Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder
Chapter 1102 - 13 : Given and Taken Away

Chapter 1102: Chapter 13 : Given and Taken Away

*Rion*

I held the princess in my arms. Sleep was going to be the last thing that I would be able to do that night with the princess pressed into me the way she was. My wolf panted incessantly. I tried to ignore him, and my thoughts drifted to other places that could help distract it.

My first thought was of my sister and a particular memory we shared, long ago. We were in one of the Royal’s palaces, sitting on an ornate bench in a hallway. I stared at the gold filigree decorating a cornice hanging just above my head, lost in a daze. My stomach growled and my mouth was dry.

The king and queen stood at the other end of the hallway with their backs turned, fussing amongst themselves in voices they probably thought were quiet. Their words echoed toward us across the hallway on the golden tunnel-shaped walls and bounced off the white marble floors. There was no hiding what they spoke about.

“We need to get them to the Light Realm,” the Queen said to the king in a hushed voice. He sighed but seemed to agree. She continued. “We need to protect them from their mother’s influence.”

Eva, who was eight at the time, gripped a doll the White Queen had given her. Her cheeks were sunken in and her arms were lanky limbs dangling from her thin frame. I looked hardly any different. We were both brought to the palace malnourished.

The king and queen returned to us, smiling pleasantly, but I didn’t much trust them. The king noticed my lack of regard for their societal status, but seeing as I was only twelve years old, he and I both knew he wouldn’t make a fuss out of it. Instead, he smiled warmly at me.

“We’re going to go for a ride in the car now,” the queen said.

“Where?” I asked.

She turned to me, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. “You will go on a boat that will take you both to your new family. Now please, the car is waiting outside.”

I took Eva’s hand tight as a butler came and led us through the ornate palace doors. The afternoon sun shone dimly; it was a winter’s sun, weak and cool. I held her hand as they loaded us into a royal car. At first, we were unsure of where the car took us, but I made sure Eva felt safe. We climbed into the backseat. I ignored the chauffeur as I strapped her and myself in.

“It’ll all be okay,” I told Eva, who only nodded and held tight to her doll. “I promise to protect you.”

The car took us through the city. We passed through different neighborhoods and finally reached a shoreline where there sat a boat in the water. Someone opened the door for us and we got out and were led to the boat.

We bled into the huge crowds of other children on the ship, orphans like us, and a man with a beard yelled at us to move along and find a seat below decks. We walked around to find the metal ladder leading down below the first deck and found rows of metal bunk beds built into the side paneling of the ship’s walls.

I walked up to one, pulled the blanket covering the inside, and the two of us climbed in. We shared that bed for the duration of the trip to make sure we never got separated.

During the trip, we only left the bed to eat the slop served in the galley and use the restroom. We dreaded using the restroom, the only time we were ever separated. Mine always smelled like the toilets never flushed.

Eva quickly became sick from the ship’s constant motion and she remained sick for the rest of the trip. Most of the time she slept in the bed, and at times she was forced to lean over the side and puke into a bucket I found for her.

Halfway through the trip, a storm hit. The boat rocked around dangerously, and Eva got more sick than ever. She cried into my chest as we huddled onto each other. Luckily, the storm passed overnight and we had little trouble with the weather after, but Eva remained ill.

The smell of body odor quickly became the norm as it took several weeks for it to get us across the ocean, but we finally made it to the docks. The same disgruntled man with the long beard screamed at us all to form a straight line to get off the ship, but we were mostly kids and didn’t listen. We all wanted to touch solid ground again and rushed off the gangplank to the docks.

Eva and I finally got off and arrived at the bay, where we were instructed to wait for our new caregivers. A pair of adults found us in the sea of children and verified our names.

“We’re your family now,” they both smiled warmly.

They took us to their car and drove away from the bay after buying us some food in a local seaside shop. Eva and I demolished the food since we had hardly anything to eat on that boat. With our bellies full and our new guardians smiling at us in the rearview mirror, things started to feel like they were going right.

