Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder novel Chapter 290

Gemma

I walked through the house, my breath caught in my lungs. I felt out of body as I followed the warrior up the stairs, my eyes focused on the open door to Rosalie’s and Ethan’s bedroom as we climbed toward the top of the staircase.

It couldn’t be true. I couldn’t make sense of it.

“Send word to Mirage, immediately. I don’t care if you have to send runners over the Eastern Mountains. You must get word to Ethan, now!” I said harshly, my voice steady despite the storm of vicious emotions rippling through my body. I knew it was a fruitless effort on the warrior’s end. Ethan would have been able to feel Rosalie depart. He would know. He would,

Oh, Goddess, no. This can’t be real.

Rosalie was laid out in her bed, her eyes closed, and hands folded neatly over her chest. I fought against the sob that was tightening my throat and nodded, accepted the harsh, unfair reality, then turned away from her to wipe the tears from my eyes. I wouldn’t let them see me cry. Not Georgia, or Kacidra. No one.

Georgia and Shelly were downstairs tending to Hanna, who was breathing but hadn’t woken up. I hadn’t known about the plan Rosalie and Hanna had concocted. If I had, I would have stopped them. It was a stupid, useless endeavor, dark magic with now fatal ends.

The warrior had closed the door behind me when I entered the room.

I was alone with Rosalie’s body.

I forced myself to look at her again, letting my eyes linger on her face. Goddess, she looked so young. Too young to be dead. I felt a rush of fury and I screwed up my face into a scowl to stop myself from crying.

“What the hell were you thinking?”] hissed at her, hot tears welling in the corners of my eyes. “How-how could you leave us? How could you? Maeve-what about Maeve? She’s not ready-”

I balled my fist and punched the wall hard enough to put a hole in the drywall. I yelped, then fell to my knees, cradling my broken fingers with my other hand as I let the tears fall freely.

Oh, Maeve. Oh, Goddess, what were we going to do?

I heard the doorknob click and turn, and I rose, lunging forward to prevent it from opening but was too late. Kacidra walked into

the room, her eyes red and puffy from crying. She was a mess, her clothes tattered, and skin scratched from the glass that had covered what remained of the temple. She had a bandage wrapped around her head, and I could see the pools of blood soaking through the white fabric near the base of her skull. She had blood in her hair and on her face. She looked like death itself.

“What the f*ck are you doing in here? How dare you-“I began, my voice biting and edged with insatiable fury.

“Don’t speak to me that way,” she snapped, her eyes blazing. “You’re not a Luna yet, Gemma.”

“Get out!” I screeched, taking a step toward her.

But Kacidra was motionless, a challenging look etched into the fine details of her face. “Hanna didn’t do this,” she said sternly, assertively.

| almost laughed. “Oh, she didn’t? Then who,” *

“You won’t understand. I know you won’t even try to understand.”

“I’m not going to stand here and allow you to spout that nonsense about magic dreams and powers, Kacidra. Not at the foot of her bed. Have some fucking respect-”

“You’re not supposed to be alive, Gemma. You know it as much as I know it. Ernest knew you were dead when he carried you into the woods. You weren’t supposed to be standing here, right now. Why do you think you came back? Who do you think was responsible for that?”

| gaped at her, shaking my head in disbelief. Ernest had recounted the tale of what happened to us after Poldesse invaded the castle. I was aware that she knew. But I hadn’t had a single conversation with Kacidra since my homecoming. She was a stranger.

And her sister murdered the White Queen.

“It wasn’t Hanna!” she repeated with heated fury.

I laughed for real this time, looking at her, watching her face twist and then fall. I took a step forward, pointing at her with my good hand. “I didn’t die because”

“The Moon Goddess spared you. She gave my sister her powers

“Your sister killed”

“She didn’t! I was there, Gemma! For f*ck’s sake, will you listen to me!” Kacidra stopped short of grabbing me by the shoulders, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

I swallowed, my nostrils flaring as I took a step away from her and gave myself an opportunity to take a deep breath.

Whatever she said to me, whatever she tried to convince me was the truth, it didn’t matter. The White Queen was dead and would still be dead. Gone. Never to come back

“Did you hear me?”

I snapped my attention back to Kacidra, seeing for the first time the exhaustion and utter despair lingering behind her green eyes. “No-l… I’m sorry. I’m just-this is all just-”

She embraced me, the two of us standing as close together as we could with the swell of my pregnancy in the way. I found myself resting my chin on her shoulder, sniffling as tears continued to roll hot and angry down my cheeks. She was trembling, her chest shaking with silent, desperate sobs.

“What do we do now, Gemma?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

“Ethan will kill Hanna,” she said with conviction.

“I don’t know if he will. I doubt… I doubt he would. But I can’t say

“How did you come back?” Her question sent a chill up my spine

as I slowly untangled myself from her embrace.

I looked into her eyes, swallowing back the trauma I still felt from the night at the castle that plagued my dreams, turning them to nightmares.

“1-I just woke up in a clearing… 1–” | turned from her, looking over at Rosalie where she lay lifeless in her bed.

