Chapter 145

145 Chapter One Hundred Forty Five

Katie woke up to the soft strokes from her mate rubbing circles in her back... ‘Wait, wasn’t I in a bathtub when I fell asleep?’ she thought before blushing red, ‘Not again... That was supposed to end with the times I was injured...’ she mentally groaned... “Someone is finally up,” his morning voice reached her ears.

Katie looked up at the royal. He cradled her in his arms as though she was a baby. “And I was supposed to be in a bathtub and yet I’m...”

“Alive and well... What were you doing in the bathtub anyway?” the male asked.

“Bathing... Is there anything else people do in bathtubs?” Cole thought through this phrase and decided against the answer he wanted to give.

“Let me rephrase my question. What woke you up in the middle of the night only to sleep in the bathtub?” he narrowed his eyes at her.

“Were you worried...”

“You keep dodging the question,” she replied, finally giving up her ruse. She’d tried to avoid the conversation for fear of having to tell him what had happened during the night.

Gathering the courage, “Fine, I had a nightmare. A freakish dream that woke me up in the middle of the night. I went to take a dip and fell asleep in the tub. Does that answer your question?”

“Partly...” the man continued investigating, “There isn’t much that can scare the Rogue Killer. So what was the nightmare about? If you don’t mind me asking.”

.....

The girl sighed and began after seeing no way out, “I was in a dungeon... a prison cell with Kyle. I don’t know what it was. Everything felt so real... Even his emotions seemed real.”

“I don’t see how that’s a problem though. Kyle is a weakling. You have nothing to fear from him,” he noted. ‘Talk about suspicious. Here I thought I would be able to keep the scary detail to myself,’ she thought. Cole could tell when she was lying through their bond and she’d heard that he would gain the ability to know what she was thinking once she’d been marked.

“That’s not the part that was scary. The scary part was the fact that his eyes were red instead of yellow,” she answered.

“Oh, that’s bound to be scary, although it wouldn’t make sense for the Rogue King to make him an alpha then through him into a cell. I don’t know what to make of your nightmare,” he concluded, “I do know, however, that we are late for pack training. I’ve heard Jackson can be a jerk when he wants to be. Get dressed.”

With that said, the girl dressed up. She’d escaped the question that loomed over her head. Having drowned the boy in the fact that the nightmare had scared her, she had dodged the fact that anyone would have expected her to get angry the moment she saw him and that’s how she wanted it to be.

................

Katie stretched her limbs, getting ready for what awaited her. This morning, Jackson had changed everything and told them to pair up, but one of the members in the pair was going to fight in their wolf forms and the other would fight in their human forms. It was a hard practice since the shifted wolves wouldn’t have much trouble losing. However, he had told them this was necessary in case they were ever fighting rogues and they couldn’t shift. This detail had made Katie curious... ‘There are moments when a werewolf can fail to shift.’

As she stretched, she gathered the nerve to ask the girl who’d volunteered to fight her once again. Crysta had been graceful in her challenge today, however, and wasn’t proud when it came to fighting the girl. To Katie, she was now looking ambitious. “What can make a werewolf fail to shift? That part, I did not understand,” she asked Crysta.

“That answer is quite simple, wolfsbane,” Crysta replied.

“Simple as it might be, I don’t know what it means. Now please get to the part where you explain,” she replied.

Crysta sighed and began to explain, “Wolfsbane works to reject everything wolf in the body of a werewolf. When a werewolf is shot with wolfsbane laced in the weapon when he or she is still in their human form, they develop headaches and lose access to their wolfs. This is different from a wolf that had already transformed. Wolfsbane robs a wolf of everything that makes them special. Their ability to heal, their ability to hear far distance and even introduces allergies. If the allergy a wolf has to the wolfsbane is too strong like air blockage, they will die in a short time. Are you starting to get the gist of it?”

“Yes, I think I understand what you mean. Do werewolves usually find themselves being dosed with wolfsbane?” Katie asked, now getting curious as to why they were worried about such a scenario.

