Mag-log in~Axel’s POV~I could not stop pacing.Back and forth across the length of my office, the same stretch of floor, the same number of steps, the same dead end where I had to turn around and do it all over again because my brain would not stop running and my body needed to match it.What had happened?When had I done it?Why could I not remember doing it?I replayed everything. The corridor. My mother. The suitcase. Walking away. The car. The accident. The crows. Cassandra. The child. Then standing right back where I started with blood on my hands and no memory of the space in between.I replayed it again and again and again. But I ended up with nothing over and over because every time I reached for the gap, the place where the answer should be, I came up completely blank. Like reaching into a drawer I knew had something in it and finding it empty every single time.I ran a hand through my hair in frustration and pulled at it harder than I needed to when a knock broke through it.I stop
~Amber’s POV~“So that is it then?” His voice came from behind me. “That is your solution? You are going to throw a tantrum?”I was already walking past him but my head whipped back in his direction and in an instant everything gave way to anger. But I pushed it out through a veil of calmness that took more effort than anything I had done all day.“I am not throwing a tantrum. I am giving you and everyone else what you want.”“And is that what you want, Amber?”“What I want is for you to leave me alone.” I kept my voice level even though nothing inside me was level. “I have been through a lot and it is not even ten o’clock yet. So with due respect, King Roland,” I let the title land with its full weight, “excuse me. I would like to rest.”“So that you can have the energy to go out there and stir up another issue.” His voice had gone quieter when he spoke again and somehow that was worse than the shouting. I glared at him. “I already abdicated. What more do you want from me?”“What I
~Amber’s POV~It was either of two things. He let me beat him, or he was just endlessly tired from the energy he had expended in beating his father to a pulp.Either way, I was more than satisfied.I could not help the smile on my face as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, checking every inch of skin for any spot that had not healed, the image of my claws digging into Axel over and over playing out in my head on a very gratifying loop.Everything had healed. Not a scratch left.I was about to turn away from the mirror and head back into my room so I could start figuring out how to make the Council see that I was fit to rule because there was no way in hell I was asking that parent-almost-murderer for help now, when the bathroom door burst open.“You attacked Axel?”My head whipped in my father’s direction and the smile remained because my first instinct was that he would be proud.It wiped straight off.Because he looked livid. Not disappointed. Not concerned. Livid. The kind o
~Amber’s POV~“Take a mic, Amber. Tell us what happened after the day of your mating ceremony.”“Alright.” I said, collecting the metaphorical mic. “But for it to have the full effect I would have to start from the night before, where my mate, in quote, told me that we should fuck and get on with it even though in a year we would go our separate ways. Because did I mention that all of this was a contract?”I paused for dramatic effect.“And then the next morning I had been ambushed out of bed by his personal assistant, because of course he was a billionaire, who was named Rosella but let me tell you there was nothing rosy about her. I then proceeded to learn afterward that I might lose my birthright and the only way to stop it was for that said mate to help me. So I had gone to find him, only to discover that he hated his mother so much that he had put his claws through her neck and she might die. And then the final cherry on top, his father, who was an even bigger asshole than my mat
~Axel’s POV~“It has barely been fifteen minutes, Axel, and I cannot find her if you keep summoning me—”Zane’s words cut short somewhere behind me but I could not turn to look at him because I could not focus on anything except my hands.They were shaking under the water, trembling in a way I had never seen them do, and I watched the blood run off my skin in thin red streams that swirled into the basin and disappeared. But it would not take away the image of her in my head. Her hands pressed against her own neck. The gasping. The blood pulsing through her fingers.And the question that kept slamming into me over and over and over which Zane took it right out of my head. “What the hell happened?”I shook my head. Trying to shake off the image. Trying to force it out the way I forced out everything else that was too much to carry. But it would not go and my hands were still covered and the water was not working fast enough so I started scrubbing.Hard.Harder than skin needed. My nai
~Amber’s POV~I had expected grovelling.And for clarity, it was going to be on my path after I had decided to find him, swallow my pride, and ask him to stand before the Council in seven days and tell them that I was fit to be future Queen of the Realm.Or if he wouldn’t make me grovel, he would bring up what he had said last night, which I knew was the absolute worst time to be thinking about but my brain did not care about timing. And he would push. He would use it. He would try to get me to give in.Which would be so wrong but in full honesty, with how the need to clench my legs together kept hitting me as I tracked his scent through the corridors, I knew it would take very little push for him to get his way.But no.I physically had to shake my head to stop the thought.The only thing I should be focused on was how I would swallow my pride and ask him to help me when the time came. And I would use him ambushing me with that pushy Rosella as one of the reasons he owed me. Alongsi
~Amber’s POV~The kitchen went dead silent.Not the kind of silence from before, cautious, uncertain, waiting.This was the kind of silence that came after a bomb went off and mouth opened then closed then opened again but no word came out.And for a second, I actually thought I had misheard her.
~Amber’s POV~Sugar.Spice.And everything nice.Those were the chosen ingredients put together to make this…I paused and stared at it again, tilted my head because maybe it was just the angle I was looking at it from then tilted my head to the other side.But it was the same from every single an
~Amber’s POV~Shit. Shit. Shit.Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.That was a lot of cursing going through my head but it was all my brain could work up as I tried to turn Axel Edgewood over.Axel Edgewood who had just slumped to the ground with the growing chaos sounding outside that sounded like it was getting lo
~Amber’s POV~“I need you to suppress my wolf.”Never in my life had I thought there would be a time when those exact words would leave my lips, nor did I think that they would be the first words I would say to the man I hadn’t seen for three years.Surprise flashed across his face before it gave w







