Bled By My Alpha Parents Adopted By The Lycan King Chapter 09
The Farewell Note
The old scars on my arms had started to scab over.
I packed nothing.
The Queen had taught me to hold a brush over the winter. My paintings still came out shaky and slanted, but I sat down at the desk and wrote a farewell note anyway. I left it folded on the table where she would find it in the morning.
I hesitated by the door.
Then I turned back, picked up the little clay figure Prince Lyle had given me the week before, and slipped it into my bundle.
The months in the palace had given me something I had never dared want.
A mother who held me when I cried.
A brother who filled my room with small antiques.
Meals I did not have to earn with my blood.
There had been nights I let myself think about staying.
But this palace was not mine.
I stepped through the courtyard gate.
Three figures were standing there.
The Lycan King. The Lycan Queen. Prince Lyle.
My whole body locked.
“I didn’t take anything, my lady, I swear,” I stammered, fumbling my bundle open in front of her. “Please, look. Don’t hurt me. I didn’t take a single thing that isn’t—”
The Queen crossed the space between us and pulled me into her arms.
Her tears landed hot against my neck.
“That pack. That filth of a pack. How dare they. How dare they do this to you.”
The Queen of the Lycans said the word filth like a common she-wolf spitting in the street.
I went rigid in her arms.
They had found out.
They had found out what I was. What had been done to me.
They knew about the secret of my blood. The chest. The eight years.
Prince Lyle’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “I’ll break every bone in Rowan Ashborne’s leg tomorrow.”
The King’s voice was quiet and cold in a way I had never heard from him.
“The Ashborne Pack has grown too big. I’ll see to it myself.”
The Queen pulled back just far enough to look at me. Her eyes were wet, red-rimmed, steady.
“Sweet pup. Be my daughter. We’re leaving for the southern territory. Our winter estate. Far from this rotten capital and every wolf in it who ever touched you. I know what you’re afraid of. I know why you flinch when I hold you. We will never be like them. I swear it on the Moon. Let me be your mother.”
I looked at her.
I looked at the King, who had never once raised his voice at me in all the months I had lived under his roof.
I looked at Lyle, who was doing a very poor job of not crying.
I opened my mouth, and no words came.
I nodded instead.
The Queen pulled me back against her chest and did not let go for a long time.
Maybe, I thought, I had found them after all.