Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder novel Chapter 384

Chapter 42: That’s Not Helping

“Forty-seven,” I said, doing my best to avoid the thorns on this long-stemmed rose as I clipped the stem with a pair of shears.

I had gotten them from the garden shed. I’d actually found several pairs and was trying each of them out to see which worked best. So far, that one was my favorite pair. It cut fairly cleanly, but it was still taking forever to harvest all of these roses. The stems were covered with thorns.

And I hadn’t found any gardening gloves.

Theo was standing off to the side, and I had to assume he was looking around, trying to figure out if there were any tunnels or secret doorways out there, but I was a little. annoyed that he wasn’t helping me. He was standing in the shade of a large flowering tree, while I was sweating beneath the hot sun.

“We heard from other servants that you’re forced to work. What’s going on, my lady?” Brook asked worriedly. I turned to see her approaching along with Jake. It was clear from the way that she addressed me that she still hadn’t remembered who we really were or what we were doing here. Jake looked the same as before as well, so he also didn’t know.

“I am picking roses for the king’s wedding,” I replied, snipping another stem and removing the thorns before I nestled this one on top of the others-number forty-eight.

“How many do you have to pick?” Jake asked, eyeing the basket that was already very full. I had seen a couple more in the shed, so I had a feeling I’d make them all fit, but it would be close.

“Uhm, four hundred,” I said, rounding up.

“Get out of town!” Brook said, and I almost laughed. She was too sweet to swear.

“That’s right,” I told her. “I’m about an eighth of the way there.”

“This is not your job, my lady!” Brook grabbed the shears from my hand. “I’ll call our guards and we’ll take care of this for you.”

Jake also agreed, “Brook is right, my lady.”

I shook my head and sighed. “She… I mean, the king’s fiancée, wants to humiliate me; that’s why she gave me this task. So if she finds out that I’m not working, I might be in more trouble.”

And I needed her to lower her guard with me, thinking I wouldn’t fight back, so that it would be easier for us to execute our plan.

“But you’ll be out here forever, working by yourself,” Brook noted. She turned and gave Theo a hard look, but he wasn’t even paying any attention to us from what I could tell. “Do you have any extra shears? Please, at least let us help you then.”

“Okay, thank you!” I nodded at the shears sitting on the ground. “You don’t have to, but it would be nice.”

“Of course!” Brook said, practically skipping over to me to pick up the shears off of the ground. “What about gloves?”

“Sadly, no. I can’t find any. Just be careful. Some of these thorns are very long,” I warned them.

“I see that,” Brook noted.

The two of them went down to the next rose bush and began to cut the roses, making a pile on the ground.

They were working so hard. Brook continuously wiped her brow with the back of her hand because she was beginning to perspire. Jake looked like he might melt, too.

I looked over at Theo and noted that he was still standing in the shade, looking bored. “I have another pair of shears, you know,” I called to him, stretching my back.

“So?” he asked. “In case you break those?”

I practically growled at him. “You know, you could help, right?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t do such things. Never have.”

Irritated, I tried to remind myself that eventually we would get out of here, and he’d be the prince again. I needed to be nice to him. “What sort of things is it that you don’t do?

Manual labor or helping your friends?”

“Picking flowers.”

I didn’t feel like letting him get away with being a prima donna at the moment. “I’m sorry, remind me again. Who is it that wants this to work? Who wants his precious berry? Is it me? No, I don’t think so.”

He grunted, but at least he came over and picked up the shears. Dropping to a knee, he began to cut through the stems, and I had to turn my face away to keep him from seeing my satisfied smile.

“Ouch!” Brook cried, shaking her hand. Tears formed in her eyes, and I could see that her hand was bleeding.

Before I could say anything, Jake was attending to her.

“You okay? Let me look at it for you.” He gently took her hand and began to examine the wound, and I saw Brook’s cheeks turning pink as she glanced up at him through her eyelashes.

Were they flirting with one another?

I couldn’t help but smile at how cute they were. Jake pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, gently cleaned the wound, and then wrapped it up. It was so adorable. For a moment, I was jealous of how the sparks flew between them.

“That’s so sweet,” I muttered, but Theo didn’t even acknowledge that I was speaking. But knowing how observant he was, I was sure he had to have seen it-even though he pretended not to.

A few moments later, a large thorn pierced my skin, biting through my thumb and cutting it deeply. “Ouch!” I shouted, shaking my hand and immediately shoving the wound into my mouth. I pulled it out to look at it. “Dang, that hurt!”

I looked over at Theo, and he hadn’t even turned his head.

