Mason pulled his phone out of his front pocket, eyebrows furrowing when he noticed that Ana had called him roughly twenty minutes ago. It wasn't unusual that his girlfriend would be calling him of course, but it was unusual for her to be calling him during a lecture.
He glanced up at what the professor had written on the whiteboard, relieved to see it was mostly a review of their textbook readings from the other night. He stood from his seat and left the room, leaning against the wall just a few feet away in order to call Ana out of ear shot.
He frowned as the call went directly to voice mail, she never had her phone off (she was royalty after all, so it was kind of fucking important to keep it on).
So he decided to send her a quick text - asking if she was okay and if she needed anything from him - before going back to class.
Mason tried to focus on what the instructor was saying, but he couldn't ignore the terrible feeling that something was horribly fucking wrong.
~~~
He only lasted another twenty minutes before his concern got the better of him.
Mason grabbed all of his belongings, stuffing his textbook and notes into his messenger bag and giving his professor a nod on the way out.
He decided to check her classroom first; that made the most sense of course, as he had left her there less than an hour ago. He leaned over to peek into the room, scanning over every head of hair he could see from the back of the room.
A lot of people had similar curls, but they weren't Ana's.
He sighed and stepped back to pull up his recent messages, running a hand through his hair when he saw that his text had gone unread. He called her again; nothing.
Where the hell was she?
He slowly made his way through the building, knocking on every bathroom door and glancing inside almost every single full classroom he noticed. He periodically checked his phone as he searched, just to see if she had responded or not.
Two hours had passed by the time he had made it back to Ana's classroom, meaning he had done a full loop around the school and still had yet to find her.
On his way to their dorm he called her again. And again, and again, and again.
He ended up making sixty four outgoing calls within those two hours, and none of them were picked up.
"Fuck," Mason muttered under his breath when he didn't find her in the dorm. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
He practically sprinted back to the main building, gasping for air as he stopped outside of her classroom for the third time.
He clenched his jaw, throat tightening as he paced up and down the hall.
And then he heard a noise, a rhythmic thumping coming from something just beside him. He turned to look in the direction of the sound, noticing a closed door right next to one leading to Ana's classroom.
It was a janitor's closet.
He hesitated for only a moment, taking slow steps towards the door until he was able to pick up on the sound of something else.
Screaming.
He immediately opened the door, recoiling back as a figure burst through the opening and fell to the ground. The person frantically scrambled up from the floor, their heart wrenching sobs echoing through the hall.
Mason felt as though his very soul had been ripped from his body.
"Anastasia," he called out. He was so relieved to see her, but to find her like this- his eyes burned.
Ana threw herself into Mason's arms at his words and his entire body sagged from the feel of her. She was safe. She was cold against him, and so fucking scared, but she was more or less okay.
My poor girl.
He lifted a hand to rub her back, praying to all hell that it was giving her some sort of comfort. "What happened to you baby?" He made sure to speak softly, not wanting to scare her any more than she already was. "Why were you in there, my girl?"
Jesus christ; how long had she been in there?
Mason had been looking for her for three hours. Had she been locked inside the entire time?
Shit. He squeezed his eyes shut as the burning intensified. Fuck; now was not the time to cry, she needed him.
"Someo-," she was interrupted by a hiccup and he instinctively tightened his arms around her at the noise. "Someone pushed me in."
His eyes flew back open, muscles tensing as he processed what Ana had just told him.
Some asshole piece of shit had shoved her in? On purpose?
He forced himself to calm down enough to speak, "Who did, baby? Who locked you in there?"
"I don't know." Her crying had somehow gotten worse and his chest ached at how completely terrified she sounded.
Mason blinked and only then noticed something on the door in front of him. He squinted slightly to read what the small sip of paper said, his jaw clenching as he realized what it was.
Stay away from Mason. Being royal doesn't make you invincible.
~~~
Mason had carried Ana all the way back to the dorm, and she hadn't even tried to argue when he picked her up. That's what made him the most worried.
She was still faintly crying when he set her down on the couch, tears coating her lashes and trickling down her face every now and then. Her eyes were red and irritated, her skin equally so as she rubbed the tears off.
"Let's get your knee all fixed up, okay baby?" He had noticed the blood on the way back home, and to say he had been furious would be a total fucking understatement.
"Okay," she whispered back with a nod.
She was so sweet. And so undeserving of this.
