Chapter 18: +Chapter 18+
Lucien woke up at the crack of dawn, sweeping out of his bedroom dressed in all black, a rare occasion. His hair contrasted beautifully with his choice of attire and if he literally wasn’t a King of werewolves, it would be easy to think he was a vampire.
He strode past King Kade’s room, heading for the witch’s instead. He would never admit it but he had been quite worried about her well being and even stranger, he felt a faint hint of guilt.
Lucien quickly scrapped that thought, the guilt he thought he felt was definitely born of the innate desire to save his people, nothing more. He merely felt bad that he had almost jeopardized a good opportunity to kill off the Shadows distressing his people.
He knocked gently at first, switching up the second time to a much louder rap. When there was no response the second time around, he didn’t hesitate to kick the door in for the second time in twenty-four hours.
His panic calmed instantly at the completely empty state of the room. The windows were locked, and the bed was perfectly made. It only meant one thing, that the witch hadn’t slept in her room for the night…
His phone rang at that moment and he picked it up without looking at the caller ID, waiting for the other person to speak first.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” Bryce’s cheerful voice came in, “How was…”
“Just get on with it,” Lucien said impatiently. Whenever Bryce was so cheerful, it meant that he had bad news to share, Lucien couldn’t say if it was because his second-in-command was trying to ease the blow of the news or if the heliophobic bastard just enjoyed his misery.
“King Kade left with the half-witch last night, I understand if you want me to prepare a flight to Wolfden, right awa-”
“No,” Lucien forced himself to say through gritted teeth, feeling stupid for waking up so early to catch a glimpse of the witch only to find out that the hunk of black ice known as the North King had already carted her away. “There is no need.”
He hung up before Bryce could try to insist, essentially rubbing salt into his already bruised ego. He had gotten too hung up on the witch and that was because he had been too busy attending to reports of Shadows to give himself a break. Now that the witch was off his hands, he had enough time to unwind.
Lucien rang up a number as he strode out of the witch’s empty room, noting sourly that her scent had been scrubbed clean from the room and replaced with some awful artificial citrus scent.
“Yo-Your Highne-” The soft voice on the other end started to say, the soft-spoken werewolf stumbling over her words in shock.
“I want you blindfolded and naked on my bed in an hour,” He cut her off coldly. “Tie your hair up,” He added as an afterthought.
Silence greeted his orders on the other end but the lady’s breathing stilted, her breaths coming out in soft gasps.
“What do you say?” He demanded, sounding almost bored.
“Y-Yes Sir.”
-+-
Kade sat down across the room from the witch, a glass of amber liquid held in a hand. It might be early in the morning but scotch worked just as well as coffee, not to mention, he couldn’t handle caffeine.
They had gotten to his palace in the capital of Wolfden in the early hours of the morning and she was still out of it when he put her to bed. He could have returned to his own room until she woke up but instead, he grabbed a bottle of scotch and set up guard beside her bed like some kind of nanny.
Mason had been surprisingly calm at the sight of the witch, although he had gone through the trouble of picking them up from the airport, all he had done was glance at her and then he proceeded to ignore her for the rest of the ride back.
Kade didn’t give a shit about what the idiot had gotten into his head this time, he would just make sure that Mason kept a wide berth between himself and the witch.
It was well past sunrise now and the witch still didn’t show any signs of rousing. Kade sat stiffly and downed his drink, pretending like he wasn’t immensely worried.
Although Marion had had a really rough night, shouldn’t she be awake by now? If the event that happened last night had actually fried her brain or something worse, he would get back at the sleazy bastard of a South King.
He wasn’t given a chance to act on his plans for vengeance because the witch slowly roused making him sit up unconsciously. At first, it had seemed like the right thing to sit right across from the witch and watch her sleep but now that she was about to wake up to him doing just that, he realized how creepy he would come off as.
Mari slowly opened up her eyes, staring into space. She had that recurring dream again, it was more of a nightmare really, everything had been on fire, even her. And it felt like it had gone on for an eternity, it was a painful experience.
Now that she was awake though, the terror of the flames was pushed back. The morning air was cool, as well as the silk sheets she was laid on. She should probably look around to see where she was but she would leave her most troubling problem for last.
Instead, she tried to remember what happened the night before. She had tried to make a run for it, and she was so close to escaping. If only King Kade had come a few minutes later… if only King Lucien hadn’t blocked off the lady that had tried to save her… if only she weren’t a witch…
Mari blinked rapidly, trying to hold in her tears because she had an innate fear that her tears would catch on fire and burn her face again. *She was a witch. She was actually a witch.* King Kade and King Lucien hadn’t been cruelly accusing her, she was an actual real-life witch.