Then, the car motor began to stutter. Soon, the car slowed down and the driver was forced to park on the side of the road. I glanced around at our surroundings–no stores, houses, or any sign of civilization, nothing but trees and dirt. Any kind of civilization was either far ahead of us or long behind us.

“Oops,” our new guardian, the ‘father,’ said. Our new ‘mother’ turned to us with a smile, but I knew now that it was riddled with discomfort and a little bit of embarrassment.

“Not to worry,” he said.

He reignited the ignition, but it only stuttered and hiccuped before going completely dead. He sighed and unbuckled. “Looks like I’m going to have to check under the hood.”

He opened the door and trudged out to the hood after shutting it. He lifted the hood, obscuring himself.

“Don’t worry, this doesn’t happen a lot,” the ‘mother’ told us. “We promise this car is actually quite capable most of the time.”

She craned her neck to get a better look at Eva but found her asleep, holding her doll in her arms.

“Oh, I didn’t know she was asleep,” the ‘mother’ whispered after looking at me.

“She’s really tired from the trip,” I said.

“Crossing the ocean into the Light Realm on a boat is a real challenge, I bet.”

“It really is–”

I didn’t have time to finish my sentence. Something rocked the car from the backside–something big, from the feel of it. I whipped around and saw two feet on the back trunk hood. With how the feet were forming two dents in the metal, I imagined the person was very large.

“What’s happening?” I panicked.

“I don’t know,” the woman said, but her gaze was out the window where the hood had been slammed down, which revealed that the man who drove us there was getting his neck sliced by a blade the size of my forearm. She screamed and woke up Eva, who blinked, looking around, and rubbed her eyes.

I rushed for Eva, grabbed her, and forced us both under the seat as far as we could go.

A window shattered and sprayed glass all over me as I shielded Eva under the seat. The woman screamed and I dared a glance, but couldn’t see much other than the back of the front passenger seat.

“No, no, please, no!” she screamed before she was cut off.

A body slammed against the car and then it all went quiet for a split second before the passenger door in front of me was torn off, revealing the legs and thighs of the giant who had crawled onto the trunk earlier.

A huge hand followed by a thick tree trunk arm dove for me and Eva by the hair. We were dragged out of the car and Eva was ripped out of my arm with the slightest bit of effort from the big man. I saw his face, but he wore a mask, but his red eyes blazed through.

I realized they were rogues.

He tossed Eva to another less huge man who was still big enough to grip her and hold her so she couldn’t run.

“Eva!” I screamed and kicked my legs as the huge man held me and then threw me to the ground. I rolled over several times, my vision blurred, dizzying me to the point of near nausea.

As I regained composure, I felt a hard punch to my gut. When I touched my stomach, I drew my hand away and found blood and a bullet hole through my clothes.

“Have fun, kid,” the big rogue said, and he walked away.

Eva screamed in the arms of the second rogue as they walked further from me. I tried to move, but it was no use. My stomach was in a world of pain, forcing all of my attention and energy toward it. As the blood drained from me, I watched them walk away until I could no longer see them.

I felt a hand holding mine and I blinked. My surroundings changed from the side of the road to the insides of a temple. Firelight danced on the floor and a young woman was holding my hand. I looked into her eyes, my vision swimming, and it took me a few seconds to realize who she was.

The Crimson Princess.

I had awakened from a terrible nightmare, I realized. The princess’ eyes filled with concern. She held my hands inside of her cuffed ones.

“You were having a bad dream,” she said.

I scrambled to my feet, guilt washing over me, leftover from that exact moment that the dream reminded me of, from that incident that took place so many years ago.

I glanced around, cold sweat dripping down my spine, and I noticed the others were still asleep. I leaped for my backpack and opened it up, taking out a bottle of water.

I gulped it down in an attempt to wash out the memory of that day, but the dream was still fresh, and the pain of the gunshot wound in my stomach remained. It clawed at me, and it felt like regardless of how much water I drank, I could not quell the burn that it had caused so long ago.

“Is your sister’s name Eva?”

The sudden voice made me jump. I turned to look at the princess, still trying to fight past my old memories clawing their way back into my consciousness.

I hesitated in answering her, not ready to spill that secret.