I felt a surge of raw emotion as I imagined what Ernest must have been thinking seeing me sprawled out in a similar fashion, lifeless. I reached up and ran my fingers over the necklace I was wearing, the circular moonstone set in white gold. I had a small burn mark on my chest, the scar only a smooth, white patch on my skin now, but at one time it had been raw, aching.

Suddenly, the room seemed to spin. I reached to grip Kacidra’s shoulder for support. She said something in alarm, but the blood hammering in my ears drowned out her words.

The first thing I remembered after the invasion of the castle wasn’t the cloudless, morning sky above my head. It wasn’t Ernest’s voice lifted in shock.

I remembered waking to an awful stinging sensation on my chest. I had reached up to touch it, feeling only the necklace my mother had given me. It was hot, so incredibly hot to the touch that I couldn’t help but let it go. And then I sat up and watched as the bite marks on my hands and arms faded. I thought I had

dreamt it.

Suddenly, it was so real.

What had Rowan told Ernest about Hanna and her dreams? Something about a ring? No, there was something else…

“Oh, Goddess!” | shouted, reaching up to pull the necklace from my neck, snapping the chain.

Kacidra was startled by my outburst, reaching out to try to grab my arm as I moved hastily toward Rosalie.

“What are you doing!” she cried as I crawled on all fours over the bed, essentially straddling Rosalie’s body. I pressed the necklace to her chest where the skin was exposed above her shirt, praying to the Moon Goddess to help me, to show me what I needed to do.

Rosalie was still covered in splotches of blood from where glass as sliced through her skin. “Blood… her blood, oh! Of course!” | was delirious. I had officially lost my mind as I ripped open her shirt to expose more of her chest and pulled a tiny piece of glass from the skin that covered her sternum.

Kacidra had her hands on my shoulders, trying to pull me away from Rosalie, but I shook her away, just as I lifted the piece of glass over the necklace and held my breath as a single drop of blood rolled down its edge and landed silently on the

moonstone.

Nothing happened.

“Get off of her, Gemma! What if someone sees us,”

“I don’t understand,” I said in a panicked whisper.

“Come on,” Kacidra pulled me away from Rosalie and I sunk to my knees next to the bed, staring up at the profile of the White Queen as she lay still.

“She’s gone, Gemma.”

“I know… I just thought-how could I have possibly thought,”

But suddenly, Kacidra tilted her head to the side, eyeing the necklace. “Is it… supposed to look like that?”

“Like what?”

I got to my feet, the breath catching in my throat as I looked down at the necklaee laying limp over Rosalie’s chest. It was glowing so faintly it was almost impossible to notice it. I could see the skin around where the necklace lay began to pinken, to warm. I grabbed Kacidra’s hand, squeezing it.

Holy shit. I was right.

A flash of light filled the room, and Kacidra screamed, sinking onto the ground and taking me with her.

“Not again!” she bellowed.

I cradled her head against my chest as I tilted my head toward the ceiling, watching as the light from the necklace began to fade until it was gone completely.

“We‘re okay,” I said softly, letting her go and clutching the side of the mattress to pull my body upright enough to lay my gaze on Rosalie once more.

Her coloring was different. The gray tinge of her skin was blossoming in a rosy apricot once again. I held my breath as one of her fingers twitched. “Rosalie?”

She let out a low, pained moan, and I jumped to my feet.

Kacidra had scrambled to her feet as well and we were standing shoulder to shoulder as we looked down on her, tears rolling down our cheeks and dripping onto the mattress. She reached up, and in a swift, deliberate motion snatched the necklace from her chest and threw it across the room, crying out in pain as she placed her hand over her chest.

“Rosalie!” I cried, taking her by the shoulders.

She opened her eyes, blinking into the soft twilight coming

through the bay windows.

“Oh, my Goddess, Rosalie! You’re okay! You’re—”

“Where’s Hanna?” she said weakly, her eyelashes fluttering as she struggled to keep her eyes open.

Kacidra let out a choked sob in reply.

“I need Ethan,” Rosalie whispered, her breath coming in short rasps. She sounded, and looked, awful. But she was alive.

“He’s coming, I promise.”

“We’re all in danger, Seraphine,” she breathed, wincing as if in incredible pain.

I stood a little straighter, caught off guard by the mention of my mother.

“It’s me, Gemma. Not-”

Rosalie had begun to ery, something I had never seen her do before. She struggled to open her eyes, but turned her head to look at me, pain etched all over her face. “Maeve can’t come back, she can’t-”

I watched as Rosalie struggled to form the words. Kacidra had risen and left the room, and suddenly, I was surrounded by

people as Georgia and Shelly appeared, as well as a few warriors and Gretchen, the housekeeper. Everyone seemed to be talking at once.

Rosalie still had her head turned toward me, her eyes watering as she looked at me.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear it over the crowd that had formed at her bedside. “I promise. It’s going to be okay.”

But she shook her head, her brow furrowed as she inhaled deeply, letting out a blood-curdling scream.

 

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