Not even death
I looked up to see if it was really him standing before me or if I was just imagining him or something. Though he was truly the one in front of me, I could have sworn it must have been a mishearing from my end because how in the world would Simon, of all people, possibly say that to me?
“Now I see that you really don’t care. Aren’t you supposed to be the mate to both Lucas and me? You know what, I always knew you only loved Lucas, and it’s pretty obvious. You just proved it now.”
I looked up to face him, and I finally thought he was actually serious. My wolf bubbled in excitement. Closing my eyes, I puckered up and slowly started moving closer to him. Right when I thought our lips were finally going to meet, I felt my lips landing on a not-so-hard surface. Laughter instantly followed, and I just had to open my eyes to see what had happened.
Right behind Simon stood Veronica, who was still laughing hard at me. I looked toward Simon and saw that it was actually a pocket mirror my lips had landed on.
“Oh my goodness,” Veronica started, as she walked closer to where we stood, laughing hard nonstop. “I cannot believe this, like what? Simon, where did you guys find such a fool? She’s hilarious!” Simon joined in with mocking me, and I slowly started getting teary.
“Vera, please tell me you got that on video.”
“Ha! Obviously!!”
“Oh, that’s awesome. You’re just so amazing.” Simon raised her face and planted a kiss on her lips, and a tear instantly dropped out of my right eye. Very quickly, I wiped it off so that I wouldn’t appear weak in front of them, but it was already too late by the time I wiped it off.
“Awww, so sad. She’s actually crying because I kissed the true mate for my brother and me.” He turned back to face Veronica, and he once again gave her a kiss, this time deepening it just to spite me. I looked away to keep my wolf from getting even more hurt, and when it was slowly starting to become very heated between them, I decided to walk away with the little dignity I had left.
“Hey, stop there, we didn’t ask you to leave just yet.” I had thought my voice was cleared up enough for me to talk, but the moment I opened my mouth to talk, a croak instantly came out.
“I…” I cleared my throat to help with the crack in my voice, and the next sound leaving my mouth was much better. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to interrupt or be a sort of distraction to you two. My king, please do not be offended if it seemed like I disrespected your authority,” I said, looking back down as he would always want me to.
“Look up,” Veronica said, but I hesitated for a while.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said look up now, you dirty slave.”
“I am really sorry, my lady, but the king has instructed me never to look him in the eye, and since you are with him, I also can’t look up to your face as well.”
“It’s good to see that your useless self is finally starting to obey my instructions, but now it’s fine, do as my beautiful wife has said, now!” Hearing him call Veronica his wife made my wolf growl. She was hurt, and all she wanted to do was to instill pain in Veronica. Not wanting to further complicate my predicament with the both of them, I just decided to do as told, and I looked up to face them. Veronica had a disgusted look on her face, and as we stood in silence for a while, I just couldn’t make sense of why she had even told me to look at them. For a brief moment, I decided to look over at Simon just to admire his features once more, but it was not long afterward that a slap instantly landed on my face. I yelped in pain, and before I could recover from that, the witch’s hands instantly gripped my hair very tightly.
“Ow! Please, that hurts a lot. Let go of my hair,” I cried out as she intensified her grip, yanking my hair even harder.
“I said to look up, and not to gawk at my man.”
“Ow, please, you are really hurting me.”
“Listen, slave, the next time I catch you staring at him, just know that you are going to meet your ancestors straight up,” she said, and then pushed me aside with my hair that she had been holding. I tried rubbing the spot she had pulled from as it was already hurting terribly. Simon shook his head as he watched me, and just as much as I was hurt, I didn’t want to give them the pleasure of seeing me crying.
“Now, this is another reason why I can never accept this slave, such a weakling!” He scoffed, and then walked closer to where I was.
“Listen, I want you to get rid of every bit of hope you might have about Lucas and me accepting you as our mate when it’s officially time to. I despise you so much, and Lucas is just having fun, trust me! If you know what’s best for you, you’d start accepting your fate, and that is the fact that you will never be anything other than a lowly slave,” he said, kicking me in the shins. One thing I definitely dreaded was being kicked by Simon, majorly because of the type of shoes he wore. Both he and Veronica locked arms, and then made their way towards his room, leaving me to tend to my badly hurt head, shins, and even cheek from the slap I also received from them. My leg was hurting as I had expected, but I obviously wasn’t going to go back at this point. I still needed to push through for the peace and alone time the garden could provide me.
