Chapter 186: Chapter 187

Azalea POV Rolling over, I pressed my face into the soft pillow. It felt like I had a hangover. My head was pounding, everything felt too bright, and my brain was sluggish as the events from earlier slowly returned to me.

My skin buzzed with an odd sensation that made my skin prickle with goosebumps. “My Queen, I feel you are awake,” a stranger’s voice said inside my head.

“Don’t be alarmed. My name is Cedric. I am part of the Landeena guard and I was your father’s Beta. I have been waiting for you to wake,” his calming voice says. How do I use the mind-link? I thought with a sigh while trying to work out how to use this newfound mind-link.

“You are using it, My Queen,” Cedric chuckles.

“You can hear me?”

“Yes, and know that your powers have awoken. You should be able to reach all of us, command all of us, and find all of us through this link. You’ll get the hang of it,”

“I remember hearing you even when I was passed out. You revoked your pledge to my mate,” I tell him. I remember the tingling sensation as their tethers linked to me.

“We were and always will belong to the Landeena Kingdom. Landeena is our home. You are home for your people, My Queen,” “And the guards, they all agree?” I asked him. Unsure about this new tether.

“Yes. All 71 of your guards will fight, kill and die for you,”

“I don’t want anyone to die for me,”

“But we will and you’ll understand soon enough. Your powers are awoken now, you just need to learn how to use them. So feel free to call on Trey or me, or any of us. We are your people, and you are ours.

You have no idea how happy I am to hear the bloodline lives on, and what a bloodline. I can’t wait to see you at full strength. See what you can do,” I think over his words for a second when the door opens.

Liam steps in.

“My guard is here. I have to go find my mate,” I tell Cedric as Liam stops, scrutinizing me.

“Very well, My Queen. We are posted around the castle. Call me through here if you need me.”

“Wait. Umm, how do I call you through here?”

“Just think of my voice. You’ll figure it out. Trey will show you. Stick close to Trey. Trust no one, My Queen, not until you know for sure they can be trusted. Landeena had a lot of enemies,”

“So I shouldn’t trust you,”

“No. But I will earn it. But I assure you, we can be trusted. We didn’t just pledge to you, My Queen. Your father assured your safety, us guards were personally picked and set aside for you. We were given no ties, just a command when we pledged. We didn’t just pledge, we tied our lives to you. We all thought Trey was mad when he said you survived. He kept insisting we look for you. We did for years,”

“I don’t understand,”

“He was your sire, and we figured he had it wrong. We even convinced him of it after a few years. Trey insisted that you were alive because he was,” Cedric tells me before cutting the link. My brows furrow in confusion.

“The King is on his way.” Liam tells me, and I nod, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.

“Who were you talking to?” Liam asks curiously, and I startle.

“You knew I was talking to someone?”

“Yes. Your eyes turned white,” he says.

“Cedric,” I answered, and he nodded.

“Where is Kyson?” I ask Liam. He bites his lip before he sighb.

“He is organizing the punishment for Ester and Peter,”

“Punishment?”

“Yes. Punishment,” Kyson says behind him, making me jump, having not heard him. I look over at him to see him standing just inside the door.

“Leave us,” Kyson says, strolling over to me and Liam quickly does as he is told. He closes the door behind him.

“You challenged me,”

“You were going to kill him. He is a boy,” I tell him because I couldn’t bring myself to say he was my brother.

“What punishment did you give him?”

“Not the one I want, but I kept my word. I won’t kill him,”

“And Ester?”

“Alive,” I let out a breath. I didn’t like the woman, but I didn’t believe she deserved death for sleeping with my father.

“What else?”

“What else?” Kyson repeats, coming to sit beside me on the edge of the bed. He drags me across his lap, turning me to face him, so my legs straddle his waist.

“We found out some information about your family. I am sure Trey will tell you more. And since I commanded him, you will have to as well. Yet Ester was forthcoming with information.”

“And you commanded her?” | asked, and he nodded.

“Yes, of course. She didn’t fight it, so I know she spoke the truth, or at least her truth. But I have to ask,”

“Ask what?”

“Do you remember Marrissa ever shifting into her wolf?” he asks, and my brows furrow. I tried to think back, sifting through any sort of memory, yet those memories were so grainy, so fractured.

“No, I don’t think so. Even when they..” | swallowed, being sucked back to that night. That night stayed fresh in my mind. The night I watched them kill her. We had been running for hours when they circled us.

We had stumbled into another pack’s territory. Abbie and I were hidden inside a hallow tree. Abbie clutched my hands, and we both tried to remain quiet. Yet as we watched through the cracks of the broken trees, not even we could hold back our screams. Not even then did she shift. My father, I mean Jordan, moved so fast. He wouldn’t stop fighting until Marrissa called out to him. I always thought her words were odd.

“It’s the only way to keep her safe,” she said, falling to her knees. Abbie’s parents still fought. Their wolves were ripped apart, and her screams drilled into my ears when Marrissa fell to her knees and looked at our hiding spot. “Don’t fight them. Don’t run. Remember, mummy loves you.” and she let them slaughter her, almost as if she was resigned to her death. It was only moments later that Alpha Dean was ripping the tree trunk apart with his warriors to get to us.

“Azalea?” Kyson says, shaking me, and I snap out of where my memories took me. I blink, shaking the remnants of it away.