Once upon a Princess (Atypical Series #1)||✔️

40. I Promise

NATE

I've thought about death countless times.
While my dad was still alive, I've always imagined how I'd die at the hands of my emotionally abusive mother.

I'd always imagine her eventually snapping, and physically hurting me for once. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, cold sweating and clutching my pillow in fear that she'd come to smother me in my sleep.

After all, she had made comments about it before, if she did I was one less burden of hers.

After my dad died, my imaginations of death slowly became self-inflicted.

I shamelessly thought about suicide more times than I've thought about my mother's potential murder, during my stay in the orphanage.

Why live? I always thought.

The only person that cared about me was murdered, the woman that gave birth to me abandoned me and I was stuck in an orphanage for over five years.

Things seemed pretty shitty.

When Cindy and the Hartleys came along, the suicidal thoughts stopped. I was still constantly living amongst them, in fear that they'd either consider me worthless as my mother had and abuse me just as she had, or throw me back onto the streets.

Neither happened. They loved me unconditionally, showed me what a family really supposed to be and mended my broken heart.

Death was the last thing on my mind.

I never in a million years, imagined of one of the ways I'd die, was at the hands of the cold-blooded murdered that ordered my father's death.

I never imagined that I'd go out the same way that he did.

At the sound of the bullet leaving the barrel, I closed my eyes and braced for the impact.

I wondered how my father felt, in this cold dark dungeon, scared out of his mind that his brains were about to be blown out.

I wondered if he fought up to the end, or if he was defeated and helpless just as I was currently feeling.

The horrid truth of my father's death felt me with a gaping hole in my chest. It was as if the King had already shot me. I had no desire to oppose him anymore.

He had won. He had killed me before the bullet had.

I then heard shouts and curses and opened my eyes to see the Chief staring at me wide-eyed.

The King no longer had the rifle in his grasp, but instead was pacing in his spot.

"Get the medics you idiot!" He bellowed at the frozen guard.

I ran my hand along my body, feeling around for a bullet hole.

Maybe I was already dead, and I was merely looking on from the afterlife.

I felt no pain, I didn't even feel the bullet pierce my skin.
As my fingers grazed my jeans for a source of the bullet hole, my eyes landed on a figure on the ground.

I felt to faint and throw up at the same time, and wasted no time in throwing myself on the ground beside the figure.

"No, no, shit no," I murmured, as I clutched her face while I searched for a pulse with my other hand.