TO KILL A KING

THIRTEEN-SOLACE

KING

The moment the last view of the crowd disappeared between the great oak doors I was slammed into a wall.

We may have remained civil before the crowd, but out of the public view everything changed.

The air was knocked from my lungs with a gasp, and apparently my words were lost too as I struggled to speak, instead my mouth failed to wrap around the words I wanted, only opening and closing like a fish out of water. 

"What the f**k have you done?"

His rough fingers bit into my shoulders as he pinned me against the cold wall. My frantic eyes scanned over every face before me in the foyer of the pack house looking for help. None came.

His two Betas, one being Scarlet and the other the handsome male who had dared to laugh earlier. Along with another female who I hadn't seen before. Though it seemed as though she knew me by the way she glared daggers at me.

His strong hands pulled me away from the wall for a brief second before slamming me back into it. 

"Eyes on me." He growled.

I couldn't help the way my eyes instantly snapped to his at his instruction. I clenched my jaw as I glared at him. "What did you expect me to do?" I spat.

I had never seen him so close. I wished I hadn't. He was so frustratingly gorgeous. The kind of imperfect perfect that made you want to tear your hair out and only made me despise him more.

I hated him. So damn much.

I wanted nothing more than to watch as his brilliant blue eyes grew dull and rolled back inside his head. 

Dead.

He snorted out a humourless laugh, his hands dropping from my shoulder and latching to my wrist as he dragged me behind him.

I hated the way he forced me around the pack house like some sort of dog on a leash, but there wasn't much I could do. He was far stronger than me. -Physically at least.

I would never win this fight with blunt strength. 

But he was nothing more than a dumb brute, I could outsmart a dumb brute.

The irony was not lost on me that he dragged me around my own halls as if they were his. Navigating every turn of marble and lush rouge as if he had carved it from the very stone himself.

"Let go of me." I hissed, yanking my wrist from his grasp. "I am capable of walking by myself."

He stopped for a second, shooting me a look so deathly if looks could kill I would be more than dead. He looked for a moment as though he were going to grab me again, or maybe even hit me. But he didn't.

I had never struggled to read someone this badly, yet at the same time I felt like I sensed things about him no one else could. The damn bond.

"In here." He ordered, opening the door to what was once my office. "Close the door behind you."

I scoffed but did as he said. It infuriated me to no end watching him sit in my chair, before my desk as his heavy eyes dragged over every one of my belongings. I was forced to sit in the brown leather recliner that Elijah had often fancied.

We took a moment to settle ourselves and from an outsiders perspective, we could've looked almost civil. It didn't last long.

"Do you even realise what you've done?" He sneered, leaning towards me with his forearms rested heavily on his knees. 

I blinked a few times, what did he mean? Of course I knew what I had done. I thought carefully over the viable outcomes as I snapped back,

"I've saved lives."

Admittedly in the spur of the moment I hadn't exactly paused to think over every one of the possible consequences, though in retrospect I couldn't imagine doing anything differently.

"You stupid girl." He let out a deep booming laugh, the kind that make the light fixtures rattle and the knot tighten significantly in the pit of my stomach.

"If anything you've doomed what little remains of your pack."

"How so?" I growled, my eyebrows knitting together in frustration. Somehow him lingering that I was little more than a girl was more insulting that him straight out laughing at me.

"Did you really think we just killed unmated females? " He stood from the chair abruptly, opening and closing the cabinets and draws around him for a moment before pulling out two fine crystal glasses. "What a waste that would be..." He mumbled, more to himself than me.

He pushed one across the desk towards me, and I clutched it between my palms like it was the last thing rooting me to the earth.

"It's known that you do." I grit my teeth as I forced out the words that were so heavily coated in malice. He didn't even turn around to face me as I spoke, instead still searching through the cabinets as I fired my daggered words to his back.

"It's not exactly a secret."

If he didn't kill them.. then what did he do with them?

He chuckled again, though this time there was the slightest hint of genuine humour that only seemed to make my face grow hotter and my beast only angrier. 

"Where do you keep the booze?" He said as if nothing had happened. Was he really that brazen?

I had never wished so much in my life that I had been blessed with the foresight to keep a bottle of poison disguised as alcohol.

What fun that would be. A small whisp of of a laugh echoed inside me not quite strong enough to make it out before it died.

His question caught me so off guard that I answered on instinct. "The green bottle. Top left hand shelf, next to the Smirnoff."

He took down the emerald flask and eyed it hungrily.  "Good girl." He said with a wicked flash of white canines. I was already on edge, no matter how hard I tried to act relaxed, and his words did nothing to remedy my rapidly pulsing heart. 

"I didn't take you for a scotch girl."

"That's because you know nothing about me." I said darkly, pushing my glass towards him to fill a little more violently than I had meant to. It teetered on the edge of the table, threatening to fall before he captured it with one swift motion, brimming it with liquid gold and pushing it back across to me.

"Now that's not entirely true." He settled back in his seat and raised the glass to his lips, his shocking eyes never leaving mine. "I know that five years ago you beat Alpha Nero to death with a rock."

I took a sip of my own amber solace as I tried to bury the images that entered my mind from that day.

I still had nightmares of that fight from time to time.

-Still saw his face, or what little that remained of it after we were done.