Mason sighed as he brushed his thumb over her bottom lip; it too was swollen and red, and he wondered how much she had to have bitten it for it to reach this point. It was a terrible habit of hers. "You look really pretty," he whispered to her with a small smile.
It was true of course - she always looked absolutely fucking breathtaking - but he had mostly said it to cheer her up.
Ana smiled for what seemed like the first time in years and it made Mason grin. "There's my girl," he muttered before leaning down further to gently rub his nose on hers. She giggled then and he knew - without a single doubt - that she would be okay.
It only took a few minutes to bandage her knee and, right as Mason was finishing up, Josh returned from his own lecture.
He pressed a light kiss to Ana's thigh, just above the injury, before sitting down beside her. "Don't you both have a class right now," Josh questioned as he glanced at his phone.
Mason sighed, resting his head on Ana's shoulder and letting his eyes fall closed. "Today's been a long fucking day." It was the only explanation he could offer.
Just then, there was a sudden knock on the door and Mason felt Ana shift slightly from the noise. He placed a hand on her thigh, his other wrapping around her waist as he burrowed his face into her neck. He was so damn tired.
Mason was drifting off to sleep, only partially listening to the conversation Josh was having with the person at the door when he heard Ana's name. And not her fake name, no.
They had used her full name, including her title.
Mason was fully awake now, and he stood from the couch so quickly that the room started spinning. "The princess needs to come with us."
Fuck that.
Mason grabbed Ana's hand, who had stood from the couch at some point as well. "What is this about?" She had asked the question softly, but even Mason could hear the demand in her tone.
He realized that they had to have been her staff of some sort, as there were four men that were dressed and stood the exact same way.
He wasn't going to lie, it was really fucking weird.
"The king and queen insist that you must be returned home."
Mason felt Ana's hand tighten around her own as she said, "I'm not leaving." So this was what Princess Anastasia was like? "Mother and father told me that I will be able to live here until I graduate, and that's what I intend to do."
Until she graduates? Mason's eyebrows furrowed. What happens then? What happens to them?
"And you agreed that you would leave if your safety was compromised, your highness."
Mason glanced at Ana uneasily. Her being locked inside of a closet and threatened was pretty fucking unsafe if you asked him.
When Ana didn't say anything in response, one of the men stepped forward. "We will use force if we must, your highness."
Then - before mason could even blink - Ana was being dragged out the door.
He ran after her, only to be abruptly stopped by the feel of someone holding him back by his arms. He glared at the guards (what else could they be?) currently cutting off his circulation.
"Let me go!" He heard Ana shout and looked back over to see her literally kicking at the two other men. "I can't leave Mason!"
Damn it.
He swallowed past the lump in his throat. "Come on, man. At least let me say goodbye." He tried to gesture in her direction, momentarily forgetting that his arms were being immobilized by two people much stronger than himself.
"No, please! Let me stay!" He'd never seen her so distraught before, and the sight of her begging these two complete strangers to be with him made Mason fucking sick to his stomach. "Please, please, please!"
Her voice was suddenly cut off as she was roughly thrown to the ground and Mason instinctively lunged forward when one of the guards grabbed her hair. "Hey!" He struggled to free himself from the men behind him, twisting his wrists and kicking their shins. "Don't fucking touch her like that, you stupid piece of shit!"
They pulled the princess to her feet again, and Mason froze when he noticed the steady stream of tears down her cheeks and the way she was choking on her cries.
It was worse than it had been earlier.
He stopped fighting the guards, chest heaving as he watched Ana gag and wretch from nothing but her tears.
"Hey, it's okay," he called out to her. "Everything is fine baby." He clenched his jaw as he noticed her stumble and almost fall again. "You're okay. I'm okay. We're all good," he continued. "We're all going to be just fine."
"No it won't!" The guards seemed to have had enough of her struggling at this point, as one of them suddenly lifted her and slung her over his shoulder. "Not without you!"
Mason completely crumbled.
Nothing could have prepared him for the utter devastation that those words brought.
He watched as they took her into the elevator, his head pounding from the onslaught of emotions flooding his body. He let his head drop once she was out of view, staring at the floor with blurred vision.
He heard a door open before a pair of footsteps entered his line of sight. "What the hell just happened?"
It was Josh.
Mason couldn't even respond.
His girlfriend had just been taken from him, and he had no guarantee that he would ever see her again.
"Is this also a prank?"
Mason's face contorted, mouth twisting and eyes thinning, before the tears finally fell.
~~~
Word Count: 1968
A/N: Oop- shit just hit the fan.
Hope you enjoyed :)