His Imprisoned Queen

Chapter 6 Kayden's Secret #1

Kayden’s POV

Like all those typical princes in fairytales, I was born in a family filled with love and surrounded by people waiting in line to get me spoiled. My mom told me that on the day I was born, my parents were so happy that they held national celebrations for my birth for a month. An entire month. Every werewolf took that month off, celebrating the birth of Prince Kayden. That’s a first in history. I didn’t understand why they made such a big deal of me until many years later.

Since the day I could remember, strange things had been happening in the castle. There were clues of something going wrong in this place I had thought filled with only delicious food, good people, and my parents’ excessive love for me.

So here’s the first strange thing: there was a locked room in the castle. And strange sounds came from it.

It was a long time ago. My memories were getting hazy and episodic, but I remembered clearly, it happened on a day when I was still a toddler.

The castle was too large for me, and I’d never had the chance to explore it thoroughly. But that day, I decided to dress like a pirate. And the castle was my globe. After my nanny fell asleep, I put on my pirate hat, grabbed my toy sword, and then sneaked out of my room without making any sounds.

When I accidentally stepped onto an abandoned floor that I’d never discovered before, I felt a huge jolt of excitement. There were no lights on that floor, but sunlight came through the only window at the stairs, and I was shocked to see a lot of dust in the air.

It was weird that I didn’t find the situation scary at all. Instead, the empty floor stimulated my curiosity and the adventurous trait hidden in me. So I kept walking into the dark and empty hallway. I stopped when I reached a room with an antique lock on the door.

The lock was huge; what was more strange was black vapor coming out of the keyhole.

It freaked me out a bit, but my curiosity soon overcame my fear. I held out my right hand to the lock. As soon as my hand touched the dark vapor, I felt an overwhelmingly sharp pain on my finger. It felt like someone was hammering a spike into my bone and making it c***k open. I screamed out loud as I retrieved my hand. The pain was gone, but there was still an unbearable burning sensation on the tip of my finger. I let out a desperate cry, my body shaking, and I reeled back around. Tears were running down my cheeks, and my vision was blurred, but I didn’t stop. All I wanted was to leave this place.

But next second, a ghastly howl with extreme pain came from the room. I was petrified to see the door to the room start shaking madly like someone was trying to push it open from the inside. The black vapor was getting dense. I couldn’t hold myself anymore. I cried like hell. I can’t remember if I fainted, but in my fragmented memory, an omega maid ran to me at last and took me in her arms. She ran away from that room at an incredible speed, like a monster was chasing her.

Later that night, I asked my father timidly, “papa, what’s in there?”

For the first time, I saw fear in my father’s eyes. He pursed his lips in a grim line and let me sit on his lap, “nothing.”

Even though I was so little back then, I knew something was not right, and it wouldn’t be wise to keep questioning it. I pretended to be obsessed with the toy train in my hands, but I knew that howl I had heard belonged to a child. I didn’t tell anyone about it. I kept it as a dark secret deep in my heart. Since that day, I was never allowed to be near that floor again.

As I grew older, I became good at scrutinizing people’s faces. Especially those omegas’ faces because they were really bad at disguising. The tension on their faces was so evident.

But I wondered why they looked like that. Countless guards were patrolling the castle 24/7. We had an army that was powerful enough to defend against any force in the world. What were they nervous about?

It didn’t take me long to find out that they were not scared of anything outside of the castle, but inside the castle.

When I turned seven, I got the most endearing present from my parents, a Highland Pony. She was pearl white, with a thick mane and tail. She always held her head up when she walked. She was so elegant but at the same time amiable. She let me touch her the minute when we met. I fell in love with her immediately.

I started spending a lot of time with Jill (that was how I named the pony.) I was a fast learner, so I got pretty adept at horse riding very soon. My parents were both experts in the arts of equestrian. Horse riding became a weekly entertaining family-gathering thing for my parents and me.

One day, we went horse riding in the southern forest. As usual, guards were following us at a certain distance. Most of the time, they were unseen, but I knew they were walking in a certain array that the second the danger came, they were going to protect us. The little trip ended safely, just like those many times before. When we almost got to the castle, my father suddenly held his right arm up, informing us to stop. He looked around vigilantly.

My mom looked at him with concern and said, “what’s going on, Jeremy?”

“Something’s not right. Stay away from the castle.”

My father stepped off the horse and mindlinked people while my mother and I looked at each other anxiously. After a few minutes of talking, my father teleported without telling us where he was going. I felt a gush of fear rising in my chest. I looked at the castle. It seemed quiet and placid, nothing dangerous. But then I thought about the enormous lake in the far west of our territory that no one dared to go near. That lake seemed calm all the time, but who knew what monster was hiding beneath the water?