In my dreams he often chased me through the woods, and no matter how fast I ran, or wherever I hid. He would always find me, and I would be forced to kill him all over again.

"He was a close friend of mine." He deadpanned. Ordinarily I would apologised, though not at all because I was truly sorry. I didn't care one bit.

Just as a formality, respect was utmost between Alphas. However he didn't deserve an once of my respect, and even if he did I didn't think I was capable of mustering any.

"I also know that since then you've ruled as Alpha of this pack. Alone." He c****d his head as he stared at me, as if trying to read the hateful words that enraptured my mind every time our eyes met. "That much tells me that you're strong if you can survive a pack full of men like that. I doubt they would've thought much of you to start with."

Biting my lip as I stared down at my glass, I could feel the heat of his gaze as it singed my skin.

In a way I almost felt myself retreat inwards at his sort of compliment. I wanted to curl up and protect myself because I doubted that he really meant what he said, and his words were soon to be followed by some sort of insult or blow.

"You know nothing about me." I whispered in a shuddering breath, as if saying it twice would make it true.

"You're smart. I know that much." His face turned stoic, though far behind his eyes the slightest glint if a smirk still remained.

"You should've seen my surprise that the great King, the King of the beasts.. Was a girl." 

I was slightly unnerved by his suddenly calm demeanour, when only minutes ago he looked as though he would tear me in two. I wasn't sure wether this meant I was safe, or in more danger than I could possibly imagine.

I wanted to speak. To say something. Anything.

But I had no idea what to say, and even if I did I didn't trust myself to match the timbre of his tone.

I struggled to judge him, and I didn't want to set him off further by antagonising him. But at the same time I didn't want to be chilled if it turned out this whole conversation would lead to an underhand jab at me. So instead I narrowed my eyes at him as I took another sip of the honey fire from my glass, holding back a moan as the sweet sanctity slipped down my throat.

Something broke through his stony mask, something hard and pressing and hot. I watched slyly as his hand subtly gripped the desk. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" I c****d my head innocently. Though not in the way of childish innocence. The kind of innocence a cat possesses, before it claws.

He took a deep breath before dragging a callused hand through his sinfully dark hair and changed the subject. "How did you do it?" He asked, and I was mildly surprised that there wasn't an accusatory tone coating his sentence.

Questions piled upon questions piled upon questions, until they were so tightly thatched that you could no longer see the truth that lay beneath, instead settling for the lies that bathed upon the surface.

Rolling my eyes I replied, "You're going to have to be slightly more specific than that."

Any mocking sense of joviality between us had vanished, "How did you manage to keep your title this long?" He shook his head in disbelief, "How did you manage to trick every other Alpha in the Northern hemisphere?"

"Never underestimate a woman." It was my turn to be smug, leaning back in the bay leather recliner and lifting my glass, ice cubes mutedly clinking. "Besides, contrary to what you may believe, I didn't win my title by luck. Many males challenged me for it and lost."

"-And as for the other Alpha's... I never lied to them. I never once pretended to be a male, it's not my fault that they assumed I was."

He sighed, dragging his palms down his face. "I don't think you realise the true extent of what this means.. Word has gotten out already that you're a... "He trailed off for a moment, as if struggling to find the right words. "-That you're a girl."

"So what?" I snapped, why did he keep referring to me as if I were a child? 

"Because," He sat up straighter in the grande seat. "Now that your secret is out, every Alpha in the land will want to make you theirs."

I didn't miss the burning undertone as he growled so lowly I felt the bass of his rumble vibrate in my core. I didn't miss all the words he didn't dare speak that still echoed through the bond. Jealousy.

He had no right to be jealous. He had no right to even assume that I would bat an eye at any of these other males.

"That's wonderful." I said sarcastically, "However, I don't understand why you're acting as though that's your problem?"

"It wasn't." He hissed, throwing his arms in the air and gesturing in the vague direction of where the crowd had been. "Until you paraded yourself as my mate before everyone out there!"

Ah, s**t. I had almost forgotten about that minor detail.

"So I'll just sent them away?" I scrunched my face as if this was hardly an issue even worth talking about.

He laughed humourlessly. "They won't just want your hand. They will want the pack. They will see you as weak and try either kill you or force you."

He didn't need to go into more details. I knew what would happen next. I would be r***d and forced to live beside them. -Though I wondered how exactly he imagined our pairing would be any different now that he had already overthrown me.

"So what do you suggest?" I scoffed. "Sounds like I'm f****d either way."

He chewed his cheek, "We throw a ball."

"What?" I said, stunned by his ludicrous idea. "That's exactly the opposite of what needs to happen! I say we just lay low until all of this passes over! We.. -I can take on individual packs when they come but drawing every Alpha in the land in to attack is sui-"

"-Shut up and listen." He interrupted, every syllable resonating straight through me. "We bring them all here. We show a front, let them see that our packs are united as one. Not a single one of them has even half the amount of people we do."

Stop saying We, I thought subconsciously cringing. There is no we or us. There never will be.

But I swallowed my pride for the sake of my people, downing the remainder of my drink as he said. "So what do you say? Are you in?"

"I'm in."

***

QOTD- What country are you from?

I'll edit this chapter tomorrow, just thought it's better to get it out sooner for you guys :)

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-TFOA