crashed unceremoniously into a nearby armchair.

Stunned, I looked up at her with bewildered, questioning eyes. But her cold, indifferent gaze offered no answers or clue as to her cruel slight.

"Jess...?" I started to protest, but my voice died in my throat as I noticed our parents, Joy and Tom, hovering wordlessly in the kitchen behind her, their expressions equally guarded and distant.

Confusion swirled through my frazzled mind as a creeping sense of dread began seeping into my bones. This wasn't right. These were my flesh and blood, my family, they should be as horrified and furious as me over King's heinous actions...

My train of thought derailed as a tiny whimper reached my ears. My gaze snapped towards the source of the sound, landing instantly on El's tiny form asleep on the oversized leather sofa. Relief washed over me in crashing waves as I scrambled to my feet and rushed to his side, cradling his warm body against my chest as I choked out a frantic recounting of the hell I'd just endured at the Alpha's hands.

Surely once they knew the truth, once they understood the torment of having your child ripped from your arms, they would—

"You're just getting divorced, Ashley," Jess' scornful voice cut through my panicked rambling like a knife. "It's not the end of the damned world."

My arms tightened instinctively around El's sleeping form as the biting remark struck me like a harsh slap across the face. I flinched, turning to look at Jess with a mixture of hurt and disbelief etched across my features, silently pleading with my eyes for her to take it back. Seeking some semblance of understanding or empathy from my own blood.

But her cold glare remained unflinching as she crossed her arms tighter, pink lips curling into a sneer.

"You heard me. Stop with the hysterics already. Anyone would think King gutted you right here instead of merely filing for divorce."

As her callous, mocking words hung heavy in the air, I glanced desperately towards our parents, mutely begging them with every fiber of my being to intervene, to put an end to this nightmare and offer some kind of comfort or compassion.

But their silence seemed to stretch endlessly, suffocating in its emptiness, before finally Mom spoke in a tight, clipped voice laced with thinly veiled venom.

"You brought this on yourself, Ashley. Don't look so shocked and wounded. He wasn't even your true mate to begin with."

The accusation hung in the air like a toxic cloud as Mom laid into me over stealing King away from Jess all those years ago. I clutched El tighter, curling my body protectively around his as her biting words rained down in a relentless torrent of fury.

Memories of that awful day flashed through my mind's eye, unbidden. The look of stunned betrayal and hurt etched on Jess's face as King rejected her advances with an indifferent wave of his hand, his eyes already drifting towards me with an intensity that had thrilled and terrified me in equal measure.

"We didn't know he wasn't my mate until El was almost born!" I tried to protest, to explain how King and I had fallen for each other, how it didn't start out as some twisted scheme like they now claimed.

But my words fell on deaf ears as Mom continued her scathing diatribe, every syllable a fresh dagger to my heart.

Until finally, Jess's callous voice cut through the haze of memory with words that cleaved my world in two:

"Whatever, i***t. He finally acknowledged me as his true mate and decided to divorce your desperate, clingy ass."

The room titled violently as the cruelty behind her sneering remark and Mom's accusations crashed over me in suffocating waves. King had chosen Jess over me and our son El after all this time.

The ultimate rejection. The ultimate betrayal after everything I'd sacrificed and endured to be with him.

"But...El..." I pleaded, staring down at my son's sweet, innocent face as he slumbered peacefully against my chest. "He's my child..."

Jess's response was an airy, dismissive wave of her hand. "Please, Ashley. You think I actually want anything to do with your bastard kid once King makes me his Luna? Keep the little brat for all I care."

My heart lurched at her cruel indifference before sinking like a stone as the implication of her words sunk in. At least I would have El, my precious child, the one constant in this whirlwind of betrayal and heartbreak.

But as I held him close, something felt... off. His skin was cool to the touch, his body unnaturally still.

A sense of foreboding washed over me, and I turned questioning eyes towards Jess, dreading the answer to my unspoken query.

"Whatever's left of him," she sneered, her words dripping with malice.

Terror gripped my heart, and I pulled back, staring at El's motionless form with a sudden, sickening realization.

"What do you mean?" I demanded, my voice trembling with a mixture of fear and anguish.

Jess's cruel laughter echoed through the room, chilling me to the bone.

"No one takes what's mine and gets away with it, Ash. You're next."

The world seemed to spin around me, a dizzying vortex of pain and betrayal. My son, my precious El, taken from me in the most brutal way imaginable.

Grief and rage warred within me, threatening to consume me from the inside out. I had lost everything – my husband, my family, and now, my child.

I clutched El's lifeless form to my chest, my body wracked with sobs as the weight of my loss threatened to crush me beneath its unbearable burden.

Through the haze of anguish, a flicker of determination ignited within me, a burning ember that refused to be extinguished.

They had made a grave mistake, one they would soon come to regret.

No one, not even the great Alpha King himself, could take my child from me and expect to walk away unscathed.

As I cradled El's body, a silent vow formed on my lips. They would pay for this atrocity, for the depth of pain they had inflicted upon me. I would have my vengeance, no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifices required.

King and Jess had underestimated the ferocity of a mother's love, the lengths to which she would go to protect her offspring. And in doing so, they had sealed their own fates.

They would rue the day they dared to cross me, Ashley Wilder. Of that, I was certain.

For in that moment, as the last vestiges of my former life crumbled around me, a new force was born – a vengeful, unstoppable force driven by a single, all-consuming purpose:

Retribution.