“Ever since the last attack on the castle. It was said there were hunters on the opposite side of the battle. A lot of werewolves were shot with wolfsbane and found themselves completely defenceless. From that day onward, it was a rule for us to learn how to fight without being able to shift. Wolfsbane saps our strength and leaves us barely human. For some, it takes away far more than that. We can only try to make things harder for the rogues if there was ever an attack on the capital,” she explained.

“How do you know all of that?” Katie asked her.

“I was only an infant then, just like you were. My parents told me the story of what happened on that day. The story of how the king and queen lost their baby girl. The empire was in mourning for quite a while. Only to realise the girl was alive this entire time. Not many of us like shedding useless tears, you know,” the girl complained.

“Oh, would you have shed any tears?” Katie asked, with a smirk on her face.

“That depends on if you’re worth my tears,” she replied, taking her eyes off the princess and onto another princess in particular. “That pair is not meant for each other,” she mumbled to herself and started walking up to Lina and Honour who was also getting ready to get this over with.

Katie looked with interest... ‘Am I supposed to do something about this?’ she wondered to herself as she watched the two collide. There was obvious tension between Crysta and Lina. Katie couldn’t put her finger on their relationship. From her point of view, Crysta was one big bully.

“Hey, Jackson,” the girl yelled out, “I would like to make a last-minute change to my choice of partner.”

“Jackson, who was busy tending to others who had their forms wrong, turned to see what the fuss was all about. He let the pair he was training to practise what he’d shown them and walked up to Crysta.

“What is it now, Crysta? You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” the large man joked.

“As if,” the girl rolled her eyes so much they might have spun in her skull, “Anyway, I want to switch with Lina. I’m taking on Honour. Maybe the family can have some time to bond, but tomorrow, the princess is mine as usual,” the girl announced, dragging a winded Honour out of the place without giving Jackson the chance to oppose her. How could he? She gained privileges by being the best amongst her female peers.

“Well, Lina, looks like you get to spend some time with your sister,” Jackson announced, “Or are there any other changes that you’d like to make?”

“No, this should work just fine,” Katie commented.

“Are you kidding me? Katie will beat me to a pulp,” Lina complained. Katie didn’t want to deny it, but there was genuine fear in her sister’s eyes.

“Would you rather face someone like Sandra then?” Katie asked her. The girl looked towards the human that had been pinned by Jason at the other side of the field. It was embarrassing to watch her try, but she never gave up trying and kept going again with the alpha. Lina wondered what the girl was doing with Katie in the first place. In the palace, she was weak compared to everyone. Although not as weak as Honour... at this, she cringed, ‘That girl needs divine intervention...’

“Fine... I’ll give your junior hunter friend a go... It’s not every day that you get to face the wondrous Lina Sirius,” Lina boasted.

“Uh-huh, because Lina is the most powerful werewolf in the whole of Sirius and we should all bow down to her Highness under her overwhelming radiance,” the man chimed, his voice filled with sarcasm, “Sandra, there is a request here.”

Crysta paused in her thoughts to look back at the royal she’d left to fight Katie, ‘Forfeiting already... Just when I think you can’t get any worse,’ she mentally scowled. The sight of Lina irritated her on so many levels and seeing the girl backing out of a fight with the hunter only made her angrier at the girl. She found herself paying attention to Lina even when it was not necessary though for reasons she kept only to herself. Not even Bree and Ginger knew anything about her take on the youngest princess.

“Oh, I see you’ve chosen to slack on your training today,” the familiar male voice that belonged to none other than Wyatt, the laziest alpha she’d ever seen in her life. The man walked up to her with a delta in tow caring not for what the delta wanted from him. She assumed this was supposed to be his excuse for a training partner. Honour was feeling completely out of place in between the best fighters of their generation. Wyatt might have been lazy, but when he wanted to, he was a formidable opponent. He spent a lot of time training in private and slacked off when the group training began.