Chapter 7 Alexander Backs Me Up

Ivy’s POV

I can barely breathe as Alexander lifts his head back up to look at me. His eyes roam over my face once, and I wonder what he sees.

Tears in my eyes, my cheeks flushed with panic, mouth opened in a gasp, and hands stretched forward towards the recorder - I know I don’t look a pretty picture.

However, his attention is on me for only a second, before he turns toward the maid. There is no sign of the cocky, aggressive woman anymore. Instead, she fidgets with her hands and looks pale as her eyes dart across the room, not being able to meet his eyes.

“What’s going on here? What is with all the noise?” Alexander asks in a dangerously soft voice. His eyes are narrowed and his jaw clenched. He hasn’t raised his voice and yet, the impact is more than if he had shouted.

“I-I … I mean, my king, she-she-she was…”

The maid can barely speak. Her entire body is shaking in fear now, and there is no trace of her previous hostility.

“She, who?” Alexander casually fixes the cuff of his sleeve. It looks like he doesn’t care about what’s happening at all, yet there is something radiating off of him; a vicious kind of rage that suffocates the room.

Before the maid can answer, he takes two more steps in the room. His steps are sharp, predatory. He gives her the full force of his gaze, and a sinister smile plays on his lips.

“You mean my wife? Pray tell, what did she do? What was it that caused you to make so much noise and disturb my peace?”

The effect of those words is fascinating. The maid’s jaw slackens as she comprehends what he just said. There’s a dreadful realization on her face. Alexander just reminded her who I was. His wife. Anything she could say against me, would indirectly be against him.

Instantly, she is on her knees, begging, pleading for forgiveness.

“My apologies, my king. I won’t be too loud. I won’t be too loud ever again.”

Alexander advances another step towards her, and the maid sways as if she is lightheaded.

“Know your fucking place, Evangeline.” He calls her by her name, and the maid frantically nods.

“Now, get the hell out of here.”

He doesn’t have to say it twice, the maid runs out of the room so fast, she almost stumbles on her feet.

I watch as Alexander watches the maid scramble away, and a small idea forms in my head.

Maybe, I should take advantage of this moment and pick up the recorder while his focus is away!

Barely breathing, I inch forward little by little, peeking at him from the corner of my eye. When I am a breath away from it, I let out a small relieved smile. However, just as my fingers reach out to grab it, Alexander casually bends down and scoops it up like he planned to do it all along.

The air whooshes out of me as he slowly turns back to me, head cocked to the side and a devilish smirk on his face.

“Looking for this?” He says, clenching the recorder in his hand. I swallow shakily.

It feels like he has my heart in his fist, and he is squeezing. Hard.

He presses the start and stop button again and again, causing my mother’s voice to go in and out.

Happy Birthday to you- Stop - Happy Birthday - Stop -Happy- Stop

It feels like it’s all a game to him.

“Tell me, how pathetic one must be to not even be able to defend themselves against a weak palace maid?”

He throws the question casually, but there is a small frown on his face. Almost like it offends him that I was unable to stand up for myself.

His insult hits me like a slap, and I feel the corner of my lips turning down. He must have already heard everything and knew what was happening before he even stepped in the room.

Indignation shoots through me. Why does he always assume the worst of me?

“My mother always told me if you can’t use force, then use your words.” I tell him tightly. “I don't have my inner wolf yet, so I wouldn’t be any match against her physically. So, persuading her felt like the only smart option.”

I brace myself for the contempt I am sure is coming. After all, not having a wolf is enough for society to think of you as less than dirt. However, I am surprised when I don’t find it there.

Instead, he goes completely still at those words, and a strange expression comes on his face at the mention of my lack of an inner wolf. Shockingly, there is almost a flash of envy in his cerulean eyes, but it is gone as soon as it is there.

Even though I don’t want to feel it, a sliver of grudging appreciation goes through me at the fact that he did not humiliate me for this.

Immediately, I banish that sneaky thought, and my eyes dart over to the recorder still in his hands. I take a deep breath and gather all my courage to plead with him.

“Please just give this back to me. It’s very … important to me.” My voice catches at the last few words, and he raises one eyebrow at the obvious emotion in my words.

He looks back at the recorder and lets it play once again. This time, he doesn’t pause it. My mother’s voice mingles with my giggles as she wishes me a happy birthday over and over again. My cheeks heat up at the idea of him looking at such intimate memories of me.

However, he doesn’t look back at me, he just stares at the recorder and to my surprise, his expression softens. It’s the slightest change and yet, jarring enough for me to notice. He moves his fingers over it in a caress and seems to be in a kind of stupor.

It almost looks like he wants to keep it.

I swallow a breath and clench my fists, bracing myself for the next words.

“Please just give this back to me. I’ll do anything, anything at all. If you like it, maybe I can save up and help you … get another one like it?”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, his head snaps up, and a mask of ice-cold fury takes over his face.

He takes a few steps closer to me and without meaning to, I stumble backwards. There is something odd about his expression though. It’s almost like his eyes wear a sheen of defensiveness.

