Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder

Chapter 151 : The Book of Magic

*Maeve*

Winter Forest, One and a Half Years Later

Troy came into our room like a battering ram, his shoulders and hair dusted with a thick layer of snow. He gave me a boyish grin as he shook himself off and began to unwind the scarf from his neck.

“What have you been up to?" I asked as I eyed him from the foot of the bed where I was pulling on a pair of thick socks over my wool pants.

It was another frigid day in Winter Forest. Outside our bedroom window, the stars were dense, the moon casting long icy shadows over the castle grounds below.

“I walked Luke to school," he gruffed, hanging up his damp sweater near the fireplace.

I couldn't help but arch my brows and chuckle to myself as I eyed Troy's snow-coated pants and the damp spots around his knees and elbows.

He caught my gaze and rolled his eyes before continuing to undress. “He fought me the whole way."

“It almost looks like he won," I mused, bending down to fetch my warmest boots.

We'd been living in Winter Forest for a year now, and Lucas was worse than ever. He'd been home-schooled by a private tutor when we lived in Avondale, but we thought Winter Forest would be a great place for him to broaden his horizons and make some new friends. He was attending the same school where Rowan and I had once been students, and at first, it had gone well.

But recently Luke had been acting out, even sneaking out of class or not showing up altogether. He was running with a group of boys his age, having sword fights with icicles and throwing snowballs at unsuspecting passersby while hiding behind snow berms on the way to the market square.

One of his friends was named Brady, and he was a vampire. That wouldn't have mattered much to us at all, had it not been for Brady's mother coming to the castle, dragging Brady by the ear, to complain about Luke's “bad influence."

I didn't blame her in the slightest. It hadn't been the smoothest of transitions for the vampires who settled in Winter Forest. Aside from Crimson Creek, Winter Forest was now home to the largest population of vampires, all of them refugees from the Realm of Night. Most were families or women and children who had lost their fathers and husbands during the war. Brady was one of the lucky few to have both parents still living.

His father worked closely with Troy training young warriors. His mother was a seamstress and one of the matriarchs in the community of vampires who now lived amongst us. She worried about fitting in, about her safety as well as the safety of her family.

Winter Forest had been more welcoming than most packs, but there were still a few people who feared the vampires. Having little vampires running around being menaces wasn't a good look, but neither were the prince's antics. And Luke was, I was sure, the ringleader in his little gang.

Luke had been acting out, and any attempts to help him assimilate to our new life in Winter Forest seemed to push him further into his devious behavior. He wasn't used to being an only child. He missed having his brothers around. We missed having his brothers around, too.

“Brady and Luke are starting warrior training today after school," Troy said as he pulled a fresh sweater over his shoulders, smoothing it over his chest. I blinked up at him, c*****g my brow. He shrugged, striding over to me and kissing me on the forehead. “I have to wear him out somehow. Both of them. Brady's father is one of the trainers, and it was actually his idea."

“Aren't they a little young?"

“Brady took on four sixteen-year-olds," he breathed, sitting down next to me on the bed. “And Luke finished them off. I spent yesterday afternoon talking to their parents. Something has to be done."

I blew out my breath, my eyes clouding with tears of frustration. Troy ran his hand down my back, then put his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. “It's not your fault," he said.

“It feels like my fault. I uprooted his life–"

“He was up to the same stuff in Avondale, Maeve. He's a scrapper, always has been, and always will be. He needs an outlet for his energy, and if he wants to fight like the big dogs, he needs to train like them too."

I snorted with mirth, wiping a rogue tear from my cheek. Troy squeezed me to him for a moment, then reluctantly released me, a glimmer of longing behind his eyes. “What are you getting all dressed up for?"

I smirked, glancing down at my wool pants and clunky boots. “I have an errand to run with Clare today," I answered, rising from the foot of the bed and striding toward our closet. I opened the door, looking over my shoulder at him. “I'll be back in a few hours. We're going on a… walk."

