The Alpha's Hunt Chapter 53

What the hell was happening? I looked at Darian and it took every ounce of strength I had not to cower under his fear-inflicting gaze. 

Everyone else stepped back- they literally took a full step back and watched us like a theatre play instead of stopping their king from killing an innocent girl.

Every part of me knew that she was innocent, it wasn’t a question of innocence but rather how I could prove it. Iliana hadn't killed anyone and she sure as hell wasn't responsible for poisoning the king's wine.

Her eyes met mine with the deepest fear I'd seen, the tears rolled down her cheeks and her lips quivered like the fall leaf on a wilting tree.

I swallowed a sob and tried to form the words to reason with Darian but I could barely feel my hands let alone find a way to speak without seeing the thin string on which my friend's life hung in his hands.

What if anything I said pushed him over the edge and he killed her? How does someone become so evil that they make you afraid to even speak at all? Anything I said or didn't say would play a part in what happened and if something were to happen to her I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

Why did she come here…

This shit was excruciatingly painful and I didn't dare turn around and look at Emanuel. He probably blamed me. Ever since he stepped inside the palace he’d been off, he looked at me differently and barely said two words that didn't have to do with Iliana.

“Darian, please,” I said calmly. Or did it sound desperate? Maybe, I couldn't hear my voice at this point. All I heard were Iliana's sobs and my heart about to burst.

I was very much dependent on the fact that there were witnesses here and that Darian wouldn't have the audacity to act out towards me in front of them. 

I beg to the gods that I'm right.

’Please what, puppet?’ 

Coward, can't even take the conversation out loud. He has to send his words through the mind link, where he can privately say whatever the hell he wants.

I coiled my fingers into fists and felt the pressure against my palms.

“Think this through. Don't just act out of anger!”

“I’m not acting out of anger,” I explained to Trixy.

“I hear your thoughts, remember? I know what you're about to do and I employ you to think it over and maybe choose to be smart for once,”

“I am”

“How?” Trixy asked.

“Better me than her. I can't lose her, Trixy,”

“You can kill an innocent girl but you can't talk to your mate out loud? How royal of you,” I spat.

Whatever waited for me I could take as long as he dropped Iliana and let her leave. She and Emanuel could run as far away from here as possible and they never had to return.

I expected a threat, maybe a glare or a frustrated growl for my disobedience, and then disciplinary actions later in private where no witnesses would see.

What I didn't expect was a laugh to rumble from his chest, a dark chuckle that echoed in my ears and forever be the sound in my nightmares. 

He smiled and lifted his head.

“Bring me my mate,” he ordered.

A scream let my lips before I could choke it and I grabbed the guard's hand which fisted my hair and pulled it from my scalp.

He held my hair at the root, clenching his hand like a toddler, and forced me ahead of him.

The guard released me when I was within Darian’s reach and even though he was no longer pulling me by my hair I could still feel my scalp burning as though all the hair had been ripped out.

I could enjoy not being dragged like an animal for about five seconds before Darian locked his hand around my face and pulled me in close. 

The tip of our noses hovered against each other, his lips touched mine in a forceful brush and if the dead could in fact rise I bet their eyes would look exactly like Darian’s: cold and lifeless with no redeeming humanity anywhere to be found. Nothing but a twisted, sickening amusement for the game he played.

“I said, ’ Please what, puppet?’” He repeated aloud. 

Shame on me for thinking he had boundaries.

He dug his fingers into my cheeks, pulled me closer, and spoke calmly against my lips, “The only way to keep people quiet is to first learn what makes them scream,” he sucked in my lip between his teeth and pulled. “I want to hear you scream, puppet,” he whispered darkly and I heard the obnoxious silence from everyone in the back.

Darian lifted me from the ground and tossed me back on the floor. I sucked in a breath and pulled my arm to my chest where I saw three pieces of glass stuck in my flesh and when I looked up I saw that Darian was watching me.

I picked out the glass and wiped off the blood before I rose to my feet. 

I felt my skin burning as the blood rushed through me faster than a flood and my eyes narrowed to slits on Darian.

While trying to hold it together, I heard Mr. Light yell out, “I demand a life for a life!” 

I held my breath, or rather it got stuck in my throat and my chest compressed. They had nothing to do with this, they held no power in the palace. This is not how the system works, there's a trial where the person in question gets a chance to prove their innocence. Darian can not choose on his own who gets to live or die. I clenched my fists when my hands wouldn't stop shaking and I drew a double breath when another voice called out.

“An eye for an eye!” Someone roared from the floor.

I slowly turned my head and saw that the men were angry, for some absurd reason they thought they had a say in any of this. They somehow positioned themselves in a stance of power where they held the final call of another person's life without knowing jack shit about the situation. Nobody knew the truth, not even Darian, and still, he was choking Iliana in his hand, slowly draining the life from her eyes as we were all forced to watch.

The sound of her sobs stopped and I whipped my head back when I heard her wheezing breaths and choked whines.

“Let go of her!” Emanuel growled and lunged forward up the stairs. 

Darian was unfazed, watching Emanuel like he would watch the fire in a warming pit; a dangerous element that he knew couldn't touch him. 

A royal guard stepped around Darian and with a monotone expression, he pulled Emanuel forward and grabbed his shoulder, he held him still and took out his knife from his leather belt.

My vision got blurry and it felt like I was looking in through a rain-covered window but I heard the gasp for air and the metallic scent filled my nose before my vision returned.