Chapter 128 128

Chapter 128 128
Amy's POV

I went straight to Damien right there in the room. He was still asleep when I pushed the door open fully and turned the light on and stood there until he woke up.

He sat up immediately. His eyes found me and then found the paper in my hand and he went still. Of course, his eyes are sharp enough to see things even from far away. He's a Lycan after all.

"You already knew," I said.

He didn't deny it.

That confirmed it before he even opened his mouth.

I walked over and held the note out to him. "Someone slipped this under the door tonight. Which means someone in this building knows something and felt the need to tell me about it anonymously instead of saying it to my face." I sat down on the edge of the bed. "I want you to tell me what's going on. All of it. Right now."

He looked at the note for a moment. Then he looked at me.

"Sit properly," he said. "This is going to take a minute."

I pulled my legs up and faced him. "I'm sitting. Talk to me."

He did talk to me about everything he knew and how he only found out recently. He told me about the prisoner what the prisoner said to him. He told me about Richard, Brian's uncle, the man behind the Dark Hunters, the one who had been running the operation for over twenty years. He told me about the poison.

How Richard used a compound that looked like natural illness to move through the Lycan royal court twelve years ago. This was the reason powerful lycans ended up losing to demon rogues even though they were wiped out later. Those lycans were still ambushed and she learned about how he killed them all slowly and carefully, and nobody questioned it because it looked like sickness and not murder.

I listened without saying anything.

He continued to explain to me that Richard never got what he wanted from it. That the structure he expected to collapse into his hands just collapsed. That he spent the next so many years building the Dark Hunters instead, trying to find another way to get the power he thought he deserved.

I was still listening. Then he told me about the child.

"Richard would have been able to succeed in finishing the job. He didn't get to finish the job and someone got a child out before he could reach her. That person was the Queen's daughter. A young child who just disappeared and who Richard had been sucking for ever since without finding her."

I felt something shift in the way I was breathing but I didn't say anything yet.

"Richard only knew a surviving Lycan existed because of the power signatures from when we went public. He doesn't know who she was or where she came from. He thought she was just a rare Lycan who had surfaced. He has been following you for years thinking you are just an ordinary Lycan. I don't know if he found out by mistake but he found out anyway."

Then Damien stopped talking. He just looked at me.

"No," I said.

He didn't say anything.

"No," I said again. "That's not... Damien, that's not me. I know my father already told me that I was adopted by him but there's no way I'm a princess. I grew up in this pack, they never told me anything like that even if they treated me like family." I could hear myself talking faster. "Don't you realize being a princess means that I have more responsibility than I think? This would be worse than anything else!"

"Amelia."

"It doesn't make sense," I said. "The princess doesn't have to be me since no one in this world knows about it except for a few people."

I stopped. I heard what I just said. I looked at Damien. I just didn't feel comfortable knowing that I was some sort of princess. The fact that my real parents were the royal family who fought to protect everyone, yet I was left without them. What am I supposed to do in this situation? Mourn? Or be happy that I survived without fulfilling my duties for years?

"It's not me," I said. My voice was quieter now.

"I don't know for certain," he said. "I told you I was still verifying things. But Amelia—"

"Don't say it."

"The ages match."

"Don't."

"Your father took you in as his own. Your wolf was sealed, not cursed. And you are the most powerful Lycan either of us has ever encountered." He said it gently but he said it plainly. "I'm not telling you this to hurt you. I'm telling you because you asked me to stop keeping things from you."

I hated that he was right about that. I sat there for a moment.

I felt a lot of things all at once and none of them were easy to separate from each other. There was fear. There was something that felt like the ground shifting under me. There was a part of me that wanted to argue more because arguing felt better than accepting it.

A small voice that was saying ... didn't you always feel like something was missing? Didn't you always feel like there was something about yourself you didn't fully understand?

I stood up.

"I need to talk to my dad," I said.

"Amelia, it's the middle of the night and he's still recovering—"

"I need to talk to my dad," I said again. "The only way I can confirm things is from my dad. I can't sleep tonight without knowing what is going on."

Damien looked at me for a second. Then he nodded. I took the note and I walked out. I was silent throughout the entire time and it felt like we were going through a long corridor, even though it wasn't normally long.

I got to his door and I stopped. I stood there for a moment with my hand not quite on the door handle.

Part of me didn't want to go in. Because going in and asking meant I was taking this seriously. It meant I thought it was actually possible. And if I thought it was actually possible then I had to deal with what that meant and I was not ready to deal with what that meant.

But I thought about the note.

He already knows who you are, Princess.

How am I even supposed to deal with the fact that I'm born into royalty? I swear I'm not trying to overreact but I don't feel comfortable with this at all. Doesn't this mean I'm a more danger than I thought I would be? He doesn't even know I'm the Royal blood he's looking for in the first place. And he just wants a child of two pure lycans, both my child and I are going to be in trouble if we get caught.

I also didn't want to forget the fact that so many people fought to keep the family alive at that time. Doesn't this mean that Damien's parents could be part of those people? They died protecting my own family, that's if I'm really the princess. How am I supposed to face him in future? His parents could have gotten away but they died because of me.

I knocked quietly and pushed it open. He was awake. I don't know if I woke him or if he was already awake but he was sitting up when I came in and he looked at me with an expression that I couldn't read properly in the low light.

I walked to the side of his bed. I held the note out to him. He looked down at it. He read it. I watched his face the whole time. And then he looked up at me. He didn't say anything.

He didn't look confused. He didn't look like he was about to tell me it was nonsense or ask me where it came from or reassure me that whoever wrote it was wrong.

He just kept looking at me. And he didn't deny a single word of it. It's true, isn't it?

I stood there holding the note and looking at my father and feeling the ground finish shifting underneath me completely.

"Dad," I said.

My voice came out very small. He reached out and took my hand. And he still didn't deny it.