Chapter 111 Deadly Letter
Chapter 111
Jax’s POV.
A note? In my room? How?
This is impossible. This cannot happen.
The words hit me hard as my vision was directed on the folded notes close to bed frame.
This where I used keep my sceptre when I was exhausted to go to the drawer where it is always kept.
My lips shut wide but no single words emanated from my mouth.
How did get here? I squeezed my brow. Confusion settled with in me.
I slowly drifted towards the paper with care, like a hot sulphur meant to scourge skin.
It felt harmless between my fingers, cool and nondescript, but my chest tightened, and a keen knowledge rose that I had just snatched something permanent.
I didn’t open it immediately.
I stood there, the note resting in my palm, my breath thinning out as I stared at it again. It felt heavy. Wrong. Like a death letter slipped to me by the spirits themselves.
Who would dare leave something like this here?
I was certain it hadn’t been there before I stepped out to meet Alpha Francis in the palace hall. I would have noticed. I always noticed. Nothing entered my chambers without my knowledge, or so I believed.
My vision searched through the corners of the room. I was expecting someone to be hiding in between the corridor of the room or behind the corner.
The person who left this had either given the royal guards a tip or was astute enough to evade their routine.
And much more than the note itself, that thought made me uneasy. That wasn't my biggest concern.
I wrapped fingers around the paper as I looked at it once more time
The feeling was strange, a mixture of fear and what I could not explain.
Like my death had just been handed to me.
What message did it carry?
A voice in my head urged me to tear it apart, throw it into the fire, pretend it never existed. Another, stronger, crueler, commanded me to read it. Courage, or foolishness, I wasn’t sure.
I unfolded the note.
The words stared back at me.
Dear Alpha King Jax,
I pray this message reaches you, and by the time it does, I would have been thousands of miles away from the Stormfang Pack, where the hands of the wicked surrounding your throne would not be able to find me.
I paused.
My eyes lifted briefly from the page, my jaw tightening. Thousands of miles away? My grip hardened, the paper crinkling slightly.
Slowly, I forced my eyes back down.
You have been sleeping and waking with a demon in human form, Rosa, your Luna. Your queen.
Rosa and your beta, Alpha Ryder, have been secret lovers long before you ever came into the picture.
The room seemed to tilt.
I inhaled sharply, the air catching painfully in my lungs. My heartbeat thundered so loudly I wondered if the guards outside could hear it.
Secret lovers?
In fact, it was planned from the beginning. She was meant to poison you gradually, until you fall to death just like your father did.
My fingers trembled now. My vision blurred for a second before I blinked hard, forcing focus.
Just like my father.
Rosa never loved you. She only entered your life to clear the path until the real king, Alpha Ryder, takes your crown.
Ask yourself why your beta has never truly involved himself in pack politics. He is growing impatient, waiting for Rosa, with the help of his father, Alpha Vexhood, to clear you off the throne.
My stomach churned violently.
Alpha Vexhood.
The name alone dragged old memories from their graves.
Queen Rosa is evil. She eliminated Luna Astra, the daughter of the Alpha of the Dominion Pack, to scare anyone away from her lover.
They were expecting a child. Rosa disguised herself and killed Luna Astra.
My knees weakened.
I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed without realizing it, the mattress dipping beneath my weight. My free hand came up to brace against the bedpost as my world fractured piece by piece.
Luna Astra.
Dead.
Alpha Ryder and Queen Rosa have a secret meeting place within Dominion territory. The address is attached to the back of this letter. You may find it useful.
The evidence was enough to bury them both. I was paid generously to leave Stormfang and its neighboring packs to keep silent.
Paid.
Silenced.
I write this so you do not fall prey to the same evil that claimed your father.
Long live the king.
Madam Ravenna.
I released a long, broken breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
The letter slipped slightly in my grasp as my hands dropped to my lap. My chest rose and fell unevenly, like I had just survived a battle I never saw coming.
Madam Ravenna.
The name struck something deep within me.
The former chief cook.
I remembered the whispers, how Rosa accused her of theft, how her loyalists dragged Ravenna’s name through the mud, how she was dismissed and sent away without trial. I had heard the story and dismissed it as a palace drama.
I never investigated.
Poor me.
Ravenna had served my father with dignity. He respected her. Trusted her. She was no liar.
My thoughts spiraled back to Ryder. His possessive stares. The way he once threatened every young he-wolf who dared look at Rosa. At the time, I had believed it was foolish jealousy, nothing more.
I thought time had erased whatever once existed between them.
I was wrong.
Everything, the timing, Rosa’s sudden devotion to my father during his illness, the way Mila was quietly pushed aside, painted as too busy, too ambitious, too unsuitable to be Luna.
Manipulation.
All of it.
I looked at letter again and again but I had to calm myself, though the rage was boiling into something I couldn't explain.
Then I checked the address with direction written with it.
I went to the drawer, opened it up to get a pen and paper.
I promise myself to write this down codedly. So that if it falls in the hand of some wolves or even Rosa and her cohort. They not would be able to understand it.
If someone could sneak into my bedroom, one of the most secured places in the pack to deliver a note, then no where in this palace is secured.
As the pen had a contact with the paper. My mind flashed back to every moment warnings, including those one I had rejected.
As the pen touched the paper, my mind replayed every moment I had dismissed. Every warning I had ignored.
Then…
Bang! Bang!!
The knock slammed into the door.
I froze.
My head snapped up, eyes locking onto the entrance, my pulse roaring in my ears.
Was it the deliverer of the letter?
Or something worse?