After spending a few hours in the garden, I decided to return inside the house to go rest. The majority of the time I spent sitting alone, all that just kept coming to my mind was what exactly my future actually held for me. Obviously, I didn’t have a secured future with my destined mates, and this further made me even more worried about what my life was going to end up as.
“Am I seriously going to remain a slave all my life? All I want is to just love and be loved, is that really too much of me to ask?” I said to myself as I tried consoling my hurt self. Simon was my mate whether he liked it or not, but even with everything he had been doing to make my life difficult in the house, I still kept finding myself mesmerized by him. I couldn’t tell what was happening with me exactly, but I think I might have started falling for Simon.
“What? No! That can’t be possible! He hates me, treats me like shit, and so I also hate him as well. It’s only Lucas that I love, yes,” I said, trying to get myself to understand what was right for me and what wasn’t. When I got back to the room, it was a whole new round of drama, as madam Mortica was quietly seated on the bed, awaiting my arrival.
“And where have you been? I thought you said you couldn’t walk just yet. You know what? I don’t even care, you’re fine now, so you might as well just go back to work,” she said, getting up and walking towards where I stood by the door. She held on to my hand, and she dragged me out of the room despite my protests.
“Please wait, I can’t move that fast just yet, please, my leg hurts,” I cried out as she continued dragging me towards the staircase. Fortunately for me, she had stopped upon noticing the presence of Veronica who was coming from in front of us as we descended the stairs. She had a snack packet in her hand, so I was guessing she was going back upstairs after getting something from the kitchen.
“Good day, Princess Veronica,” madam Mortica greeted, and I obviously remained quiet as she walked towards us. Immediately after she passed by our side, madam Mortica instantly continued moving, still dragging me along with her, and I soon felt a pair of hands pushing me from behind. My brain didn’t have enough time to process what had just happened to my body, and so there was no way I could possibly stop myself from falling. Madam Mortica, on the other hand, was just too focused on dragging me downstairs that by the time she realized I was falling, it was already too late for her to help break my fall.
Hitting the ground really hard, I felt a warm substance flowing from my head, and before I could even look to find out what it was, madam Mortica had yelled out from behind me.
“Ahh, blood!” I touched the part where it was coming out from and remained silent as I looked at my blood-stained hand. Looking towards the stairs, I saw Veronica with a wicked smile on her face. She waved at me upon noticing that I had turned to face her, but there was obviously nothing I could do because I was slowly starting to feel extremely weak.
“Ashley! Oh my goodness, how did you manage to get yourself hurt once again? Do you seriously enjoy falling down and getting injured?” madam Mortica yelled out, and I glared at her with the most dangerous look ever. Instead of getting me up or at least getting help for me, all she could do was yell like she wasn’t the reason why Veronica even got the chance to push me down the stairs.
“ASHLEY!” I heard a voice come from the door, and I turned to see a shocked Lucas. He dropped the files in his hands for his beta to carry as he rushed over to meet me on the floor. It was at this moment that Madam Mortica’s senses suddenly came right back to her, as she called out to the aides for someone to put a call through to the royal doctor. I rolled my eyes at her hypocrisy, but what could I say? I was just too weak to even react to everything happening. Without wasting any time, Lucas instantly lifted me up from the ground, taking me upstairs to my room. I looked down to the ground where I was before, and I could see a lot of my blood that had been spilled on the floor.
As Lucas proceeded up the stairs, I could feel the atmosphere so tense, as I felt my life flashing right in front of my eyes. All I wanted was to just close my eyes and be free from all the pain and constant degradation I had been experiencing, but a voice within was still up and about urging me to keep pushing, keep fighting, and I shook my head at what it had eventually come to. Had my life gotten so pathetic that even death had started looking me straight in the eye but still was not willing to claim me? I laughed out, gaining the attention of a worried Lucas, who had by now gotten to the room and was getting ready to place me on the bed. He looked at me with worry in his eyes, but instead of even expressing the pain I was feeling, all I did was laugh.
“No, don’t do this, Ashley. You can’t leave like this,” he said, and I just continued laughing, this time, so hysterically. This time I felt death so close, but instead of resisting, I found myself embracing my hands towards it. I abruptly stopped laughing, and a smile soon appeared on my face as I saw Lucas’s extremely worried face. Very weakly, I said to him,
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine! I’ve called death countless times, but even he rejects me as well.” I laughed one more time, and very slowly, my consciousness started leaving me, and the last thing I remembered hearing before ‘sleeping’ was Lucas yelling out my name,
“ASHLEY!”