Hours after the guards cleared the entire palace and made sure there were no wolves left, I found myself wandering through the private part of the palace where the royal family resided in. I needed to make sure everyone was fine and I needed to know what exactly it was that happened tonight. There was no way this attack was a last-minute decision.
This part of the palace was definitely more fancy than the rest. I could tell more thought, and more importantly, money was put into the decorations of this part. I just knew that the portraits on the wall were original art pieces created by the royal family's most trusted artists they have.
"Miss, you can't be up here." I turned around and was met with one of the family's personal maids. She wore the tacky uniform that I thought only maids on TV would use. "These are private quarters."
"Sorry," I said, giving her a small smile. She wasn't having it. She seemed tough, but if you paid as close attention to her behavior as I did, she was intimidated. The way she twirled the string of her apron, which flowed down the side of her attire, and ran her hand through the skirt to rid it of the excess sweat gave it away.
"You need to leave, now." I didn't like the way she was tapping her foot impatiently against the ground. Her hands were in her hips and her eyebrows were furrowed. She was flustered.
"I was just looking for the King. I need to talk to him—"
"I can get someone to schedule you a meeting with him, but you have to leave or I'll have to get the guards to personally remove you." She reached into the front pocket of her apron and took out a contraption that looked like an old, outdated cell phone.
"You don't get it. I don't have time to talk to him later. I need to see him now."
My ears started heating up with irritation when she brought the device to her lips, pressed a button on the side of it, and started speaking into it. "I'm going to need someone—"
"It's alright, Mandy. I'll take care of her." Bennett came up from behind me, startling the young woman. She quickly put the device back into the pocket of her skirt, bowed, and disappeared down the hallway. Perfect timing.
Bitch, I thought.
I turned on my heel. "I need to talk to you about what happened," I said urgently.
Bennett nodded and placed a hand on my shoulder. He began leading me down the hallway. "Not out here. It's better if we go to my office." We eventually made it into the same room that Levi had brought me to when we first arrived. Bennett made his way over to the desk and lent on it. The desk groaned under his weight.
"Do you know who was behind the attack tonight?" I asked, getting straight to the point.
"The Destroyers," he said nonchalantly. That was the same thing the guard had told me earlier today. It made me think that this was a common occurrence.
"The Destroyers?" I asked, intrigued. This counted as the second time I had heard that name and I wanted to know more.
"A group of ruthless, power-hungry rogues. They make it their mission to overthrow the royal family and take over the entire species. We nicknamed them that because they will destroy anything and anyone who gets in the way of their goal." The way he explained it to me made it seem like he wasn't alarmed or worried that these so-called Destroyers would attack again.
"You're not worried? They specifically attacked to bring you and your family down."
"This isn't the first time they've attacked, Norah. They've attacked before. Lucky for us, they've never succeeded." He lifted himself upright and walked all the way around the desk towards some filing cabinets that were neatly placed along the wall. He seemed to know exactly where what he was looking for was judging by the fact that he quickly opened one of them and took out a manila folder that was about a centimeter thick with papers. Closing the cabinet and turning around, he tossed the folder on the desk. The folder was labeled Destroyers in the top right corner where the tab was. I quickly took Bennett's invitation for me to open the folder. I spread the contents of the flimsy, bright yellow folder across the table.
"These are all the recorded attacks that have been made by the Destroyers with the goal of taking us down." As I scanned the papers one by one, sure enough, these were all attempts to overthrow the royal family. Each sheet of paper had a specific date on one of the top corners, indicating the day of that specific attack. It absolutely baffled me how far back these were dated. Some of these were years old. It looked like the papers were organized from oldest to newest, so when I looked at the one at the bottom of the stack that I had sprawled out, my eyes nearly fell out of their sockets when I realized it was almost a century old.
"How long have these been happening?" I gave light to my inner thoughts. More thoughts clouded my head as I continued to sort through all of the papers. It threw me off that the dates were too inconsistent for them to have a pattern of some sort. Somewhere close to each other by a couple of hours or days, while others were months —hell, even years apart.
"If you think almost a century is long, that's where you're wrong. They've been happening for far longer." Bennett picked up the paper that caught my eye. "This is just the first time they recorded it."
"Wow," was the only word I could form at that moment. I took his silence and the burning awkwardness around us as my cue to leave. I neatly stacked the papers back up in the same order they were in and placed them back into their corresponding folder. I closed it and nudged it back towards Bennett.
"I'm leaving to go back home tomorrow." I pause, eager to know his reaction.
"I heard. Your brother told me about it. I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye to me."
"You talked to my brother?" Why would Rowan have a normal conversation with the king of werewolves out of nowhere?
