Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder novel Chapter 369

Chapter 27 Prince Theo, Be My Servant

Jake drove us to my pack lands. The ride was almost ten hours, and Theo and I spent most of the trip in relative silence. The good thing was, the car used to transport royals was spacious enough for the two of us to maintain a comfortable distance from each other.

To not draw any unwanted attention, we were dropped off at the border of our pack lands, and we would walk the rest of the way.

Theo suddenly began to speak. "Who am I?"

I cocked my head to the side and studied his face for a moment. Did the brioche he had for lunch give him amnesia?

Then I understood what he meant.

He couldn't go into my pack as Prince Theo. It wouldn't be safe for the security of the palace for people to know he wasn’t there.

At the moment, he was wearing a pair of nice gray slacks and a blue button-down shirt that made him look almost like a regular person-

An incredibly handsome regular person with perfectly straight teeth, hair that was never out of place, and the muscles of a warrior....

"Doesn't the king know you're gone?" I asked him, still not sure what we should say about his identity.

"I told him I had some work to take care of right away and hinted that it might have to do with an uprising without being so bold. He is obsessed with this wife hunt at the moment and thinks that nothing else is as important." "Except for perhaps squashing a rebellion?" I filled in for him.

"Precisely. "

That made sense. "Well, if you really want to go incognito, I suppose you’ll just have to be my servant." I couldn't help the sly smile that covered my face as I drew the conclusion.

"Your... servant?" He said that last word like it was an obscenity, a word his mouth couldn't articulate.

"That's right. What's wrong with being a servant?" I leaned over and whispered, "Is it beneath you, Your Highness?"

He only increased his glower. "Yes."

Laughing, I pulled my bag up my shoulder. "Oh, well, I suppose you probably have a better idea, what with you being the most intelligent, sophisticated, wise man in all of the land."

He was right on my heels as I headed toward the exit. I felt his breath on my neck as he ordered, "Think again, if you don't want to be punished."

A shiver went down my spine, but it had nothing to do with the threat from his words. No, this trill was from something else.

I turned to smile at him. "That’s the best I could come up with. We don't have much time; the village is right there. We need a name for you too. How about Mikey-" "Don’t call me that/' he snapped.

"Bobby." "Something else." "Right... well, considering how you have been nothing but a pain in my backside, how about Thorn?"

A low rumble emanated from the back of his throat, and it made me laugh.

"Thorn it is.” Then I reminded him, "And please suppress your Alpha demeanor and don't scare people away."

He let out a humph, and I took it as an "okay."

I led the way across the countryside to the town where I’d grown up. Just being back here brought a smile to my lips. I breathed in the fresh air, looking around, my eyes darting off among the trees and the forest that surrounded the town.

I hadn’t been gone that long, but it felt like a lifetime.

As we approached the gate, I noticed immediately that something was off. Normally, my father had at least a dozen guards stationed there, but I saw no one.

Theo noticed, too. "Where are the guards?" "I don't know." I didn't need to say more because he could read my expression. This wasn't normal.

"Halt!" I heard a high-pitched voice shout, and turning to my left, I saw a familiar face running toward me. She was wearing a uniform that was way too big for her, and the way she was practically galloping, moving so slowly, with her clothes billowing around her, was almost comical.

"Susan?" I questioned as she stopped in front of me.

"Miss Ciana!" she exclaimed, her expression of fear melding into something else. Shock maybe? "What are you doing here?"

Luther said there was an imposter, but based on Susan’s reaction, it seemed that they were still expecting me to be away in the palace. Did that mean, somehow, I’d beaten the imposter here?

Or was I misunderstanding the situation?

"I came back to... uhm... I was dismissed." My eyes went wide as I considered what I should or should not say.

"Dismissed?" she questioned, releasing me. "What do you mean? Oh! You mean from the prince? I had heard this whole thing was about the Dark Prince trying to find a luna. Is that true, then?"

I nodded, trying to look solemn. "Yes, unfortunately, Prince Theo and I were not a match. He was looking for a selfish, angry brat. And he found one rather quickly in a girl named Sophia."

Prince Theo cleared his throat next to me.

"Oh, dear. I'm so sorry to hear that." Susan, who had been a governess to me for several years, patted my arm. We'd always been close, but she was very gullible, and it had always been easy for me to pull one over on her. "Well, I’m actually kind of glad. As much as it would've been nice to know that you had become the princess, I was a little concerned. After all, everyone knows how dangerous he is!"

From behind me came a low growl, and I almost laughed. How must Prince Theo feel, standing there, hearing her say those things about him when he wasn't himself?

"Oh, who is this?" Susan asked, seeming to notice him for the first time.

