The Alpha King's Claim novel Chapter 26

The Alpha King’s Claim chapter 26 by desirenovel

Aero

For the first time ever, I was glad the healers in my kingdom were mostly female. Three of the best lined up to meet me in my throne room when I summoned for them. They were nervous inside. I could easily sense it as I gave them a careful once-over.

“You will be taking care of the queen. She is sick. I want to know everything about her status, her prognosis, and the medications she will take.”

By the mention of the queen, their eyes somehow lit up. They looked at each other and nodded subtly before one curly-haired healer said, “It is an honor for us to heal the queen, Your Majesty. We will do our best.”

“William, take them to my chamber,” I ordered, looking at my beta who was dressed in his official royal uniform of emerald green and gold. As my first cousin on the father’s side, he was the best man for the position. Plus, he was skilled in combat and politics. Like Elijah, he was indispensable.

He lowered his head first before guiding the healers out of my throne room. I sighed thereafter, thinking of just how much this arrangement had gone out of control.

First, was Sedsah, my ever-dependable augur. He had foreseen the queen’s ill state the moment I transported back to my realm. With that, he immediately went to me, offering his healing skills. In a heartbeat, I declined. I didn’t want any man to touch her even if he was the doctor.

Second, were my council. They had sought an audience with me for whatever reason, but since I prioritized meeting the healers, they had to stand outside the throne room and wait for my signal.

“Come in,” was my cue and at the opening of the double doors by the two stationed guards, the council members came rushing inside.

“Your Majesty,” they chorused and all knelt on one knee before straightening up. There were exactly fourteen of them. All loyal to the crown. All loyal to my father. I was yet to test how loyal they were to me, but so far, in my ten years of being their alpha king, they were doing good.

Until they conspired to have me wedded just to fulfill the final decree of my father…fuck.

The council was composed of the head of the packs in my kingdom. Only a couple of them were clean-shaven, most have beards or goatees that were either graying due to old age or in the shade of black or brown to keep up with the trend. Some had protruding bellies, some were muscular and fit, some were too old to stay as head of the pack and must be replaced.

The packs of my kingdom were based on the skills they specialized in. It had been a long-held tradition to use the kingdom’s native plant, Sam’rha, where its translucent white flower decides where the person belonged to.

At age six, the child will under the initiation. With the high priest presiding, the child will have to hold a flower bud of Sam’rha and wait for the light of the full moon to touch it. The color of the flower bud changes thereafter depending on which pack the child was destined to.

It’s an absolute decree. A will of the Goddess so they say, but I had always thought of it as bullshit. The Goddess for me was just a made-up entity by Sedsah and my father in order to poison the minds of the people; give them something to hope for and believe in. Make them believe in that crappy word called destiny.

However, as far as the flower’s sorting skill goes, it had never made a mistake. The packs were formed in a rather organized way. Yellow was the flower color for the healer pack; blue for those person’s best suited for the kingdom’s line of defense and the people’s safety, orange for gardening and agriculture, purple for engineering and research, green for education and literature, red for artistry and craftsmanship, and so on and so forth that I didn’t have the enthusiasm to enumerate.

Now, fourteen heads looked up at me; in their eyes a clear indication of a rather unexpected question.

“Your Majesty, we want an explanation from you, please,” Halcynos, the elder leader of Alchidna, the army pack, stated, lowering his head so to demonstrate his subservience to me. “We heard our queen was in the vampire realm and in Oldan’s blood auction no less. How did this happen? Why?”

I had no doubt the dark lord would remain silent about the incident in his castle. But of course, with all his bitches inside, one was bound to wag her tail and leave crumbs of the queen’s apparent visit in the vampire realm. Unfortunately for me, news traveled fast and it reached my kingdom faster than Elijah could return.

Where the heck was he?

“I sent her on a covert mission,” was my alibi, lying to their faces with not so much as a blink. “As the Queen of Phanteon, she should know the recurring issue of auctions in the vampire realm, especially when these auctions deal with our native plant. You do know Manross uses the essence of this plant in order to drug and capture the humans. What I want to know is how he got a hold of this plant. The queen was the best person for the job, so I sent her to the human world. The rest happened according to plan.”

“But she could have been bitten by one of those dangerous vampires, Your Majesty,” Halcynos continued, showing worry. “Could that be the case? We heard the queen is ill.”

“No,” I answered right away and then stood up. I didn’t like the thought of her blood inside a vampire’s throat. It made my own blood boil with anger. “The queen was not bitten. I made sure of that.”

Halcynos and the others brought their heads lower. “Then we feel at ease, Your Majesty.”

“I am yet to be updated on her current health by the healers, but I see it not a cause for great concern. She will recover fast.”

“She could continue with her lessons on our traditions once she recovers, Your Majesty,” Gerard, the pack leader of Thospos, stated. “The queen was very enthusiastic to learn about it. Actually, it’s unusual for her not to learn this at school. Our traditions were the core foundation of our education.”

I could sense it now, his growing confusion about why the woman seemed uneducated with the traditions of the kingdom. If she were truly a werewolf like us, she would have known all of these things, but of course, Elijah hadn’t thought much of the consequences when he enlisted the best professor, Gerard de Patria, to teach her.

“Queen Serena is a special case,” was my simple answer to his statement. “That time, she was groomed to be a queen, so extra lessons should be given.”

The others looked at each other and quickly nodded, showing their understanding of her situation. Deep inside I was pleased. Their profusely accommodating treatment towards the woman was an advantage for me. I didn’t care if they feared to question me about her or were just keeping a blind eye to everything. What mattered was that I get to undergo this marriage thing again without hassle. Maybe not headache-free, but at least free of their questioning.

After the topic of the woman, the council jumped into different matters. I got bored gradually. Politics and other issues of the kingdom seemed to feel pretty trivial to me.

An hour after, the meeting ended. Once they left the throne room, I brooded over the situation of the woman again; remembered her pale face, her limp hand, and her darn death-like sleep. A spike of concern materialized inside me over her health. It was enough to lead me back into my chamber again in just one blink of an eye.

“How is she?” I asked, standing behind the three healers as they worked their skills on her.

The curly-haired woman clasped her hands and turned to me. “We just started, Your Majesty. Please give us time to assess her.”

I groaned inside and painstakingly nodded at her. “Go on,” I told them and then left the room without even so much as a backward glance. I realized right then and there I had worried about her more than I allowed myself.

And it was pissing me off.

Shifting to my wolf form, I left the castle, ran across the fields, and into the mountains, venting my anger there until my knuckles bled.