Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder

Chapter 73 : Go Back!

*Xander*

I wasn't sure how long I'd been in the garden of Lena's creation. I spent what felt like hours screaming her name into the sky, trying to mind-link with her, and tearing the place apart to get her attention. But no matter how much destruction I caused to the shop that housed her painting supplies, or even the bark and branches I'd stripped off the weeping willows, the second I turned my back, everything went back to the way it was, totally untouched.

I could have been here for days, weeks… I didn't know. I wasn't hungry. I wasn't even tired and found myself lying down in the grass and closing my eyes out of sheer boredom rather than exhaustion. But I needed to get out, and soon. There had to be a way.

The all-seeing voice that was my constant, and only, companion was no help at all. Whoever it was seemed oblivious to any breaks in this handcrafted realm. The voice didn't know its name and had no sense of its history or origin. At first, I thought the voice was a manifestation of Lena's consciousness and spent a great deal of time pleading with it to free me, but I slowly found out it was the realm itself talking to me. It was new, infantile, and just as curious and desperate for information as I was.

Lena had created a god for this realm without knowing it. Of that, I was sure.

So, I told it everything. I laid in the grass with my arms crossed behind my head and told it the stories of my realm, of our God Lycaon, every fable and tall tale I could think of. I told it of Lena's realm, her pack lands, her lineage, and the myths and legends of what was considered the birthplace of our kind. I couldn't shift here, but I tried. I'd get close and feel my body giving way to the transformation, but then I'd snap back out of it. The voice wanted to see me as a wolf, however, and pushed me to try harder, to dig deeper into those powers.

But it was no use.

I wasn't willing to give up, but I was running out of ideas for how to escape.

I didn't have time for this. I was so incredibly angry at Lena, but I had a sneaking suspicion she hadn't done this on purpose. I was a victim of her refusal to acknowledge her powers.

When I got out of here, the first thing I was going to do was force her to accept her true self, and then force her to learn what she was capable of. I had to, and not just for her, but for the safety of everyone and everything around her. If she could build realms… what could she do to the realms already in existence?

“I'm leaving," I announced to the voice, but received no reply. Where I was going, I had no idea, but I couldn't spend a single second more sitting in the garden and mulling over Lena and her powers. A walk would do me some good, and I needed to reflect on the other pressing situations I was dealing with before Lena blasted me into oblivion.

Crimson Creek, the hybrids, the mutant wolf-like creatures who roamed the area of the West–I was supposed to be handling it all and reporting back to Ethan. Hell, I was supposed to be there now.

I rose from my usual spot in the cashmere-like grass and stretched, groaning as I lifted my arms over my head and splayed my fingers. I'd never spent this much time laying down or relaxing. My body wasn't used to being idle. As my body creaked and ached, I realized I needed this movement more than I initially thought.

I left the garden in no particular direction and walked for hours, and hours, and hours–at least I thought so. The sky didn't change. It remained bright, a soft violet that peeked through the canopy of leaves over my head as I trudged forward, running my fingertips along any tree trunks I passed.

Eventually, I came to a clearing that I hadn't seen during my other explorations of the realm. Strange, twisted trees grew there, their leaves black and dusted with something that glittered in the trickle of sunlight that reached this place. A chill ran up my spine as I looked around, and then down at my feet where the emerald grass gave way to crunching, ashen blades of night. This place looked… diseased. It was so unlike the rest of the realm she'd created, and I was sure I'd been just about everywhere. This realm was tiny in comparison to Lena's and my own realms. It was a circle I could transverse in only hours based on how long I could walk in a straight line before I ended up in the garden again.

But this place? How had I never come across this place before?

I took a cautious step into the clearing, the dead, black grass snapping and turning to dust beneath my weight.

Beyond the clearing the light faded into a deep purple, dusted with stars, but they were fragmented, little specks of light that looked all wrong, like they'd exploded and left nothing but flakes of starlight behind. And then, at the end of the clearing, there was nothing but a black, glimmering pool of water.

I swallowed, glancing over my shoulder toward the healthy trees and colorful foliage from which I'd come, then walked fully into the shadowed clearing with a lump fixed firmly in my throat.

Then, I smelled it–sharp and acrid. My nostrils flared as the scent traveled up my nose and filled with nothing but dread.

Blood root. Everything here was covered in blood root.

I licked my lower lip as I continued toward the pool. I knew this wasn't of Lena's creation. This was something else entirely, something sinister and broken. The voice had mentioned Lena had made this realm long ago, as a child. Had this blackened place been a product of her injuries in Crimson Creek? Had she known this was even here?

I almost called out to the voice but thought better of it. It wasn't here with me now, I knew that much. Those little orbs of light that danced in constant rhythm around me in the garden hadn't followed me like usual. They were busy, it seemed, doing whatever they had to do other than keep me company.

The voice would have told me this place was here. Any question I'd asked, it had done its best to answer in its infantile way.

“Hello?" I whispered, but there was no sound here; not even the gentle black waves lapping against the edge of the clearing made a shred of noise. Silence–it was a vacuum of total, unnerving silence.

I felt a tug within my chest, my heart squeezing then releasing. I gasped, reaching up to touch the mark Lena had left on me that burned with sudden, painful vigor.

“Lena? Lena!" I croaked, whirling around as if she'd materialized behind me. Voices drifted around me, soft and feminine, two of them, distant and separate, a quiet conversation I couldn't decipher. “LENA!" I bellowed as the chatter pitched in volume, embracing me.

I stumbled backward as the pain from the mark began to radiate through my body, prickling over my skin in sparks of heat. She was here, right? That had to be why. But where? In the garden? She was calling to me through the mark, through the bond.

“I'm here!" I cried out, whirling around to the blackened pool.

The voices began to fade, and I panicked, taking a shuddering breath before taking several long strides toward the edge of the pool.

The burning in the mark began to fade as I screamed her name over and over. Why couldn't she hear me? This was her realm, wasn't it? Couldn't she just appear before me?

A soft hum drifted off the water, a song of sorts. I recognized the rhythm from my childhood, but couldn't find the words in a distant memory lost to time. All of my senses were on fire as I panted several ragged breaths and realized with a start what this place had to be, and why I'd heard Lena, or what I thought was Lena, speaking in a soft murmur.