The King's Queen |2|

|28.|

Chapter Twenty Eight ▪︎ The King's Queen |2|

Alexander was getting flashbacks from when Dahlia died for the first time. Her body looked the same as it did then and (also just the same as then) her body wasn't decomposing.

It had been a day since Dahlia died, and somehow the child inside of her was still alive, a faint heartbeat piercing Alexander's ears and soul.

He was now laying next to her, trying to give her strength to wake up until he fell asleep in exhaustion.

When he woke up, he sensed her heart beating again. She was in a coma, he realised.

The moment he felt a bit of her spirit reaching out to him, he cried in joy. Luca visited a couple of times, his face stoic and vocabulary very limited.

This time, his eyebrows furrowed. "Is she reaching out to you?" He asked.

Alexander nodded sadly. "I can't understand her."

Luca came closer to her and pressed a finger to her forehead. He started chanting in an ancient tongue, one far older than Alexander.

Once he stopped, Alexander felt Dahlia's spirit strengthen while Luca was growing weaker.

Luca lost a lot of strength whereas Dahlia barely gained any. "Why did you do that?" Alexander asked him once he was done.

"It will help the child." He pasued for a moment. "Have you thought about it?" Luca asked carefully. The child was his main problem right now and he didn't quite understand why.

It should have been Dahlia, but he felt that she would make it. The child, on the other hand, he knew nothing about.

"I wish I hadn't. I want to name her Anastasia if she's a girl and Lucas if he's a boy. That's about the only thing that I know regarding it's future." Alexander groaned.

"How is Thanatos feeling about this?" Luca asked.

"He's pissed as hell." Alexander answered. "Or pretending to be. I have no idea."

Luca stayed quiet for a while, allowing his friend space to think and process all of the new information he has been bombarded with recently.

"There haven't been any more sightings of the rebels." Luca tried to get his mind off of it by changing the subject.

"Good. I really don't feel like dealing with them." His friend answered.

"That man is still in the cell. We haven't fed him yet. Should I?" Luca asked, refusing to acknowledge that monster of a creature as Dahlia's father.

Alexander switched with Thanatos, who growled and looked up at Luca with blood red eyes promising the man who killed his mate and abused her as a child nothing but pain and misery.

That was the most the beast had said in a very long time.

Luca could sense how worried he was about the woman lying limp on the bed and even more so about the child in her womb.

"You don't have to pretend to dislike the child, I know what you're feeling, Thanatos." Luca spoke.

"I don't hate the child, I hate the universe for putting it in such a wrong place at such a wrong time." He murmured.

This surprised Luca. He didn't know the beast very well, only meeting him during battle and heated arguments. He was pretty sure that nobody apart from Dahlia understood his attitude, perhaps not even Alex.

There was a closeness between the beast and her, a love and care that only a tormented man could carry. He sensed that she was far more than a person to him, that she was a hope for life, a hope for redemption.

He grew envious of them. Why didn't he get a mate? What made him so much more hideous than the actual beast who had killed thousands of men and women, humans and creatures?

He teleported out of the room. He knew those thoughts weren't valid and that there was no reason for his jealousy, yet he still felt that way.

He went to his home in the hidden woods, entering the small dark cabin carefully so he wouldn't hit his head against the door frame.
He lifted a lighter off the desk in the left corner of the one room house and lit all of the ancient oil lamps hanging on the walls.

He removed his clothes and showered, watching the crusty dried blood make the water slipping off his body an angry red, reminding him of his eternal life of misery and pain.

And loneliness. He was very lonely, spending every day in his small cabin doing the same things over and over again. Once upon a time, he had a strange cat that would visit every once in a while, but even she stopped her visits decades ago. He always felt like something was aloof regarding the immortal feline, but he couldn't quite sense what.

Meeting Dahlia and Alexander brought some change in his life and he had to admit that they made the gaping hole in his chest slightly smaller. If not smaller, less painful.

But they could never replace the missing piece of his soul that every creature got back once they met their soulmate.

His Goddess hadn't given it back to him even after centuries of being her loyal servant.

Still, he had hope. He didn't like admitting it to himself (or anyone else for that matter), but he did. He hoped and he prayed whilst being unable to sleep in the darkest of nights.

He'd stare at the night sky and gaze at the stars as he thought about her. He often created illusions of her to keep him company when he was injured.

She, or rather the illusion of her, had crystalline eyes, often different colours and shades, a frace framed with long strands of wavy brown hair, cascading down her tall figure, falling slightly under his chin.

She was the only person he trusted; because she wasn't real. Je knew he could confide in her and it was one of the rare things that kept him moderately sane during his lengthy life.

He stopped thinking about her and drank a warm cup of tea to get him to sleep easier.

He went to bed, hoping to dream of her instead of the usual gore nightmares.

Memories, they were memories. Not nightmares.

Memories.