Page 26 of Undertow
He wasn’t at my parents’ funeral feast.
Was he seriously out of his mind? I even went so far as to ask his father if he knew where his son was.
The Alpha frowned and looked at his watch. “He said he was going to get some air, but that was over an hour ago.” He slowly looked at me with rage in his eyes. “Are you saying you haven’t seen him this whole time?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. “I haven’t seen him since he threw a fit trying to walk with my family in the funeral procession.”
A few people cursed in interesting combinations, but I excused myself, my stress increasing now with this new mess. And with more stress, it meant my heat was getting worse.
Way worse.
Beyond anything I’d experienced before to the point I was getting worried.
And guess what? Yeah, that meant stress on my body.
I finally had to resort to asking security and trying not to act like there was a reason. No one wanted to tell me, but right as I was about to lose my temper and tear someone’s head off, one of the female guards pulled me off to the side.
“No one wants to add to your upset, Your Highness,” she said under her breath. “But I see what the stress is doing to you.” She gave me a look not to even deny it. “Someone saw Kole leave the party with a woman, complaining about his room and saying he was going to show her.”
“Thank you,” I muttered. I went to turn away but then glanced at her. “Make sure his father is informed of that, would you?”
Her eyes flashed shock, but then she smirked. “I will personally see it done.” She cleared her throat and started to turn away. “You deserve so much better, Your Highness.”
Yeah, that wasn’t something she really should have told me as a guard, but if I sort of overheard it… Gray area. Either way, I appreciated it in the moment.
I was going to have a harsh conversation with Benson though that it wasn’t the guards’ jobs to spare my feelings. How could I trust them if they wouldn’t tell me things? Even the difficult things?
Everything in my life was going to be difficult from now on. They didn’t get to make those decisions for me.
I debated just leaving the castle to go fly. Handle my stress that way even if people would talk about it and they wouldn’t be kind that I left my parents’ funeral feast because I couldn’t handle the stress.
Who could? Seriously, who didn’t deserve allowances burying both of their parents and taking over being the leader of anation?
I felt almost a pulse though—a shake of magic, and it sounded crazy to even think, but I would have sworn it came from thecastle. But that wasn’t possible.
Was it?
I didn’t have enough time to consider it. I blinked and I was down the hall from the room I thought Kole was assigned. I wasn’t even sure I knew for sure.
So how did I get here? I didn’t ask anyone, did I?
A giggle pulled me out of my thoughts. It did more than that, it made my blood run cold.
Because I knew that voice. It might sound ridiculous when it was just a giggle and I hadn’t spent much time with anyone in the castle.
But when something grated on your nerves, you remembered. When it was just the right octave that it was like claws against the wrong material—metal or something off and hit your ears wrong.
Youremembered.
That was her voice.
Her giggle.
Heranything.
I turned the corner and what I thought was confirmed in the next instance.
“She’s trying her best, but Sagan just doesn’t understand people like others do with how she was raised,” Elira said in a sickly-sweet voice.
