Mated To The King’s Gamma By Jessica Hall

Chapter 59

Queen Azalea

Walking out of my room, I was greeted by Liam, who came over and looped his arm through mine like we were best buddies. “And what adventure are we going on today, my Queen?” he asks, and I chuckle, looking around for Dustin.

“Dustin went to get your breakfast,” Liam says as I glance around.

“I’m not hungry. I just want to see Abbie,” I tell him with a frown as I walk down the steps toward Gannon’s room. Abbie hadn’t left the room since that first night back, and I know that is why Gannon wanted to take her somewhere, and I wanted to see Abbie before she left.

Kyson told me she was leaving through the mindlink. It always freaked me out when he used it. Not used to having someone in my head, let alone being a part of something. Abbie was a rogue again, and I hated that, but she refused to let Gannon mark her. Every time I asked Kyson to make her part of the pack, he said she refused and he couldn’t unless he changed her.

I knew why. She didn’t think she was worthy of having good things, but that wasn’t all. If Gannon couldn’t change her, then she wouldn’t be a Lycan, and I don’t know what I would do without Abbie. Gannon stopped by not long after the King left to let me know he was taking her somewhere and that they were leaving after lunch.

Walking through the winding corridors and toward the back of the castle I finally arrived at their door. I knocked but got no answer. Looking up at Liam, he gripped the door handle and pushed the door open, and stuck his head in the door.

“I think she is showering.” Liam whispers, although he had a strange look on his face like he knew something I didn’t, so I push the door open wider and step inside.

“I will wait here. Gannon isn’t here,” Liam says, sniffing the air and looking away from me awkwardly. I give him a nod before stepping into the darkroom. The curtains were closed, and no light made it a little difficult to see as my eyes adjusted to the darkroom. I managed to kick my toe on a coffee table and felt like cursing the damn thing. Making my way to the bathroom, I knocked on the door.

*Abbie? It’s me.” I call out to her, but I get no answer. However, it sounded like she was crying behind the door, and I suddenly knew why Liam didn’t want to come in. Glancing around the room. I open the door and close it behind me. Turning to face the dark bathroom. I find the mirrors are covered over with large sheets of black paper, the bathroom darker than the main room, the air thick with the salt of her tears and the billowing steam.

I instantly broke out in a sweat. It was like a sauna in here. Muttering could be heard from the huge glass shower stall that was fogged up.

“Abbie? I whisper, opening the shower screen. I find her in the bottom of the shower, scrubbing herself viciously while pressed into the corner. Her skin is bright red from the heat of the scalding water. I knew she wasn’t okay. Everyone knew that but seeing her like this broke my heart. She stops like she hadn’t realized I was here. Her head lifted and she just stared vacantly ahead. A scourer clutched in her hand, something you would clean a heavily stained pot with, not skin.

*1 can still feel his hands Az. Still taste his vileness in my mouth,” she whispers while staring off vacantly. A tear slips down her cheek before disappearing down the drain along with cascading water. Her lip quivered as I stepped into the shower, my clothes becoming saturated, and the water was scalding hot. I move over to her near the far wall and sit beside her. Some parts of her skin were bleeding like she had scrubbed herself raw. The scars that littered her body are raw and angry but thankfully healed, now just raised from the scrubbing.

“Sometimes it is okay to remember the dark parts, Abbie. Just don’t stay there too long. Don’t let it trap you, don’t give him the control he no longer has over you,” I tell her, and she turns her head to look at me. I grabbed her hand, clutching the scourer, and laced my fingers through hers.

“I don’t want control. I want to forget. I want to hate him and not still love him. How can you still love someone even after they do something like that? I should have listened to Gannon. I should have stayed,” Abbie whispers.

“It was the mate bond. That wasn’t really love, just some twisted version of what you perceived as love,” I tell her.

“I was naive! And stupid!” she scolds herself.

