She let them go. She let them all go. Her love for Noah was so great that she just let them walk away with Asher. She didn’t even try to fight him. And Qi. It took everything I had in me to keep her alive. When I could finally get her to a medic, it took them four days to put her back together completely. I never left her side. Not until she opened her eyes and smiled at me. She thanked me for saving her life.
The entire Realm heard about our failure. Noah and Gavin now had the first weapon, which meant an attack on the Magistrate and the Republic was imminent. How soon, none of us knew.
Aria was locked in the dungeons for her betrayal. Typical of her, she didn’t even bother explaining herself when her father demanded an answer for our failure. As punishment, her father had Bleak beat her within an inch of her life. Even then she didn’t put up a fight. She just…took it. With her eyes trained on me, she weathered every blow to her face and body. Every day her body would heal and every day he’d have Bleak beat her into a bloody pulp.
Qi was granted sanctuary for her bravery and sacrifice. I made sure she had a room not too far from my own with Aria. Now that we’d produced heirs, my parents didn’t care what I did with my love life as long as I kept up appearances. My consort and my mistress were mine to do with as I wished.
“Aria is back in the throne room,” Wake poked his head through my door to announce.
I followed him to the throne room where Aria knelt before the Republic and the Magistrate. Again they demanded answers.
“Why did you pull your team back?” Marcus demanded.
Silence. He was met with silence. Again she wouldn’t speak. She had no emotion. She didn’t acknowledge that anyone was even speaking to her. Marcus motioned for Bleak to begin yet another beating when Crux placed himself in front of her. One-by-one my team placed themselves between her and Bleak.
“What is this?” My father shouted, “A mutiny?”
“Hasn’t she suffered enough?” Willow spoke first.
My father motioned to me. I was the only one who didn’t come to her aid…who didn’t stand between Aria and her punishment. “Command your team to step away and then I want you to punish her.”
I turned to my team who all had tears in their eyes. Why were they crying for her? She betrayed us. She let them take Asher and now nothing could stop Gavin and Noah from destroying us all.
“Stand down,” I ordered. As their General, they had no choice but to obey my command and each of them cleared a path for me to get to her.
Aria nodded to them to let them know she was okay with it. She wouldn’t be. Not when I was done with her. What she did was treason. She betrayed the Realm. She was good at that…betrayal. I wondered if she was capable of anything but.
My team turned their backs to us. They couldn’t watch. They refused to. So be it. If they didn’t want to watch, I’d make them listen.
Blow after blow they listened. They listened to the sound of my fist thudding against her flesh. Listened as she took each blow in stride. Of course she would. Aria always accepted her punishment this way, but I was intent on breaking her. I wanted to break her like she broke me, sleeping with that asshole Noah. I wanted to break her nose, her jaw…everything. I wanted to break her until she no longer resembled the cause of the pain inside my heart.
She hadn’t wanted me the day I gave her my Yang. She ran away from me in fact. She hadn’t wanted me when I spoke my vows to her and bore my soul before the world. She shit on those vows. She shit on my heart, and now I was shitting on her, raining my fists down on her until alas, she cried out in agony. Willow dropped to her knees and began to pray to Alpha for her friend. The girl I used to love. The girl I was bound to by duty and obligation, but nothing else. The girl who’d shattered my heart over and over again as I shattered her bones with my fists.
“Why?” I asked, clenching her throat in my hand. I lifted her bloodied face to mine and she whimpered as pain shot through her, “You said you could kill him. You said you would. Why did you let him go? Why didn’t you fight?” I brought her face so close to mine so she could feel the anger rolling off me in waves. I wanted to look into her eyes before I struck the final blow.
She was trying to say something but the words came out too quiet and accompanied with gurgling sounds. I turned my head and brought my ear to her lips so I could hear her better.
“For you. I did it for you,” she whispered into my ear. Her voice strained.
I quickly pulled away. Pushing my anger to the side I allowed reason to take over. For me…she did it for me. Carefully I went over the details of that night. We were outnumbered six hundred to thirteen. We could have beaten those odds, even with my strength depleted she could have annihilated them all, but she didn’t. Why?
Suddenly, images of Aria watching me with Qi, holding her, begging her not to die flashed in my head. The look in her eyes…the look on her face as she watched me. She knew. Even before I knew myself, she knew whatever we had, was over.
The more I thought things through the more I realized she was protecting me. Even now that she knew the truth, she was protecting me. She’d take the blows and whatever else to come…for me. I was the reason this mission failed and she was covering for me. She was covering for me even though she knew I no longer loved her the way she loved me.
Fuck…
She could have killed them all on her own, but once she realized what was between Qi and I, she lost her will to fight. I could see it in her eyes the moment she dropped her blades. I could see it the moment she dropped to her knees and was willing to accept death. That’s what my feelings for Qi were to her…death.
Fuck…fuck…fuck…
Looking down at her face. The face I’d bruised and battered with my anger and resentment, all I could do now was provide her with an act of mercy. So I did. I struck her at the temple and rendered her unconscious. Willow willingly helped Pru and Becka take their fallen leader back to the dungeon. Leader. Not a traitor. Leader.
I dismissed myself from the throne room and found myself inside Qi’s chambers. I told her what Aria had done for me. For us. How she sacrificed herself for me, and how I’d hated her in the moments before realizing it. How I’d brutalized her with my anger and resentment. My hands were still covered in her blood.
Qi took me by the hands to her bathroom and gently washed the blood off my hands. “She’s still in love with you,” Qi sighed nervously.
“Hey, don’t do that. If I wanted to be with her I would be.”
“But you are with her. You’re her consort. The two of you have created sparks together that will one day grow old and rule the realm. Powerful sparks. Little sparks that won’t take very kindly to the fact that their father has a mistress.”
“I’m with her in title only. My heart I give to you.”
Qi looked away, unimpressed. What more could she hope for? What more did she want from me? “If Aria were to die in battle, you and I would be free to wed, would we not?” She asked.
“We would, but I would choose your next words very carefully. As my consort and the princess of the house of Bliss, Aria is royalty. She’s highborn. Untouchable.”
“And yet you were allowed to beat her to a pulp.”
“Yes, but as an assassin for the house of Muerte. An assassin that failed her mission, and let our enemy flee unharmed.”
“That still doesn’t change her title. She’s your consort and you beat her like she was a criminal. Your wife. You beat your wife like she was a criminal until she lost consciousness.”
“What kind of game are you playing right now?” I narrowed my eyes at her.
“I’m just wondering how sorry you really are. I’m wondering if you would ever lift a hand to hurt me.”
“I’m not a brute Qi. What I did to Aria, that was just business.”
“It looked personal to me,” she cut her eyes at me.
That’s because it was personal. All of the anger and frustration I’d stifled and shoved so deep down inside myself that even I forgot it was there came out. I willingly beat Aria because I wanted to make her suffer. That’s what Qi was getting at, but why?
I wouldn’t get the chance to ask her, because as if she realized what I’d realized, she quietly left the room. She left me to my thoughts. I didn’t bother going after her.
Aria was caged for about another week before her mother was able to persuade her father to free her. My father obliged and released her from our dungeon. She was brought to our bedroom by her ladies, bathed, and dressed. She was completely healed now. Well, physically she was. Mentally wasn’t as easy to decipher. She hadn’t uttered a word to anyone other than to let me know she’d allowed the beatings to go on because of me. Because she…loved me.
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