All Chapters of Mated to the Alpha King: Chapter 41

The words fell into the oppressive heat of the forge, a quiet surrender. 'Sometimes...when the cold sets in' It was an admission of pain, of a weakness he had hidden from the world for years, and he had given it to her. Winter’s heart ached with a feeling so sharp and unfamiliar it stole her breath. It was empathy. Pure, undiluted empathy for the monster everyone feared. In the hellish glow of the fire, she didn’t see the Alpha King or the blood soaked butcher from the garden. She saw a lonely man with a wound that never truly healed.Her fear was a distant thing, a buzzing fly in a room suddenly filled with the roar of a furnace. All she could feel was a desperate, insane urge to offer some kind of comfort, a balm for a wound that wasn’t on his skin.“That’s....” she started, her voice a raw whisper, “that’s not fair.”He didn’t turn, his broad back still to her, a wall of rigid, sculpted muscle. A short, harsh, and utterly humorless laugh escaped him. “Fair? Fairness is a child’s