Chapter 117
CIERRA’S POV
I kept wiping my hands against my jeans as I tried to get rid of the excess moisture that somehow kept coming back. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I was terrified, and I didn’t even know why…
He couldn’t possibly be that bad, right? I mean, he’s her mate, obviously, he can’t be that bad, right? It doesn’t matter, because I couldn’t spend another day in this place.
Yes, I might be absolutely terrified about his reaction, but the weight I had been carrying around these past few weeks was worse, and I love my girls, but seeing how happy they were with their mates was a constant reminder of how miserably mine failed, and the heaviness grew every single day.
I finally stopped in front of his office door, and before I could talk myself out of it, I raised my hands and knocked twice. I could barely hear him telling me to come in over the sound of my heart beating in my chest. Hesitating for a brief second, I turned the door handle and let myself into the room.
As soon as the door shut behind me, every bone in my body begged me to reconsider. My head told me that there was literally no need to go through this entire process to leave the pack.
With a deep breath, I blocked out all the voices in my head and focused on the man behind the table. I know he’s my friend’s mate, but that did not make us friends… at all, and no matter what, I was still an omega, and he was an alpha… the literal soon-to-be alpha king.
With my heart still beating like crazy in my chest, I gave a bow. “Your highness,” I say, still bowed down, I looked at him through the corner of my eyes. He looked up at me, and I took that as my green light to straighten my back and continue speaking.
“Your highness, may I be permitted to leave the castle temporarily?” I asked, probably sounding a little too rushed, but I was certain he heard me. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just kept on looking at me for an entire minute before he asked the one question I had been dreading the entire time.
“Why?” I saw it coming. I’m sure anyone would have, I mean, it’s a basic formality, I could not escape it, but somehow, I wish I could. In that moment, I honestly wished that I didn’t have to relive that terrible memory, or at least the ground would open up and swallow me; either of the two would have been fine, but as always, luck was too far away to be on my side.
I took in a deep breath and straightened my spine even more as I braced myself for the pain that was soon to come. “I met my mate…” I paused, trying to get rid of the huge lump that was suddenly stuck in my throat. “I met my mate, alpha, but he doesn’t want me, and he also doesn’t want to reject me… I had tried to reject him multiple times, but he refused to accept my rejection, so our bond ended up not breaking and…” I took in another deep breath, still trying to get rid of yet another lump in my throat, and stop the tears that threatened to fall.
I guess this time, that huge lump in the back of my throat had decided that it was going absolutely nowhere, and so it stayed. I tried ignoring it and talking around it, but that just ended in me sounding like a dying whale as I started sobbing right in front of him.
Talk about embarrassing moments. I could barely see him through the tears, but the little I could see of him, I could tell that he was really uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his head, looking like he would rather be anywhere but here.
My embarrassment caught up to me real quick, and the tears dried up almost immediately after seeing that look on his face. He awkwardly shuffled out from behind his table and handed me a pack of tissues. He was basically tiptoeing around me, almost as if he was scared that I'd burst into tears at any minute.
If this weren’t my alpha, I may have smiled a little, maybe even laughed. Seeing him like this made me realise that he was the perfect person for Ana, and even though my mated life was really bad right now, I was glad she was happy.
“Where do you want to go now? To be with your parents?” The question struck a nerve in me. I hadn’t even thought of that, like it was definitely not even an option. Unlike regular packs, in the royal pack, omegas aren’t necessarily weak. Well, we might be the weakest in ‘the royal pack’, but when comparing our strength with that of other regular packs, we would most likely be on a gamma's level. Maybe we could even get close to the beta's level, depending on the strength of the pack in question.
I was from a beta’s family. Funny right? I know. Why was I serving in the castle then? Long story short, my father's second-chance mate hates me, and she somehow convinced my dad to send me here. Now, I love my dad, and he’s a wonderful man most of the time, but that woman is terrible, and he loves her so much that he doesn’t even see the evil she does.
It pisses the hell out of me, especially because most of the time her hatred is aimed at me, and I could swear that I have never done a thing to the witch. She honestly just hates the fact that I live and breathe.
“No alpha, I’m going to live with the humans.” He looked up at me, surprised, before nodding in understanding. “How are you going to survive with the humans? You have no job, no place to stay, or even a relative or friend you could stay with till you could find your feet.
“I’ve saved a little fortune from my time here, alpha. I can rent a little place and live fairly comfortably for a week or maybe two.” I had always wanted to go somewhere nice one day, maybe a mini vacation, but I definitely wasn’t thinking of leaving the pack temporarily then, but I guess it all still works out fine.