Fiona
“Take him as well,” the King said, pointing to Alexander.
Two more guards appeared and flanked Alexander, who did not resist as they put rough hands on his big arms and tried to force him forward. He was completely calm and went without a fight, walking coolly out the door a few paces behind his brother.
Before passing me by, Alexander darted his eyes to look right at me. He shook his head quickly just once, then looked forward again and disappeared. I knew he didn’t want me to get involved. I knew he would take care of this himself.
But I was running after them a moment later. There was some commotion behind me, though it didn’t occur to me until later that it might have even been the King commanding me to stop.
I burst through the doors just in time to see Lucas wrench free from the guards that had been lazily restraining him. I guess they weren’t expecting the lanky, clumsy, and seemingly intoxicated young man to overtake them.
Lucas flew to Alexander, fist raised. To my surprise, Alexander held still, continuing to look calm. His shoulders were relaxed, unclenched fists at his side.
My fight instinct had my wolf itching to take over. But I knew better than that. Alexander could defend himself just fine – the scars all over his chest told me that the moment I first studied his body, the night we met.
Then suddenly everything happened all at once, in the split second that it took for anyone to follow us out of the Great Hall.
Somehow the guards were more concerned about keeping hold of Alexander, who showed no signs of resisting, than they were about the reckless man-child lunging toward him, and Lucas landed a sloppy blow to the right side of Alexander’s face.
Alexander took the hit like it was nothing, turning to the side to absorb the punch.
Finally, the guards clamored to restrain Lucas, leaving Alexander in only one man’s now-shaky grasp, from which he quickly pulled himself free.
And then, in a flash, Alexander was on top of Lucas, pinning him to the floor with a knee in the chest and punching him full force in the face. Once, and then twice – that’s when I heard bones crunching – and then a third time that sent a fountain of crimson blood spraying from Lucas’s mouth.
The blood flew an impressive distance. I was at least ten feet away, but I looked down and saw the bottom of my gold dress was now splashed with red mist.
Alexander’s countenance was like nothing I’d ever seen before. His eyes, somehow both controlled and ragingly wild, were still fixed rigidly upon his half-brother, who was unconscious on the ground underneath him.
He stopped, frozen, with a red-drenched fist behind his head. A few drops of blood fell onto his own neck.
The guards scrambled to their feet.
And that’s when finally, the doors opened behind me. And out came first, the King himself, flanked by his guards. Then Scarlet behind him, shrieking at the scene before her. And the rest of the crowd came pouring out behind them, jaws dropping in horror.
Nina’s voice was coming from somewhere, saying my name. Finally I caught sight of her, and saw that Kayden was holding her in his arms, keeping her from running over to me.
“Silence!” The King’s voice was like a roar.
Then, Alexander was suddenly on his knees before his father, with the palms of his blood-soaked hands pressed to the floor in submission.
I could feel the anger pulsing off the Alpha King. His energy was furious, sending a vibration through the hallway that I could feel rattling my bones. Suddenly I realized I was very cold. I did not make any movements to betray the weakness I was feeling, though. Just straightened my spine and pretended not to notice the eyes of the gasping crowd as they roved my body from head to bloody toes.
The King had his eyes on Alexander, who was prostrate before him, silent and unmoving.
“The dungeon,” the King said, snapping his fingers. Ten or twelve guards then rushed to restrain Alexander, shouting for compliance, shoving him into retrains and dragging him away.
“Both of them,” the King added, dragging his eyes in a slow semi-circle… they landed on me.
Before I could even open my mouth to protest, I was in their grasp, and they were hauling me off behind Alexander and the massive swarm of guards that were upon him.
The dungeon was at first a cold maze of stairs and tunnels, and then we were in a brightly lit room with brick walls, hanging lamps with blinding lights, and endless varieties of metal restraints hung from the walls, floors, and ceilings.
It was all I could do to keep from panicking as I found myself being taken to Alexander’s side. He was already seated in a metal chair and being latched to it with an enormous chain.
“Leave her,” Alexander said. “She’s done nothing.”
Somehow, the King and Scarlet had both beaten me to this place. Perhaps they’d taken a more direct path, while I’d been dragged around through the labyrinth.
“Nothing?” The King still had that white-hot energy of rage pulsing off of him. It felt even stronger in this little space, where the old man, though his back was now hunched slightly with the unavoidable signs of age, stood tall and hulking with his head almost touching the low stone ceiling. “You’ve made a fool of us – the both of you! This indignant whore with her disrespect to our family—”
“Allow her to watch,” Alexander said again, louder. His eyes remained on the floor in front of him. “It will hurt her enough. Let her watch, and give me her punishment as well as my own.”
The King looked at me with a white-hot gaze that sent a strobe of unwelcome heat straight through my chest. My stomach dropped with fear… and then ached for a moment, causing me to wrap my arms around my abdomen unconsciously.
“Alright,” the King said reluctantly, dropping his eyes from my own down to my stomach. “Twenty lashes, then.”
And then with a nod of the King’s head, Alexander was removed from the chair and shoved down to his knees. I’ll never forget the sound of his kneecaps smacking the stone floor. But he didn’t even flinch.
For the first time since arriving in this place, I stole a glance at Scarlet, who had been standing in the King’s shadow on the other side of the room. She was quivering with excitement, looking both frightened and ecstatic, the devilish little smile on her red lips getting bigger and bigger the longer she looked upon Alexander as he shrank to the cold, hard floor.
To my surprise, it wasn’t a guard that came forward to give Alexander his punishment.
A guard just took the King’s jacket as he shrugged it off his shoulders. Then the King walked over to his son, rolling up his sleeves and unbuttoning the top two buttons on his shirt. Another man handed the King a long, well-weathered whip, which the old man handled playfully and then snapped expertly.
“Just one last thing,” Alexander said as his father stood behind him.
The King was silent.
“I’ve been trying to keep it out of the media while looking for a time to tell you in private, so you wouldn’t be taken by surprise,” Alexander continued, “but it looks like we’ve missed that chance.”
The King snapped the whip at his side frustratedly. “What is it, Alexander?! Out with it!”
“Your wife has been embezzling money from the royal property.”
Scarlet gasped. I saw all the color drain from her already-pale face, and she dropped slowly to her knees, like she was melting into a puddle, with her red gown pooling on the floor around her.
“It’s not true,” she said. Her voice was the opposite of convincingly sincere.
The King ran a rough hand across his face. “You have proof?” His deep voice lowered to an even deeper growl.
Alexander only nodded his head. But the King looked like he believed what had been said. Maybe it was Scarlet’s horribly insincere reaction of feigned surprise and scandal.
The King paced across the room over to this wife, whip still in hand.
She looked up at him with pleading eyes. But he took one large, open hand and slapped her hard across the face, sending her tumbling to the floor on her side with a yelp of pain.