“No, you wanted something more than what we have been given. And that’s not your fault,” I tell her. I sat with her, letting the boiling water scald my legs. Thankfully she only had her legs under the water, the rest of her was pressed against the wall. Yet her skin was raw and raised.

“I can’t live like this, Az. I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to be the broken doll,”

This wasn’t my Abbie, this Abbie had given up. This was what was left. She looked as helpless now as she did when we first stepped into that orphanage. Only then we were younger, and children. Children only know what we are told, accepting of whatever fate we are handed because we don’t know better.

Yet now that we are older we see the horrors of the world with a different light. We see the monsters, the lies and understand nothing about

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Chapter 59

our childhood was normal. What we thought was normal no longer is, and this new normal we are still uncertain of. Comfortable with pain because it was normal, comfortable in our own misery that was normal, so broken was normal. How do you fix normal?

How do you break the cycle of a thought pattern? Pain is not normal yet it was all we know, or I did know until I met Kyson, Abbie hasn’t met her new normal, she is still suffering in the version we grew up with. And I knew she was tired, tired of the old normal. She wears her resilience like armor, but now laid bare I knew for once she didn’t want to keep carrying it.

“You’re not broken.” I whisper despite the fact she looked it.

“I am. I don’t know who I am anymore.” she whispers, staring off vacantly.

“You’re my best friend. My sister. You are more than my life,’ I tell her, squeezing her hand.

“No, we are you! We are rogue. We are whatever they let us be and nothing more,’ she says.

“Only if you let yourself be. You are not what he did to you Abbie. You are not what the butcher did to you, and we are not what Mrs. Daley made us believe,

“You aren’t. You are a princess and soon to be Queen you are Azalea Ivy Landeena. I am rogue. I am nothing, and now everyone knows what they did. Everyone knows the dirty things I wished I could forget! I am sick of them looking at me with pity! Sick them looking at me with disgust! Sick of being what he made me!”

“Then be Abbie,” I tell her putting my head on her shoulder.

“But I don’t know who she is” Abbie murmurs, her voice emotionless.

“What they did to you is not you, but a reflection of them. That is who they were, Abbie. They are dead, and you are still breathing. They don’t get another chance, but you do. So take it, don’t let them chain you down in the memory of what they did. They don’t deserve it. Live because you can and want to,’ I tell her and she shakes her head and pulls her knees to her chest.

Abbie puts her head in her hands, and cries. Her shoulders shook, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what she was going through, but she would get through this. She had to because this world wasn’t worth being in without her.

“You sound like Gannon, but even he looks at me the same as everyone else. Even you do. I know you can’t help it, but …” she choked out, her entire body shaking.

“I don’t look at you with pity. Abbie. I know who you are, and that is all I see. I see you, and this is not you. You are better than them. I see the girl I am willing to die beside. The girl I jumped with. The girl that kept me going when she wanted to give up herself. And you are not giving up. More than my life Abbie. I am right here, and you are staying right here with me. You go, I go. So which is it? Are you jumping? Because if you are, I am jumping with you.”

“You have a mate and a are Queen, so don’t say that. I am nothing compared to you,” she says and I hear in her voice how much she truly believed that

“You are everything to me. You always have been. My title doesn’t change that. And you have Gannon and will be my Beta. So don’t tell me you are nothing because the only reason I am still here for any of this, is because of you.”

Abbie chuckles and shakes her head but lifts it placing it against the wall. “I am a werewolf. You are a Lycan, I can’t be your Beta, and I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a Beta.”

“You think I know how to be Queen?” I laugh, sitting up to look at her.

“I can’t even read. But we have people here that will help us. I have Kyson. You have Gannon, and me.”

*Yeah, until he tosses me aside, when I can’t give him what he wants,”

“He wants to change you and mark you. He isn’t going anywhere. And even if he does, I am still right here,” I tell her.

“You would change me?” she asks.

“Wouldn’t think twice about it! But we may have to ask how though, because I am not sure how to,” I chuckle, and so does she before her smile falls

“Who would have thought freedom would be worse than the chains that restricted us,” she whispers.