She was apparently very good at guard duty.

"This is... my servant," I said. "Thorn." "Oh?" There was a high, intriguing tone to her voice as she stepped around me to look at him. "Hi Thorn."

Theo mildly nodded his head as his response. That was the best Susan could get out from the prince.

"He's awfully handsome," she said with her hand next to her mouth, but she didn't lower her voice. "Are you sure he's not your boyfriend?"

I choked on my own spit and started coughing to cover up my embarrassment. "Thorn? No, no, please, Susan! Don’t be

ridiculous."

"But if he didn’t have that scowl on his face, he'd be so cute.

And you so deserve a handsome, kind young man, Miss Ciana." She squeezed my arm and gave me a dreamy look. "Unlike that ferocious Prince Theo."

Again, Theo let out a low growl, and this time, she heard him and jumped a little.

Just like any good border guard should do....

"Oh, no, Susan. Trust me. Thorn is not romantically interesting to me at all. I found him standing on the corner of the street in one of the little villages that I passed through." "Really? What kind of man would pass on a fine lady like you?" she asked. Of course, she wasn't expecting me to answer, so she answered her own question. "Only the stupid ones! This Thorn must not be too bright."

I could sense the anger started to build within the prince next to me and I glanced over my shoulder to see him glaring at Susan.

She leaned in closer to me. "Why is he looking at me that way?"

"Oh, well," I had to come up with something really quick, so I said without thinking, "He was begging on the streets. It's really a sort of a sad story. You see, Thorn was... kicked in the head by a mule when he was younger. Now, well, he just doesn't have any sense at all. So... he has to beg for food from the townsfolk."

"That's just terrible!" Susan said. "Poor lad. No wonder! Can he even hear what I'm saying?"

"Yes, yes, he does hear well..." I tried to make Susan drop the topic. "Susan, let’s urn... talk about..."

But Susan continued, "He can hear, oh good. Then does he understand me? Why doesn't he say anything..."

"He picks up bits and pieces," I said, nodding my head and plastering what I hoped looked like a proud smile to my face. "But sometimes he gets confused and thinks people are making fun of him, even when they’re not."

"Poor, poor dear," Susan said, shaking her head, and I thought I saw misty tears forming in her eyes.

She was truly the last person who should've been on patrol out there. "Where are the guards?" I asked her, ignoring the daggers Theo was shooting at me. "I have no idea why you're out here."

Susan turned to face me, her mood sobering up as she began to speak. "Well, as you may know, your parents are still away. They haven’t returned, and it's been a little while since anyone at the castle has heard from them."

Immediately, my heart lurched into my throat as my mind went wild with the possibilities of everything that might've happened to them. I couldn't ask Susan her opinion on whether or not they were okay, though. She would have no idea, and it wasn't worth it for me to hear all of her speculations since they were likely to be unnerving.

"So... in their absence, some strange things have been going on. Many of the guards and warriors are struggling. They feel like the orders they've been given are not in line with what your parents would want from them, but if they dare to protest, they are often arrested or thrown in prison by the ones who are willing to do the bidding of a tyrant."

She said that last word with emphasis, and once again, I felt a wave of anxiety wash through me. I didn’t want to interrupt her to find out exactly what she was talking about, so I kept quiet.

"So without the warriors out here on patrol, or at least not as many of them, then us ordinary citizens have been assigned these duties. You know me. I have a family to think of, so I can hardly go against the orders I've been given." I could see the distress on her face.

"Yes, of course," I said, understanding what she meant. Susan was married and had three children, two boys and a girl. If she were thrown in prison, they wouldn't have anyone to take care of them. "So are most people doing what they're told, even though they don’t think it's in line with what my parents would want?" "Yes, they are," she said, and I could see the inner struggle she shared with the other citizens written on her face. "He's almost as scary as the Dark Prince himself."

I braced myself for her answer as I swallowed hard and asked, "Who, Susan? Who is giving these orders?"

She took a deep breath and looked around, as if she wanted to make sure that no one was listening in. She finally said one word, and I wasn't surprised to hear the name considering the description she'd just given me. "Raymond."

I gave a sharp nod and said, "Right." "Who's that?" Theo asked coldly.

"Ray. Mond." Susan said loudly this time, overly articulating for my "slow" servant. "He's a mean man here."

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

As amused as I was at Prince Theo's expression of utter displeasure, what Susan had just told me was not funny at all.

"Why in the world would Raymond be giving everyone orders and disrupting the flow and processes in the territory?" I wasn't asking her as much as I was thinking aloud.

But Susan answered me anyway. Her response was only one word, but it sent chills up my spine.

"Revolution."