The Royal Alpha's Destined Bride

Chapter 4

Assisting the chefs in the palaces kitchen was not as difficult as Iris thought it would be for me. In fact, I was so happy that she had been so lenient with me that I ignored the throbbing of my elbow the entire time I cleaned in the kitchen. I was already used to helping my mother out in the kitchen when she was making dinner on most nights and the temporary summer job as a waitress I had in the past gave me enough skills that impressed the chefs in the kitchen.

Iris was not used to that kind of domestic work so she saw it as degrading and that was why she decided to have me do it. Her ignorance only made my day a lot better than it already was. Before I went to the kitchen to help with the cleaning, I put on a basic, long sleeved dress that would cover up the bandage I had over my elbow. No bones were broken but the bruise had to be disinfected and closed off from the air. Not to mention that I would be doing a job that would get me dirty and I didn't want to make the injury any worse.

To my luck, I didn't see Iris for the rest of the day, mainly because she was welcoming the guests into the palace. It was already late in the evening and the chefs were making dinner to serve the guests. I was told to be done with my tasks come dinner time to be able to join them at the dinner table as my lack of presence would have been strange. After all, the guests were there for my wedding. They had to see the blushing bride before the actual wedding ceremony.

Once I was done with helping out in the kitchen, it was time for me to prepare the guest bedrooms. Iris made it a point to tell the other servants to not touch those bedrooms so that I would prepare them all by myself. Well, it didn't matter much because there wasn't a lot to do.

As I said earlier, the queen was ignorant when it came to house chores. All the rooms in the palace were cleaned on a daily basis, so I didn't have to clean them myself. What I needed to do was to make sure that the rooms had blankets in them, that there was sufficient heating and that the wine racks were stocked up along with everything else that was similar. That had to have been by far the easiest punishment I had to go through.

Because the guests would be staying for the next few days until the wedding, the queen and princess could not afford to physically punishm me and create any bruises on my body that anyone could notice. The dislocated elbow would be the last harsh punishment I would receive from them. Very soon, I would become the queen and I would live a fairytale life I never thought I would have.

I went through each of the guest bedrooms doing the exact same thing each time. If I worked at a steady pace and checked everything one at a time, I would be done in less than half an hour, which would be the time that the dinner would begin. I became nervous with each passing minute because as the future queen, I had to meet the officials from the kingdom and the royals from the outside kingdoms as well. I had to prepare myself for whatever criticism that would come my way because I was a human.

Just as Iris did, there were were many rulers who were against Ven marrying a human, but they had no say in his love life and they could only remain silent and give him the support they could. I told myself to calm down as I went about working for the evening. I had only myself to talk to and the reminder that I was marrying the man I loved made my situation a little bearable. Little did I know that everything would come crumbling down within the next few minutes.

I was walking down that hallways on the second floor of the palace where all of the bedrooms were when I noticed the prince's door was opened up ahead. I wasn't married to him yet so we couldn't share a bed. I had to sleep in a separate room from his. When the king died, Iris couldn't bear to sleep in the same bed without him and moved out of the royal bedroom into another one where she had been stayed for many years. After the wedding, Ven and I would move into that bedroom as the official king and queen.

I noticed that Ven's bedroom door was opened and the lights were turned on as well. My heart began to race as I thought he would have been inside. I didn't spend enough time with him earlier and was willing to seize any opportunity I could get to spend some more time with him in private. I happily walked over to the door and was about to enter when I came to an abrupt halt at the door. My heart stopped beating and my whole world stopped for a moment as I looked over at the scene that was unfolding before me.

I saw Ven standing in the middle of the room next to a woman I had never seen before. She was exquisitely beautiful and less than elegantly dressed. I didn't care that she wore a black, tight dress that revealed most of her shapely figure or that her cleavage was exposed for his eyes to see. What bothered me was how close she was standing next to him. She had her chest pressed up against his, her red, curly hair flowing down the side of her face, some of the strands flowing down her front to rest on her cleavage.

Her lips would have made any man want to seize them in a kiss and her eyes sparkled under the chandelier lights. She was simply too beautiful to comprehend and seeing Ven smiling down at her made my chest tightened. It hurt a lot more than when I fell and struck my elbow on the floor. I couldn't say anything because my voice had disappeared and my throat was dry. But when she took ahold of his hand and placed it on her waist, I couldn't help but call out his name.

"Ven...?" I muttered just loud enough for him to hear, and they both abruptly turned their heads to face me. My vision was already blurry from the tears that had welled up in my eyes.

"What's going on?" I asked and he looked down at the woman. He quickly pulled his hand away from her hold and took a step back, but she clung on to him and didn't allow him to step away.

"You must the future queen. We haven't met before. I'm Fleur Mel-Heulen. Otherwise known as the prince's ex-girlfriend. We used to be so in love in the past," the woman said in a smug tone. Ven instantly became uncomfortable with how touchy she was with him, and when she intertwined her hand with his, my heart dropped to my stomach.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I took a step back and Ven tried to get Fleur to stop touching him. When he saw that I was about to run off, he gently pushed her away, but because she was wearing high heels, she ended up twisting her ankle and fell down with a scream.

"Ow, Ven! This isn't how you're supposed to treat a woman!" She called out to him when he was walking towards me. He stopped and looked back to see that Fleur was injured. From the fall I had earlier, I could definitely tell that Fleur sprained her ankle and that she was in pain. She took off her shoe and tossed it aside, clutching her ankle to ease the pain. I pulled my right hand behind my back when I was reminded of how much pain I was in earlier.

"Odette, it's definitely not what it looks-"

"Are you just going to leave me here?" Fleur called out to Ven when she noticed him walking towards. Ven stopped once again, unsure of what to do. His ex-girlfriend was laying on the floor with a possibly broken ankle that was his fault and his future wife was crying by the door from the misunderstanding she witnessed.

"You should take her to get her ankle treated," I said to Ven, ignoring the throbbing of my elbow. I may have seen something I didn't like but I now knew the pain of a dislocated joint and I didn't want her to go through the pain any longer. Ven seemed to have been having a difficult time with deciding but it was already clear that he would choose to help Fleur. Her situation was more urgent. To help him with deciding, I turned away from the door and ran down the hallway from the bedroom.

I was in tears and couldn't see where I was ggoing. I heard Ven calling out my name from behind me but didn't pay any mind to him. I just wanted to get away from him so that I could cry away the pain I felt both physically and mentally.