It’s a mindset. Only we

free?” she asks, and I

rogues anymore. I don’t know who I am either, but I am determined to find out. And I prefer we find out together,”

than my life,

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Chapter 59

than my life,”

voice says, making us both jump. Neither of us heard him come in, and I swiped my hand down the glass to find him leaning against

shaking her head

have you

are leaving,” he tells her but she doesn’t

am not going.” Abbie says, staring vacantly

opens the door. I look to Abbie, who makes herself smaller like

a hand down his face, and I see the blacked-out mirror behind him, glancing back at Abbie and looking at her scarred

wasn’t so bad. Abbie however, was marred,

what had become of it, and if that was what was preventing her from leaving the room, she needed to know she had nothing to be ashamed of. Her scars couldn’t be hidden by clothes like mine could, but

she whispers, her

and I knew I was right. And by the way she scrubbed her skin raw, I knew she felt dirty, felt on display by the marks

the cuts on her face that left white lines once healed. To me though, she was still beautiful. I remember the shame I felt when the King asked me to get changed in front of him, the way Abbie begged at

understood that, and I hated mine too.

me. It is one thing that everyone here knows, another having the world see,” she

for me. It was so weird trying to feel for him in my head. The bond was one thing, but the mind was something else, and Kyson made it look

feel embarrassed?” Kyson

hates her body.” I

makes you embarrassed?” he asks, and my face heated as

like this feeling. Where are you?” The King

the shower

” I see.”

like that. I have clothes

“But what?”

want to take them

a problem with that,” my face heated even more. I was not afraid to be naked in front of Abbie. God knows how many times I

is making me queasy.

want to walk

Kyson growls. Which angers me and

him, though I was kind of hoping he would

are you

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Chapter 59

don’t have to find out from the staff,” I tell

“Azalea!” he snaps.

walking the corridors!” I

to open up again as

through the mind-link, opening it for all the castle staff. Their voices flitted through

we have

installed two days ago. You

“I am!”

my head hurt and I

Azalea leave the bathroom!” Kyson growls

answers. Abbie touches my arm as she stands, making me jump and pulling me back to

and I stand, stepping out of the shower. My face is already heating. I start shredding my clothes, dropping them in a wet heap as Abbie sticks her head

get you some spare clothes,”

the mindlink, arguing with guards to leave Gannon’s quarters. While Liam asked neverending questions, it was hard trying

a towel and dry myself, and Abbie runs back into the room with a cami and shorts, trying to pass them to me while

whispers, but

went to step past her when she

standing completely naked. I had no idea where to look, so I stared up at the roof, and so did

says through the mind-link and I look at Gannon who sends

swear, Azalea when I

challenge,

some clothes on! And Liam, stay away from my mate!” he

If Gannon is strutting his stuff, so is me! Sometimes you

said clear the

remains at their posts!” I commanded back a little shocked at

The King growls “Azalea!”

says, through

could hear Abbie asking what was going on, but I grabbed her hand almost blindly as everyone’s faces flitted

you in my damn head!” I tell

because you aren’t

is going

streak through the damn

it, I am still standing in the bathroom though now I can see Gannon. I made sure to keep my eyes above the waist. I did not want to see more than I needed to. However,

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more

we doing this?” he asks, looking at

Abbie squeaks looking

not late,” Liam says, busting into the bathroom with only a floral

birthday suit,” he said, not even being subtle as he looked at me. I swallowed under

off my

my King,” Liam chuckles, earning a growl through the mindlink Kyson kept forcing open. Liam reaches past Gannon. grabbing my wrist jerking me to him, and loops his arm through mine while Abbie stands stunned. She grabs my arm as

“What are you doing?”

are showing you. You aren’t the only one a little broken,” Gannon says,

out, when I realized something, his commands on

“Azalea?” he asks.

I am doing this for Abbie,”

fucking off?” he calls through