“You're finally going to the old temple to return the book, aren't you?" He rose from the bed as I tossed him a pair of socks, his mouth twitching into a smile that warmed me from the inside out. I hoped to carry some of that warmth with me today while I trekked into the unforgiving chill with Clare, lugging that Goddess-forsaken spell book over ice and knee-deep snow to where I hoped would be its final resting place.

“I am," I replied, taking a shaky breath as I turned back to the closet to finish getting dressed. “It'll be quick."

At least, I hoped it would be quick. The spellbook had been sitting at the bottom of a seldom used closet on the upper floors of the castle for months now, out of sight and out of mind. It was Clare who came to me yesterday, telling me with a firmness that made me want to bend the knee to her that it was time, that we'd put this off for far too long.

That kind of magic didn't belong in our world. We had no use for it. We prayed we didn't need to use it again.

“Are you donating blood today, too?" Troy asked, his voice wavering a bit.

I turned to him, clutching my favorite purple turtleneck sweater to my chest as I huffed a long, shallow breath. “I did yesterday. I'm taking a break for a few days," I replied, but he narrowed his eyes at me. “Troy, it's for the children–"

“You've been doing too much," he said, running his tongue along the inside of his lower lip. “After you get back from your errand, you should take a break for the rest of the day. Eat something. Take a nap."

“You know that's not going to happen–"

“You're burning yourself out."

I gave him a tight-lipped smile in response. Troy was right. The past year had been the busiest year of my life, and then some.

But I was the White Queen now. This was my pack, my territory.

And I was the only person who could give the vampires what they needed to survive in our world.

***

“The pill form seems to be working," Clare said softly as we made a path through the snow toward the mouth of the river. The river that looped around Winter Forest met the inlet not far from where we were now, and crossing the frozen mouth of the river was the only way to reach the sunken, ice covered island where the ancient temple stood in decay and disrepair.

“I heard as much. It requires far less blood that way," I replied with a sigh, shifting the weight of my heavy backpack. The book weighed as much as a small child, and my thighs were beginning to ache as we broke through the ice crusted snow. “The blood is mixed with blood root, and some other vitamins and minerals."

“Well, a weekly dose is all the mature vampires need at this point. The children who are taking the supplement are able to handle the sun–"

“Really?" I stopped walking so I could face Clare, who was walking a few paces behind me. She raised her eyebrows, nodding.

“It's been tested in Crimson Creek, and successfully. One pill, once a week, and the kids can play outside. The adults can even handle the sun in small doses now."

“Then it's working–"

“It's working," she said with a soft, fleeting smile. Her shoulders relaxed a bit as we caught our breath, our faces lifted to the first inklings of late winter sunshine that had just begun to peak over the mountains in the distance.

I'd been donating blood for the past year and half, sometimes multiple times a week. There were other people willing to donate the life-giving nutrients the vampires needed to survive, of course, but there was something different about my blood, even that of my mother and my niece.

We noticed it last year, the first spring I'd spent as the White Queen. After a dose of my blood, some of the vampires were able to handle an hour or so of sunlight without their skin reddening and blistering. Plus, just a taste of my blood was enough to sustain them for days.

We knew a lot more about these so-called “lower vampires" now that we'd been living in close quarters with them for a while. They could eat the same kinds of foods we did. They had a similar culture and lived in family groups like we did. They matured fully around the age of twenty and aged slowly from then on. Not immortal, so to speak, but some of the vampires I'd met who looked elderly were several hundred years old, and even some of the young looking one were two hundred years old, or more.

“You're finally going to the old temple to return the book, aren't you?" He rose from the bed as I tossed him a pair of socks, his mouth twitching into a smile that warmed me from the inside out. I hoped to carry some of that warmth with me today while I trekked into the unforgiving chill with Clare, lugging that Goddess-forsaken spell book over ice and knee-deep snow to where I hoped would be its final resting place.

Children were far and few between, but there were enough to fill classrooms in the school in Winter Forest. Two vampire babies had been born in the past year, both of them delivered by Clare, who had spent her time in Winter Forest training to be a midwife.

There had even been a few weddings between vampires and shifters, and a few of those unions had produced pregnancies. One of those women was due to deliver in a few weeks.