Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder
Chapter 1112 - 23 : A Tempting Shower

Chapter 1112: Chapter 23 : A Tempting Shower

*Rion*

I admitted that the previous night, I’d done too much drinking. I woke up to a pounding in my head. It didn’t hurt so much that it was unbearable like some drinking binges in my past, but it was enough for me to become increasingly uncomfortable.

I turned to the side of the bed to see if the princess was there and found it bare. I blinked. I could have sworn I’d taken her to bed with me the night before. My mind blanked when trying to remember when I’d seen her last.

All I remembered was drinking mead and singing with the boys. I racked my brain for when I had last seen her and realized that was when she said she was going to the bathroom and never returned after that.

I looked at the bathroom. It was empty.

Panic filled me. I jumped up despite my mild headache and rushed out of the room. The hallway was quiet compared to the previous night, other than the soft clatter of dishes from the floor below.

I hurried down the stairs and found Katheryn working the bar. She gave me a look and I went over to her.

“Where is she?” I demanded.

“Good morning to you too,” she grumbled.

I sighed. My head hurt and I didn’t need her smart-aleck behavior. That was one thing I certainly didn’t miss about her.

She pushed a plate of bacon and eggs toward me.

“Thanks,” I said. I wanted to know where the princess was, but knowing Katheryn, I would find out when she was ready to tell me.

“First of all, calm down. It’s way too early for this,” she said, pouring gravy over the food. “I have her someplace safe. I told you I’d be keeping her where I could keep an eye on her. She tried to get away last night. I don’t get why, seeing as she really avoided the bullet with me coming into the game.”

I dipped into the mashed potatoes. I didn’t want to refuse the food and with my headache, it seemed like a good idea. She set down a bottle of painkillers as if she read my mind.

“Where is she?” I repeated but with much less vehemence.

“Finish your food and I’ll show you. I won’t show you if you’re a grouch.”

I sighed and decided to sit down and eat. I dug into the food and she left to go into the back behind the swinging door, where I heard running water and dishes clattering. Just as I finished, she came back and poked her head out the door.

“Feeling better?”

I nodded.

“Alright, come with me.”

I followed her to the hallway past the bar and down toward the end. The section was reserved for out-of-town staff or for her to sleep, so I assumed she had kept the princess in one of the bedrooms.

When she opened a door that revealed the princess bound and gagged in a broom closet, I was furious. I turned to Katheryn.

“What the hell? This wasn’t necessary at all!”

My headache threatened to return. Katheryn turned to me and her eyebrow rose with suspicion and judgment.

“You’re soft for her, aren’t you?”

I blushed. A warm wave flushed from my neck to my cheeks, where it stayed.

“I didn’t say that. I just wanted her to have better conditions is all. She’s a prisoner, not a slave.”

“She’s not quite the shrinking violet you think she is,” Katheryn added.

It was then I remembered the times that the princess had tried to escape. She had been a pain since the very beginning and was only willing to follow through with the plan recently, then she had been resigned to completing the task.

Well, she said she had resigned herself to it, but with her trying to escape, perhaps she hadn’t been as honest about it as I thought. Maybe my suspicious surrounding her had been correct and justified after all.

“You’re right,” I said, and I scooped the princess up from the ground. As I carried her, I glimpsed fear in her eyes.

I brought her back to our room. I didn’t like that we shared one, at least not at that moment. The previous night I would have welcomed it, but in the light of day and after the what had happened, I just wasn’t so sure I wanted her around.

I laid her on the bed and tore off the tape from her mouth. She shrieked in pain. I pulled out the balled-up rag that Katheryn had stuck in there the night before.

“You tried to run away even after I made a deal to get you out of the exchange?” I demanded.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I didn’t know if it would be better or worse for me in the end.” Daphne spoke with a jittering, anxious voice.

I hated myself for being the one to provoke it out of her, but at the same time, it felt good to be in control again.

“I gave you a chance to get out of this. All you had to do was follow my plan. And yet you tried to run away again. You know we would have just tracked you down like we did the last time.”

Her chest heaved from breathing so hard as though she was stressed and scared, but she didn’t move from the bed.

I wouldn’t let her.

“I didn’t know what would happen to me,” she repeated, as if that was all she could say for herself.

