Page 18 of Lycan King's Claim
She shakes her head. "No. The first thing he taught me? Was to block."
She swings. I barely duck in time, missing the other hand that catches me under the ribs.
"He taught you to punch too?" I gasp, clutching my side.
"No, I taught myself. So did a few of his guards. They couldn’t handle watching him beat the shit out of a teenage girl every day."
I swallow hard. Guilt knots in my stomach.
"It is what it is. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm still breathing while he’s rotting in the ground."
She waves me forward. "You and I aren’t so different. We both had shitty childhoods."
"Does that make you feel better, knowing you destroyed mine?"
A snarl rips from my throat.
She moves fast, going on the offensive. I try to block, though I still end up on my back, staring at the ceiling, wind knocked from my lungs.
"Javier said you killed your father?" I wheeze, trying to catch my breath.
She nods, offering a hand. I take it, letting her pull me to my feet.
"Yeah. After I retrieved my sister. Not that it saved her. By then, the damage was already done." Darkness shadows her face.
"He attacked here. Killed Rehan’s father."
I don’t wait for her response. Swinging hard, I catch her under the chin. Her teeth smash into her bottom lip, and blood dribbles down it, making her smile.
At that moment, Adina's past unfolds before me like a dark tapestry, exposing the depths of her resilience and the scars etched upon her soul.
"So your father was a king but killed your mother? I thought kings go crazy without their mate?" I ask her.
"He's the reason the law was made, he wiped out half his kingdom by the time I was a teenager, took down two others," she tells me.
"Why did he kill her?" I ask, intrigued by this horror story. "Because she rejected him," she answers. My brows furrow.
"Rejected? I don't understand," I admit. She smirks. "Bet you wish you knew that before Xandros marked you," she laughs. "Yes, she rejected him, it breaks the bond, unless you've been marked already. Then it's too late."
"Why did she reject him?" I ask curiously, sitting down on the mat, trying to catch my breath. "My father was at war with her parents' kingdom; the treaties were broken. He went to try to make a new agreement. When he spotted her, she was 16. He refused to leave without her. She didn't recognize him. We don't recognize our mates until we are of age to shift, yet we can still reject them.”
“They weren't sure if he was her mate, but she was underage anyway. Her parents told her to reject him, and she did. It started a war that got her kingdom wiped out and her kidnapped." My stomach sinks at the thought of what her mother endured.
"He raped her. Obviously, he needed an heir. Months later, I was born, but I was born a girl."
"So he killed her because you were a girl?" I ask horrified.
"No, he was always going to kill her, because she rejected him. Me being a girl was just an added disrespect in his eyes, my father told me he didn't even let her hold me, just snapped her neck the moment the midwife delivered me, when he went to pick me up, he realized I was a girl not a boy like my mother told him." Adina drops onto the mat next to me.
"He couldn't have a boy, so he treated me like one; I became his punching bag. I ran off when I was the same age as my mother. Fled to Rehan’s Kingdom, only when I was brought before his parents he realized I was his mate. It was almost like history was going to repeat itself," she chuckles.
"Only he was kind. He refused to mark until I was of age, so I knew for certain, but back then I would have taken his word for it if it meant escaping my father." she laughs bitterly. “A few decades later, not long after I had Xandros, the Council got fed up with my father killing innocents, and his kingdom was pulled down. That was when I found out I had a sister. I was curious, so I went to visit her and went to confront my father.”
"I thought I had it bad," she laughs, shaking her head. "What he did to her, sent her insane; I couldn't leave her there, so I waited for him to leave and took her."
"He came looking for her, didn't he?" I ask and she nods. "He killed Rehan's father, he tried to kill me, almost did too, but I got the upper hand. I slit his throat, but not before he plunged his sword into my stomach, he took away my ability to have any more kids, I couldn't heal, he'd dipped his sword in poison." she tells me.
She shares the harrowing tale of her mother's untimely demise, a tragic result of a mate’s rejection that unleashed a wrath that knew no bounds. Adina herself became a victim of her father's twisted desires, a mere pawn in a cruel game of power and control. Her words hang heavy in the air, casting a haunting shadow over my understanding of her lineage and the burdens she carries.
