Page 83 of Mated To The King's Gamma
After the chaos has settled and Azalea has declared this place Valkyrie, I find Azalea standing at the edge of the eastern balcony outside the huge sitting room, arms resting on the railing, eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun is just beginning to dip behind the mountains.
I pad out, wrapping a shawl around my shoulders to check on her. It must be hard being here for her.
She didn’t look at me when I joined her,
“It’s beautiful here,” I say finally.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “And peaceful. Feels wrong, doesn’t it?”
I laugh under my breath. “A little. It must feel strange being here, knowing this is where you always belonged,” I tell her and she smiles.
“No, I have always been where I needed to be.” Her words sadden me a little, knowing how much she suffered from a life that was never destined for her. She shivers, and I glance at her, opening my shawl. She chuckles and steps closer, allowing me to drape it over her, too. My eyes go to the scars that peek out from beneath her shirt sleeve, scars like mine.
“I’ve never belonged to a crown, throne, or a kingdom,” she whispers. “But I’ve always belonged to the pain that taught me how to carry them.”
We stand in silence, the kind that only comes with knowing someone too well to need words. Just watching the setting sun.
Then Azalea turns to me. “I need to ask you something.”
I blink at her, surprised by the seriousness in her tone.
“I want you to be my Beta. I just didn't want to throw you on the spot when it is announced in a month.”
I choke. “What?”
She glances at me, a small smile tugging at her lips.
“Az—no. No way. That should be Tandi. She’s Damian’s mate. That makes way more sense and I—I can’t?—”
“You can,” she says firmly, grabbing my hands. “Don’t you see, Abbie? We’re finally free. No more chains. No more rules. No more being told who we’re allowed to be. We are free to be whoever we want to be.”
“Az, I don't know how to be a Beta. I can’t even read.”
“If I can survive being Mrs. Daley’s slave and somehow end up a queen, you can damn well be my Beta.”
“But you were always a queen,” I tell her, throat tight. “We just didn’t know it yet. You were born to rule.”
Azalea shakes her head slowly. “No, Abs. I wasn’t born to rule. I was born to survive with you.”
She takes a breath, eyes shimmering, voice raw. “Even if I could rewind time—go back and change it all—I wouldn’t. I’d relive every scarred second, because it led us here.”
My chest aches. Her words—our truth—are almost too heavy to carry, but we always did, didn’t we?
Then she smiles through her tears and says, “We’re like cracked concrete, Abs. Our scars? They’re just places for the flowers to bleed through and grow.”
And gods, if that isn’t the most beautiful kind of broken. My throat tightens.
“More than my life,” she whispers.
That old vow—the one we whispered to each other at night, curled up in a cold orphanage bed, hoping morning never came.
“More than my life,” I echo, voice cracking.
“Nothing’s changed,” she says.
“Hasn’t it?” I ask. “You’re an empress now. You’re building a kingdom. And me.”
She stepped closer, touching my cheek. “No, Abbie. It has changed. It’s become bigger than us. We don’t just live for each other anymore, we live for them. For Tyson. For our mates. For the family we’ve built. For the kingdom we’re about to raise from the ashes. We live to right the wrongs of the past, ours.” She turns her gaze back to the gardens where the remaining Landeena and Valkyrie guards are busying themselves getting this place set up. “And theirs,” she whispers.
