Mated To The King’s Gamma By Jessica Hall

Chapter 70

ABBIE POV

Tyson sat next to Oliver near the pantry, the boys playing with their mini dump trucks that they were running over cookies with while I helped do the dishes with one of the other servants. Clarice had bitched me out real good for being down here. Eventually gave in, and I had been down here for a few hours helping prepare food for the guards and royals while also preparing the servants’ dinner.

I also found something soothing about cleaning or cooking. It was a task that occupied the mind, one that had an end result that could be seen. It was better than the thoughts that usually occupied my mind or, more like haunted it. Ghost of fragmented and distorted memories, twisted and wicked as they forced me to relive the past repeatedly.

I supposed to the other servants here I looked like a madwoman wanting to be a servant, but it was better than being me. Better than being Abbie. Nobody wanted to her, you, as Mrs. Daley would say.

Yet here, being a servant was like being invisible. We were the ghosts that cleaned and moved about the castle, sneaking into rooms before quickly leaving. Servants are the shadows of our master. We lived with routine and repetition, no thinking, just working, my mind separated from my body as it handled the task it was told to do. Muscle memory takes over, and I no longer exist. I just float within myself as I move from task to task.

Apparently, Gannon had told Clarice he doesn’t want me working now that I have Tyson. Yet he made it perfectly clear that Tyson was no longer welcome. Therefore, I was not. What he also didn’t realize was working was the only peace I have known. I needed to work, wanted to work

the wall, looking for a spot to place me on it. Drying my hands on a tea towel, I moved toward her and peered down to see where she was putting me and which floor I would be working

Clarice sighs, chewing on the end of her pen. She

I put you on this roster,” she says, tapping it with

why you won’t be!” Gannon snarls, making me jump. Turning around, I spot him at the entryway. Gannon storms through the kitchen

and scoops him up. The room falls quiet, and I glance around nervously as he turns to face me before stalking toward me. He was furious. Did the servant wake him? I told her to just set it on the table so she didn’t wake him.

here?” he snaps at me, and the tone of his voice was one I had never had directed at

the fury on his face. I squeeze my eyes shut, and my body tenses, a noise

recoil, waiting for his blow, my skin prickling and itching as I wait for the familiar feel of my hair being ripped out. Waiting for my head to bounce off the floor as he dragged me. Or the

his hand falling heavily on my shoulder. I flinch at

open to find I was on the ground. I don’t know when I dropped to the floor or when I lifted my hands to cover my

hands, the furious look on his face, how my stomach sank, sending my body into a cold sweat, and the itchiness of anticipation as I waited

a plea, and I find him kneeling next to me, guilt all over his face as I blink up at him. I could see Gannon, see him right in front of me, but my body expected was not registering that this man was not Kade. Glancing past him when

bellows at the servants, clapping her hands at them to hurry, and they take off. Tyson was sucking his thumb. watching me with a