As if … he didn’t like me pointing out the fact that he might want the recorder?

“Do you think I care for this shabby old recorder? I don’t care for this useless trinket at all.” He snaps, his voice curt and withdrawn.

With that, he throws the recorder to me, and I fumble to catch it with trembling fingers. He doesn’t wait to see if I have caught it, stalking to the door, already dismissing me.

He turns back when he is by the door and speaks in a quite serious manner.

“Also, bear in mind, I don’t need any of your little things anyway because I own you, little liar. All of you, do you understand?”

I freeze and just stare at him as his words penetrate me. He gives me one last mirthless smirk before disappearing like he was never there.

Surprisingly, however, his parting words don’t stir as much dread in me as I thought they would. Instead, a slow hope starts blooming within me because for a moment there, just for the tiniest of moments, as he held my tape recorder, the mighty Lycan king had lowered down his walls.

With every passing day, Alexander was becoming more of a mystery for me.

He treated me like I meant nothing and yet, called me his wife to back me up in front of the maid.

He acted like he didn’t care for my feelings at all, yet, he had … given my recorder back to me.

Maybe, maybe there is some humanity in him after all?

And, maybe, just maybe … I could appeal to that part of him?

I close my eyes and clutch the recorder tightly to my chest, feeling more determined and hopeful than I have in a long while.

____________________

Alexander’s POV

“Fuck.”

The moment I am back into my office, anger grips me.

Anger at my little lying wife but also … anger at myself.

I hunch over at my desk, gripping the edges but I miscalculate my strength. It splinters under my hands, causing deep cracks in the mahogany surface.

Fuck.

Jerkily, I release the now destroyed desk and walk towards the bar to pour myself a glass of whiskey.

I don't know what it was. Why was I there outside her room in the first place? The reason seems so far away now. All I remember were the voices. Her begging the maid, her face full of pain, eyes wide with unshed tears.

Usually, I wouldn’t mind that expression on her face. After all, didn’t she deserve it? The pain, the fucking misery? Didn’t she deserve to feel a fraction of what I do every single day? I should feel happy to see that look on her.

But, I didn’t.

Because I hadn’t put it there, and for some absurd reason, I couldn’t stand the idea of someone else putting it there.

Her pain, her misery, her tears - they all fucking belonged to me.

Rage had taken me over so quickly, I had to physically restrain myself from ripping apart the maid in two. I wanted to paint the walls with her blood so she could never raise her voice to my wife again.

My lying, deceitful wife who I hated more than anything.

A bitter chuckle leaves my mouth as I pour the whiskey down my throat, relishing in the dark burn of it.

It was the stupid mate bond. It was driving my wolf wild and fucking with my head. The mere scent of her was pushing him to claim her as his own. My hate and my wolf’s want for her were always in constant battle.

It was just my luck that while I was being tortured every single second in her presence, she didn’t have a wolf so she was blissfully ignorant to the mate bond.

Just my fucking luck.

I exhale sharply once and then settle in front of the fireplace. A hiss leaves me as my back connects with the leather of the couch. Pain rushes through my body like an electric current, always my faithful companion.

I focus on the fire burning in front of me, trying to drown out the voices that keep coming back to me.

Her damn recorder.

The voice of her mother singing happy birthday to her. So sweetly. Her innocent giggles. So happy.

It was something about that scene that had frozen me in time.

For a moment there, she wasn’t the woman who caused my fiancée to die but just a child who was loved by her mother.

It made me feel warm.

It made me feel human.

As I held that recorder in my hands, I felt a strange kind of longing for it. A deep-seated craving to have something that Ivy had been given so easily. Something that I never had.

Love.

I drop my head back and let my eyes fall shut.

Now, all I can see behind my closed eyelids are images of my own birthdays. Of my father never being there. Of my mother’s whip that tore into my flesh. One lash for every year I grew.

This is for your own good, Alex. You need to be stronger, my child. You need to not be worthless. You are worthless right now, you know that, don’t you? That’s why I am just a mistress, and your father made that other woman his queen. That’s why he is with her, celebrating your younger brother’s birthday right now, but doesn’t even care that it's yours too. You don’t even matter to him.

My fingers clench around the whiskey glass as the ghosts of my mother’s words assault me.

You’re just a forgettable bastard. You deserve these whips. You deserve this pain to remind you to be stronger.

An empty smile graces my lips. I didn’t know what hurt worse then; her words or the whip making my back bleed.

The whiskey glass crushes in the palm of my hand. The sharp alcohol burning the cuts as it mixes with my blood.

My smile widens as my strength causes the pieces of glass to turn into dust.

My mother was right about one thing after all.

The pain did make me stronger.

It made me king.

This time, when I close my eyes, a different image flashes in my mind.

Of green tearful but defiant eyes. Of a tape recorder. Of a mother celebrating her child’s birthday.

I scoff at the idea that I would ever want that stupid recorder.

What did these things mean to me anyway?

Nothing.

And, the slight twinge of emotion that I feel twisting in my chest is not envy at all.

Not at all.