Alpha King's Mate

62. Goodbyes

I stood in the cold, alongside everyone who was left: guards, servants, cooks, footmen, ladies in waiting, handmaidens, noblewomen fleeing the countryside, the flocks of village children I have permitted to wait out the war in the palace, and of course, us; the royal family rarely, in the midst of the war, made public appearances such as this one. The captain of my personal guard made more than one attempt to dissuade me from the whole ordeal, but I felt it was necessary.

A footman opened the door of the heavily armored truck as Lou watched, trying to put on a happy face.

She was anything but happy these past few days. I saw how her shoulders slumped when no one was looking and she began to phase herself out of the eccentric fabrics and beautiful clothing she took so much pride in. Where she was going, those things were prohibited. Where she was going, she was no longer the Princess Louise.

Her leave of absence from the Hunter's Disease Research Center has been long overstayed, and not only the tabloids and the public began to notice, but the Council as well. I had received many a letter about the whole affair, from these high-born men, the ones too frail or too old to fight in the war, which called the princess some of my favorite of their insults. To them, we were "little girls", "spoiled" and "immature", we did not know the way our country worked, and they took much pride in explaining these things to us. They didn't care about Lou, or her work at the HDRC, as much as they liked to claim they did. They only cared that her King Father, her owner, has commanded she be sent there, and his word, literally, was law.

These misogynistic sentiments had hardly been masked in the most polite of the letters, but I had been assured by more than one handmaiden, the rhetoric worsened behind closed doors. A serving girl once reported to me she had heard them call me "whore", "bitch", "slut", and (my personal favorite) "shrew". I didn't care about the names, in fact, I welcomed them. The more they insulted me, the happier I was to govern them. I did not fear their opinions. I did not care to impress them. I acted as I saw fit, and if they had a problem with it, they could, quite frankly, fuck off.

But saving Lou was the one command I could not make. They had struck me down on more than one occasion, when I had demanded King Xavier's banishment of her had been unjust, citing his royal degree which ended in the phrase, "henceforth and forevermore." They argued that neither I nor my husband, could undo such a statement. If it were the King's final wish, it was the Council's duty to uphold that no matter who next rose to power.

She said her goodbyes. There were hugs, and tears. Marcia tried not to let the staff see her upset, but her only daughter was being shipped off to an underground facility in the middle of nowhere for the next two years, and her only son was fighting a war. My mother thanked her for being there for me when she could not be, for helping Julia get accustomed to this strange place. Julia was not one for many words, so she just gave Lou a massive hug and then let her go. Finally, she stepped toward me.

"Liv," she said, smiling. She looked down at my belly. "Take care of my niece or nephew in there."

"I will. I'll miss you. A lot."

Her smile became more sad, and her eyes glossy. "I will miss you too... And make sure once this war is over and you get your sexy bod back you put all my clothes to good use. I want to see you in a magazine at least once a week, matching your dress with the stroller, okay?"

We both chuckled. "I'll try."

There was a pause, and then Lou pulled me into a hug. I broke.