Page 1 of Mated To The King's Gamma
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The look on her face will forever haunt me. She looks at me as if I’m a monster. I only went to take her hand. The way she reacts it’s as if I punched her. Her entire body collapses in on itself as if to shield herself. The fear in her eyes when I speak her name, the way they dart frantically around, makes my stomach sink.
I did this to her, and she reacts to me like this. It angers me. I’m not angry at her, I’m angry at myself. I had momentarily forgotten where she came from and who she recently returned to me from. She races from the room, nearly knocking me over as she snatches Tyson from my arms. She smashes her hip on the counter as she darts past Clarice, but I don’t think she even felt it.
Rising to my feet, Clarice steps aside, staring worriedly after her as she escapes. Stepping out, the guards point me in the right direction, and I know she is headed toward our quarters.
It is the only place she has to go, and I know Abbie won’t be running to Azalea because Azalea has her own issues at the moment with the pregnancy and Kyson keeping her locked away, worried she will be poisoned again.
We still haven’t caught the culprit, even after he used his command on all the staff. So, there is no way she will give the queen more to worry over.
Climbing the stairs, I see our bedroom door closed but spot the light beneath Tyson’s and hear his wailing screams. I run toward the door, wondering what is going on to make him scream like that. Shoving the door open, she hits the ground.
I reach to catch her, but I’m too late. “Tyson, shh, shh,” I murmur, rolling her onto her back. She stares up at the ceiling, her eyes unfocused as Tyson climbs off the bed, his little hands clutching her shirt and shaking her.
“Shh, buddy, Momma is okay. She just fainted,” I tell him, scooping my arms beneath her. I lift her up and stand.
“Grab your blanket and binky,” I tell him, and he blinks, trying to register what I’m saying. Abbie sometimes signs to him, and I try to remember, but after a few seconds, he seems to catch on and snatches the corner of his blanket and his binky.
He follows me and runs ahead, pushing the door, his little feet getting tangled in the blanket dragging behind him, and he slips, his chin hitting the floor, making him scream. Cursing, I use my hip to shove the door open and set her on the bed before rushing back to Tyson. I grab him under the arms.
His chin is bleeding where he banged it, and I quickly move him to the bathroom, sitting him on the bathtub’s edge before grabbing a washcloth and dabbing it. It isn’t deep, but he will have one hell of a bruise in the morning.
He took only a few moments before it was forgotten, and he was transfixed on the scars that laced my chest, poking out from beneath my shirt. I sigh, taking it off and grabbing him. If it means keeping him quiet, he can poke and prod them like he usually does.
Sitting on the bed, I place him between us and lean over to check on Abbie. Her face is scrunched up as if she is dreaming. But her heart rate is even, and so is her breathing. I’m used to her panic attacks. They were frequent when she first returned.
The slightest noise would set them off, but this is the first one she has had since Tyson arrived here. Tyson smacks my chest, his fingers fisting my chest hair, and I growl when he tugs the hair on my chest.
He continues smacking me and making the noise I recognize he makes when wanting to draw. Sighing, I get up and grab the bucket of markers off the bedside table that Abbie didn’t remove from the room and hand them to him. There are only three colors, but every shade of those three colors. Blue, green, and red.
He hates the other colors and we have to hide them away. He rummages in the bucket, finding the shade he wants, and I sigh, laying on my back and letting him have at it. His tongue pokes out as he traces my scars and kneels next to me, his elbows digging uncomfortably into my sides.
He has some fascination with coloring them in—Abbie’s too—though I usually distract him with mine when he spots hers. Abbie is self-conscious and it always draws her back to dark places when she gets those sudden memories.
I glance toward her, watching as she sleeps—curled toward Tyson like he’s her anchor, the rise and fall of her chest steady now, no longer hitching with silent sobs or fractured breath. In moments like this, when the world is quiet and her face is at peace, the resemblance between her and Sia is jarring.
For a split second, I forget who I’m looking at. And suddenly, I’m not in this room anymore.
I’m back there.
The lookout was quiet that night, the wind colder than I remembered. I had thought maybe—just maybe—she’d changed her mind. That she’d grown tired of hurting me, of tearing me apart piece by piece from a distance.
I’d done what she asked. Kept my distance. I hadn’t forced her to accept the bond, hadn’t demanded anything she didn’t want to give.
But still… I showed up like a hopeless fool.
Hope is a fucking disease. It poisons you, makes you believe in things that aren’t real, and then when it’s ripped away, it leaves you bleeding out, choking on the truth.
But that night, I had it. I had hope.
For two years, I lived with the torment of a mate bond she refused to accept. Two years of feeling her with someone else, feeling her pleasure, her happiness—none of it mine. It had nearly killed me. I had nearly let it kill me.
But now she wanted to see me.
After everything, after rejecting me, after disappearing, she had agreed to meet. And I needed it to mean something.
I told myself it did.