I sighed and turned away. “That was going to be an expensive exchange. Whatever your parents are paying for you, even a portion of it would clean me out. Don’t you understand it was a huge risk for me?”

She was quiet, as though I had struck her.

Then I realized who I was talking to. Underneath the worn cargo shorts and thrift store T-shirt and ratty hair, she was still a princess. Losing money was a foreign concept to her. She didn’t understand what it felt like to be without or to want for anything.

Money was like air for people like her, something I could never understand. I hated her for it at that moment. I felt my fists clench from the strife that blew me out from the inside.

“You know how hard it is to come by money where I’m from? Or is it so hard for you to understand that I slaved away just to get where I am today? Do you even know what hard work is?”

Her silence continued, but I saw something change in her eyes. Anger boiled just below the surface and it threatened to run over.

She said nothing, her chest heaving. Then she spoke in a voice that scared me a little. “Big risk for you?” she seethed.

I couldn’t say anything; her boldness stunned me. I blinked, too surprised by what she’d said to formulate an appropriate response.

“I didn’t ask to be poisoned and dragged out of my home and brought out into the middle of the woods by a total stranger. I didn’t want any of this. You put me here!”

She grit her teeth, then continued, pointing at me as she spoke.

“You ripped me from my home, scared the crap out of me with your rage fits, and now you have the gall to complain about how expensive it is to swap me out?”

I couldn’t say anything. Everything that she said was the truth.

“I even offered to have you speak to my parents about this, and you turned it down. So don’t complain to me about finances when I already offered you help. I didn’t have to do that.”

She sighed and brought her hands over her face. Her eyes changed expression like they glazed over for a moment, then her features softened. Then, she spoke in a level and compassionate voice.

“I don’t know what it’s like to have everything taken away. And I don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You’re absolutely right.”

I was hesitant. I wasn’t sure if she was just pulling my chain to get on my good side–working me like a tool, playing me for a sap.

I waited.

“I will never understand what you’ve been through,” she said.

“But?”

“But that doesn’t mean that you can complain to me about how expensive it was to switch me out when you put me here in the first place. I won’t accept that.”

I sighed and turned away from her. “Fine,” I grumbled.

I made a slow spin around and noticed the bathroom and the tub inside. She probably needed another bath since we had been walking around all day, and who knew when she would get another one.

“Okay,” I said and came toward her. “You can wash up in the tub.”

I bent to undo her knots but thought better of it and went to the door to lock it before I returned. She hadn’t moved from her spot on the bed, but I was still hesitant to trust her.

“But you’re going to leave the door open, and I’m going to watch you and make sure you don’t run away again.”

She frowned.

“I promise I’ll behave. I won’t run away again. I promise,” she said.

From the looks of it, she was on the verge of tears. I wondered if those were real or if they were a way for her to manipulate me into letting her go. Maybe she had been crying crocodile tears the whole time and I just never noticed them for what they were.

“Yeah, I’m not really convinced this time around after the stunt you pulled.”

Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened as if to say something, then closed as if she thought better of it.

“Fine. I guess you’re right,” she said, but it was not as compassionate as before. She went to the bathroom and walked in. Her hand moved to shut the door, but she paused. She hesitated before she left it open and walked toward the tub.

She disappeared behind the wall of the bathroom, but I saw her sinewy and blurred-out reflection in the tub’s porcelain wall. Her features and details were lost in its smooth, milky texture.

Pieces of her clothing dropped and made soft noises on the floor. If she attempted to open the window in the bathroom, I would have been able to hear it. That gave me a little more peace of mind.

As she undressed, I was reminded of what had happened not too long ago, back when the whole ordeal and kidnapping had started.

It felt like we had started back at square one, that what little bond we had formed between us had been shattered. It reminded me of the first night I had been with her when she took a shower in my room.

That memory awakened my wolf and with it, the arousal of my nether regions. I stood up with a groan, not wanting to leave her alone.

I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to keep myself in my head and not in my body.

The squeak of the water faucet handle and the surge of water draining from it reached my ears. The tub water sloshed around and clinked against the tub’s inner walls. Within a few moments, the soft smell of the inn’s soaps came wafting my way.

My nether regions tightened. I remembered the kiss we shared at that moment and how crazy my wolf had become just from one kiss. My thoughts wandered into dangerous territory.

I wanted it to stop, but a smaller part of me wanted to entertain the thought as long as possible.