Page 14 of Renegade Kingdom
I wanted to pull her into my arms. Wanted to wrap her up and shield her from all of this. The guilt, the grief, the impossible weight she was carrying. The bear wanted it too, was pushing at me to comfort our mate, to protect her from her own pain.
But we were in the middle of camp, surrounded by people who needed her to be strong. So instead, I just reached out and squeezed her hand briefly.
“You can’t change the past,” I said. “You can only honour it by moving forward. Rhidian believed in you. Believed in whatyou’re fighting for. He knew that if there was a way to save all of this, you would be the person to find it. The best way to make his death mean something is to finish what he died for.”
She held my gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded, squaring her shoulders, pulling that mask of composure back into place.
“You’re right,” she said. “We need to move. We need to get these people to safety, and then we need to figure out our next steps.” She paused, something flickering across her expression. “And we need to figure out what to do about Damon. We can’t keep dragging him along in chains forever.”
“No,” I agreed. “We can’t.”
But that was a problem for later. For now, we had a more immediate mission: get the wounded to the ship before we lost any more of them.
Alyssa straightened, and I watched her transform. I watched the grieving woman disappear behind the mask of the queen. She raised her voice, letting it carry across the camp.
“Everyone! Start packing up. We’re moving out within the hour. Help the wounded if you can walk on your own. We’re going to the ship. There’s food, medicine, and safety there. But we need to move as fast as we can. Lives depend on it. I you’re able bodied, find someone who is wounded and stick with them.We willsurvive this.”
People started to stir. Started to move. And just like that, the tension in the camp shifted. It didn’t disappear, that would take more than a single speech, but it found a direction. A purpose.
I watched Alyssa work, watched her move through the camp rallying people, and I felt something like pride warming my chest.
She was going to be an incredible queen. She already was.
And I would be right here beside her, every step of the way. Watching. Waiting. Holding everything together so she could focus on saving the world.
That was my role. And I was content with it.
Someone had to be the anchor. Someone had to be her king. Might as well be me, and the rest of them when they were ready for it too.
Chapter Five
Alyssa
Iforced myself to eat.
The rations were meagre. We had nothing but hard bread and dried meat that tasted like leather. I chewed and swallowed mechanically, not letting myself think about it. My body needed fuel. It didn’t matter that every bite felt like sawdust in my mouth, that my stomach rebelled against the intrusion. I had to be strong for what came next. Whatever that was.
We’d walked for two days to get back to the ship.
Two days of putting one foot in front of the other. Two days of silence so thick it felt like a physical weight pressing down on all of us. Two days of watching people fall and not get back up, of leaving bodies behind because we didn’t have time to bury them, of pretending we couldn’t hear the dying gasps of those too wounded to keep going.
We’d lost so many along the way. People who’d survived the battle only to succumb to their injuries on the march. People who’d simply... stopped. Sat down in the snow and refused to move, their eyes empty, their will to live extinguished. We couldn’t force them. We couldn’t carry them all. So we left them.We had no other choice. Lingering here would mean death for all of us. It was only a matter of time before Arik was able to get more of his soldiers to come after us.
The silence around the survivors was chilling. No one had the energy to talk. All anyone could do was put one foot in front of the other and pray they made it to the ship before their legs gave out.
And now we were here. Finally. The ship loomed before us, its dark hull a promise of safety that felt almost too good to be true. Food. Medicine. Shelter. Rest.
But even as relief washed through me, it was tainted by grief. Because Rhidian should have been here. This was his ship. His crew. His home.
I stood on the dock and watched them load his body onto the deck.
They’d wrapped him in sailcloth before carrying him aboard, the white fabric stark against the grey morning sky. His men moved with the careful reverence of people handling something sacred. Someone was crying. Quiet, muffled sobs that cut through the silence like a blade.
There was talk of burying him at sea. The ocean was where he’d been happiest, they said. Where he’d want to rest. I wasn’t sure about that. I was starting to wonder if I’d known him at all. He’d loved me for so long, and I’d never been able to love him back the way he deserved. And now he was gone, and I’d never get the chance to try.
Fizzle would know what Rhidian would have wanted. The little guardian had spent years working with him, guiding him, while I’d been in the human realm living a different life entirely. Fizzle probably knew Rhidian better than I ever had.
The thought made guilt twist in my stomach. I’d been ignoring Fizzle since the battle. Shutting him out, refusing to hear hisexplanations, punishing him for his secrets. And all this time, he was probably hurting too. Grieving for Rhidian in his own way.