“I cut myself pretty deep on a thorn!” I explained to him.

“Sounds painful.” He went about his work, not even lifting his gaze.

“It’s bleeding profusely!” I told him.

“Try not to get any on your clothes. It’ll stain.” He snapped through another stem.

“Seriously?” I mumbled to myself as I wrapped my hand in the hem of my dress. I didn’t have anything else. I squeezed it tightly until it stopped bleeding, and then went back to work.

“It’s about time you got back to it,” Theo said, shaking his head at me, like I had been slacking because I didn’t want to work.

The nerve of this man! Had I actually had sex with him? I must not have fully arrived here mentally when that had happened.

“You know,” I said, as I moved to another row of roses, “if you let me borrow your gloves, maybe I’d be less likely to poke myself again.” I looked at the pair of thick black gloves. he had on and then met his dark gaze.

“Not on your life,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t even think about it.”

My eyebrows arched. I didn’t understand why he was so protective of those gloves. He’d gotten so mad at me before, when I’d simply picked them up while we were in his room that night when I’d first become his personal attendant.

The only time he hadn’t worn them was when we first arrived in this world and we were both naked…

“Why not?” I asked, pushing it a little. I knew better, but I was so frustrated that he hadn’t helped for so long, and then he hadn’t even cared when I’d ripped my thumb open. “Why can’t I borrow them? Lend them to me, Theo!”

“No!” His tone was sharp. “Now, knock it off!”

Now, I was growing angry. “Fine-if you don’t want to lend them to me, I guess I’ll just have to take them.” I knew there was no way in the world I was going to be strong enough to overpower him and take those gloves off of his hands, but at that moment, I was impulsive and I didn’t care.

Without thinking, I reached for his hand.

Immediately, Theo yanked away from me, and I saw anger rise up in him like nothing I’d ever seen before, not even when he had killed those would-be assassins.

His eyes began to glow and then, suddenly, he shifted, his uniform tearing into a thousand pieces as a giant black wolf with red streaks stood next to me, towering over me. The gloves in question were shredded and on the ground beside me.

I fell backward onto my bottom, staring up at him, my heart racing as I wondered if I’d truly pushed him too far that time. Did I really make him this upset?

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so forceful. I should have let it go. Recently, Theo had been a lot more approachable and I almost forgotten that… he was the ruthless Dark Prince after all.

He hovered over me for a moment before growling and lifting his front paw. I closed my eyes, waiting for the blow to land, anticipating that he would rip my face off.

Instead, he leaped over me, and when I opened my eyes again, I felt a whoosh of wind and looked up to see the tip of his tail clearing my head. He went to the first rose bush and began to tear it apart, ripping it out of the ground, red blooms flying up into the air and snowing down all over the place, many of them landing on me as I stared at him in shock.

After that rose bush was destroyed, he quickly moved to the next and the next. I caught Jake’s eyes as he yanked Brook out of the way, staring after the giant wolf in shock. I could tell he was considering whether or not he should shift and take him on, but Theo had nearly worked his way through all of the rose bushes by then, and all around us there was nothing but destruction.

When the eruption was over, Theo disappeared behind what was left of a bush that no longer had roses on it, and I had to think that he had shifted back into his human form and was on his knees.

Part of me wanted to go to him, to apologize, to see if he’d cut himself at all with all of that, but I couldn’t move. I knew that I was in shock. I hadn’t been expecting any of that, and here he was, destroying the entire garden.

Just as the ramifications of what had happened registered in my mind, I heard a booming, angry voice behind me.

“What the hell has happened here?” Sophia demanded. “What have you done, you vulgar woman?”

I turned to look at her, and it seemed that her eyes were about to bulge from her head, she was so angry. She looked even more upset than Theo had right before he shifted.

“I-I’m so sorry,” I began, noting she had a half dozen guards with her. “I didn’t mean-”

“Shut up!” she demanded. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you? You tore up my roses so I couldn’t use them in the wedding! You don’t even want us to get married! You’re trying to sabotage me because the king chose me instead of you!”

“No, that’s not true,” I told her, but there was no use. She didn’t believe me. Honestly, if I were her, I wouldn’t either.

“That’s it!” she snarled. “Guards, take her to the dungeon!”

The guards moved toward me, and I couldn’t help but sink a bit. Why was I always getting thrown in the damn. dungeon?

“No!”

I heard Theo’s voice and turned to look in the direction where he’d disappeared. The bushes hid most of him, but he was naked from the waist up at least as he said, “I did it, not her. If you want to throw someone in the dungeon, take me.”