"He somehow found out about us being mates and came up to talk with me." He used air quotes. "He specifically warned me about breaking your heart and he would cut my limbs off and shove them down my throat as I bleed out if I did." The laugh that followed let me know that he didn't take the empty threat seriously. I, however, did not think that my brother was kidding around when he threatened the king. I was still concerned. Not because of the threat, but because my brother somehow knows who my real mate is. I wasn't sure what his plans were with that information, but mine was to keep it a secret until it was absolutely necessary. It was another one of those things that I don't want the whole world to know about. Most of my life was known to the rest of the werewolf world, and I need something to keep to myself.
Another silence covered the atmosphere like a thick fog and I decided to be the one to break it and speak my mind again, but not before bowing my head to avoid eye contact. "I did think about leaving without saying goodbye." On the way to meet with Bennett, I thought about it. I thought about cutting off all contact with him. I thought long and hard, and I had realized the danger that surrounded him and the danger that would be added to my life if I stayed with him. I knew that my family would be in the line of danger once word got out that I was the king's mate, and that was the furthest thing I wanted.
Suddenly, just like that, the mood in the room changed. He and I both clearly noticed. I couldn't look up and look at his reaction, but I knew very well that it wasn't a nice one.
"Did I do something to upset you?" The usual smoothness of his voice was now gone and replacing it was a rasp I had never heard from him. He was upset, and rightfully so.
"It isn't you. It isn't you at all," I said, my attention drifting to the manilla folder. I played with the corner of it, trying to do anything to distract me, something to keep the urge to tell him I'll stay with him at bay. "It's all this," I took the folder in hand, shaking it to try and get my point across. "Your life is full of danger and responsibilities that I know will be pushed onto me if I have anything to do with you. I can't do that to myself— to my family. They need me and I need them, and I won't be able to live peacefully if I have to watch their backs along with mine every second— if I can't even stop to say hello to them because I'll be so busy with responsibilities that I know I won't be able to handle."
His next words were said without any hesitation and it scared me. He took the folder out of my hand and dropped it onto the floor, the contents of it sliding out of place. That forced me to look up at his sparkling grey eyes. They were so full of emotion, he was so sure of what he was saying. "If it makes you happy, and if it means we can be together and happy, I'll drop it. I'll drop it all for you. I'll take my crown and put it on someone else's head if it makes you happy. You can go home and no one has to know about us until you're ready, but please don't give up on me. You won't have to watch anyone's back, because I'll be there to do it for you. Just please, please don't let me go."
I had to force myself to look away. If I stared into his tear-filled eyes any longer, I would've broken down myself. "I don't want to give up on this, but I have to, for my sake, for my family's sake, and for everyone else. You can't give up your crown for me and I won't let you do it either. The werewolf world needs you Bennett, and I'm not selfish enough to let you abandon them." My own tears started to escape my eyes. I quickly wiped them away in fear of him seeing me cry.
"Norah, I love you. We haven't known each other for long, but I'm so certain that I am willing to give up my life here to be with you. You don't have to tell me you love me back, but at least give this a chance." Bennett's voice cracked more and more with every word he uttered and It completely shattered the already broken pieces of my heart into even finer grains.
I shook my head. "I can't love you right now, not until I'm ready. I need to work on fixing myself before I can love someone else, but if you're willing to love me from a distance, I'll let you do that, just as long as you don't let word get out about this." I've had instances with him where I thought I was falling for him, but I came to realize that was only the mate bond doing its work. I was incapable of love because you can't love someone and not be to your fullest potential. You need to work on self-love before ever thinking about loving someone else.
"You take all the time you need," was all he said. He let his tears free-fall. Something told me that he didn't cry in front of everyone often. After all, his title required strength of him, but no one can continue to be strong forever.
I took that as my final cue to leave. I made sure to thank Bennett for spending time with me and for letting me open up to him the first time we met. He refused to say a single word as I left. He only stared at my back as I left the room, my head bowed in order to avoid eye contact with anyone I passed and let them know I was crying.
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Hi Ya'll!!! Thank you so much for being patient with me as I slowly update!! It means the world!
Soooo, Norah is finally going back home. How do you guys think Evan will react once he finds out Norah found her mate?
Yesterday, Different hit 3 Million reads which means the absolute world!! I never thought my work would get this far, yet here we are!!
I'm not sure if I said this already, but thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, even though it was a couple weeks ago!!
I'm still working on getting finished with pre-planning of my new book!!! I still need suggestions for titles for it so if you have any, feel free to message me. If I end up using anyone's suggestion, I'll credit them once the book goes up. (Probably not until this book is finished).
I really like how this chapter turned out. I think my English paper that I turned in yesterday inspired me to try something new with my writing and I completely love it. Weird for getting inspired by an English paper, I know. It's just that my paper turned out so *chefs kiss* that I wanted to implement what I did in that paper into my writing on here!!
Anyways, I'll see ya'll in the next chapter!!!