Chapter 38
“Still the same,” Alyssa divulged with a heavy heart as she couldn’t help but feel bad when she remembered how the King had been suffering along with his mate, who wouldn’t come out of this bedroom, confining herself to these four walls.
Abby had been frightened to death on the day Micah lost control and killed that guard. Since that day, she had refused to even meet anyone.
“Did she come out of this room at least?” Micah asked, but his voice was so soft, as if he already knew the answer to his own question.
Alyssa could only shake her head at that,
“So no progress at all?” Micah’s voice almost broke at the end.
“No, my king,” Alyssa said, in an even smaller voice.
Forget about any progress, the people she even remotely interacted with could be counted on one hand, if her looking at them could be considered as interaction in the first place.
However, Micah couldn’t be included even in that list as she was adamant about avoiding the King’s eyes at all costs.
She would actually burrow further into her blanket, which had been her third layer of clothing for the past week, if she simply heard Micah’s name.
In a nutshell, only five people saw her after she returned to her bedroom that night.
This was worrying beyond possibilities.
Alyssa and Reyna could only pray to the moon goddess that this would pass soon, as they couldn’t stomach the sight of these two mates suffering so much.
“My king, do you wish me to tell her anything?” Alyssa asked the King, when Micah didn’t say anything for a long time.
Hearing her question, Micah just handed her a single stalk of yellow flowers.
“Give her this,” the King said vaguely, but Alyssa was wise enough to understand his intention.
After her panic attack on that first night, no one ever mentioned Micah’s name in front of her again, under the King’s own orders.
So, she couldn’t let Abby know from whom these flowers were either.
“Lady Abby really loved these flowers,” the maid said wisely, and then bowed to the King as she went inside to keep Abby company, so that Reyna could retire for the evening and take rest.
Alyssa could only hope seeing these flowers could finally cheer Abby up a little.
Fri, 8 Mar DB
Chapter 38
66% *
“My King, you have been summoned to the old tower for an audience,” a guard bowed to Micah, as he read the summons from the former king, Arthur, out loud.
Micah, who was reading a report, stopped what he was doing and looked at Alan, in response to which, the royal beta could only shrug.
“I’ll be back before the sun goes down,” Micah said to Alan, as he had to entertain the elders later that evening again.
“It came almost a week late,” Alan mumbled under his breath as he watched Micah leave his study room to go meet his father.
“Father,” Micah greeted Arthur, the former king of werewolves.
Arthur was waiting for him in the front yard, as if he wanted to meet his son as soon as possible. Right now, as soon as he entered his sight.
And the moment he looked into Arthur’s eyes, Micah could tell why he was summoned there. He anticipated this but his father took his time before getting involved in this matter.
“You are here,” Arthur nodded at Micah as he watched him walk over to himself. “Have a seat.” The former king pointed to the only other chair at the table he was sitting at.
“Why did I hear that you punished Ruby? Out of nowhere at that,” Arthur shot point blank, as he sipped on his afternoon tea, after inquiring a little about how Micah was doing and how the kingdom was.
It seemed the former royal beta, Leon, had reached out to the former king about his daughter’s punishment.
The very punishment Micah slapped her with the same night she sneakily escaped from the palace. with her three friends.
Just thinking about that night made Micah feel the urge to break the table, but he still controlled
his emotions.
“It wasn’t out of nowhere,” Micah answered his father with a levelled tone after a short moment of
silence.
“But she didn’t do anything,” Arthur stressed when Micah didn’t elaborate his answer. There was a frown on his face, which clearly indicated that he didn’t approve of Micah’s decision on this matter
at all.
“What she did, put my mate’s life in danger,” the King told his father.
“All she did was take that girl out for some fun,” Arthur, who believed Leon’s narration, took hist side. “One month of house arrest was too much for a moment of carelessness.””
The casual tone in Arthur’s tone made Micah go silent for a second.
“That moment of carelessness could have cost me my mate’s life,” Mical pointed out,
15:05 Fri, 8 Mar DG.
