Mated To The King’s Gamma By Jessica Hall

Chapter 13

Her squeals turned to laughter and made me run faster as we zipped through the trees heading home. The warmth of her body was comforting, and for once, I felt warm inside instead of the cold feeling that usually churned within me. She was like fresh air after so many years of having the oxygen stolen from my lungs. As much as trauma tainted her, she did not wilt and wither away as I did. It did not turn her cold and uncaring, she still had life within her, and I found I craved seeing that on her face. Seeing the way she lit up with excitement, the way she came out of her shell when she thought no one was watching.

When the castle lights came into view through the gaps in the trees, I slowed. Some part of me expected her to try to make me put her down, but instead, she remained in my arms. A place I never wanted her to leave, tucked in my embrace and I hers. Yet as we got closer, I knew I had to set her down and leave her side. A place I wanted to remain but couldn’t because she was not mine and I was not hers, but for a second, I could pretend. Pretend she was the mate I was destined for.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” I ask her, and she purses her lips, lips that I desperately wanted to taste.

“Going into town with Clarice,” she answers as I brush a fern away so I can step through the gap in the trees. I hoist her up higher, making her bounce in my arms as she scrambled to grip on to me, so she didn’t fall backward.

“You don’t want to go?” I ask her.

“I want to see Ivy. I hardly see her anymore,”

“You and Ivy are close,” I tell her.

“She is all I have,” she says. I nod.

“What about you?” she asks, and I could hear the curiosity in her voice before she blushes.

have to answer. Sorry, that was rude,” she says, and

it rude?” I ask her as I start

place, speak when spoken to or not

raised in the kingdom, alongside the King and Beta Damian. My father was the King’s Gamma, and my mother was

Clarice?” I laugh because Clarice raised nearly everyone in the castle. She was like the universal

titles were usually handed down, then we competed for

“Higher?” she asks.

“Yes,”

only one Beta,” she

but he is

how do you compete?”

could probably match Damian, yet he

in the trials? Aren’t you third in command?” she asks, and I

again, I train daily with the guard, so probably not,

it bother him that he is of lower rank

like my brother, like Damian and Kyson. Packs are family, united. It doesn’t matter where we fall. We all have each other’s

life,” she says, and

more than my life

she says simply, yet the far-away look she got, I felt it meant more than what she