Chapter 38
Micah still felt this immense rage whenever he thought what would have happened to Abby if he had been even a few minutes late.
But then, Micah couldn’t really blame Arthur, when all he had was a hunch about this matter.
Even though he learned how Ruby literally forced Abby to go with herself from Alyssa and Reyna later, it wasn’t enough evidence to prove that Ruby actually planned for Abby to go missing.
Everything sort of seemed like a bunch of coincidences.
Call it overprotectiveness or whatsoever, but Micah really felt that Ruby planned all of that. Not to mention how she narrated a twisted story of Abby following a stranger.
“She was careless but not at fault,” Arthur pushed when Micah didn’t respond.
“I still have to investigate that,” Micah didn’t budge in the face of his father’s continuous persuasion.
Seeing his son’s stubborn attitude, Arthur felt frustrated. “Micah, even though Abby got lost, she is. not a three year old kid who is unable to protect herself.”
Micah could see what Arthur was thinking. As shifters, of course, they were gifted with several abilities and were naturally strong, both physically and me ntally.
However, Abby was different. She never got to train like others, nor was she strong enough to protect herself, while her timid nature would only drag her down in really dangerous situations like the one she faced with that headstrong guard.
But since he hadn’t met her yet, Arthur didn’t know about this. This was because Micah thought of giving her as much time as possible to adjust to her life here before pushing her to accept her responsibilities.
So he pushed back letting Abby meet Arthur a little too much. She was not supposed to meet anyone for at least another three days when Ruby barged into the palace and met her at the lake side.
To top it off, she dragged Abby to the town where she lost her the next day.
“But she still got hurt, that is all that matters to me,” Micah asserted with conviction, thinking at month of house arrest was too little as a punishment when he remembered how Abby had been living soullessly for the past few days.
He should have let her rot in the dungeons for a month along with her friends, who only got a punishment of being forbidden from entering the palace for a year.
“All that guard did was push her to the ground, what could that possibly do to her?” Arthur almost shouted at Micah. “And you killed that guard already for disrespecting Abby. There isn’t a need for you to punish Ruby and her friends as well. It was all just a misunderstanding on your part.”
“It was not,” Micah almost gritted the three words out, as the discussion heated up by the second.
“Listen Micah, you are just letting your emotions cloud your judgment. You know Ruby for so many years. She is not someone to hurt a person without a reason,” Arthur frowned, as he
15:05 Fri, 8 Mar DB ·
Chapter 38
narrowed his eyes at Micah.
Micah almost scoffed at his father’s words. It was precisely because he knew Ruby from a long time that Micah could tell she was lying about losing Abby at the festival. He knew her personality, after all, they were childhood friends.
Only the lack of substantial proof to support his own claims was stopping himself from going for their blood.
“Just stop for a moment and think clearly, you will immediately realize this was all a misunderstanding,” Arthur said with confidence, still talking in that casual tone.
He didn’t really think that Abby could be seriously hurt by all of that that transpired on that day, because he didn’t know the life she lived in her former pack. But this was not the right time to let his father know that.
“So just revoke the punishment and apologize to Ruby for punishing her unnecessarily,” Arthur continued his monologue as he explained how he shouldn’t let his emotions get the better of him when Micah laughed suddenly.
“Apologize? Why? There is nothing wrong with my decision to punish them,” Micah said word by word while Arthur looked like he would fl*p the table.
“Nothing wrong?” Arthur gritted the words out.
“Their punishment is justified and necessary.” Micah declared, “Moreover, a king wouldn’t apologize so easily.”
“Justified and necessary?” Arthur narrowed his eyes at his son. “And you are telling me what a king should and shouldn’t do? Did you forget that I was a king before?”
“Exactly. You were the King before me. But not anymore.” Micah’s voice was even.
“This isn’t like you, Micah. Are you doing this to please your mate? Was she dissatisfied with something? I’ll talk to her and she will understand.”