Chapter 275

275 Beloved Queen

Little Cole spent the biggest part of his early years getting out of his father’s way when he could. The kind and benevolent leader was kind to his entire kingdom except for the one thing that was the cause of his sadness... Cole himself.

All through his life as a child, Cole had known the king for his rage fits and the experiments that were carried out on him. The man cared nothing for his well-being.

Diving into the detail was hard for him as he told the story... Thankfully, the bond he shared with his mate made it easier for him. She saw what he remembered and through that, few words were required for an explanation.

Day after day, the boy was pierced, poked and prodded and the scientists that had accepted the king’s offer took the time to study the divine energy that flowed through the boy’s veins.

As it turned out, the boy had far more power compared to the ordinary royal and research was made to try and discover what made him special from the rest of them. At first, there were no results and it seemed the boy was just the same as all of them, but then...

After everything they had done to his body, something manifested within him. A power to resist torture. He became impervious to needles and resistant to the drugs they used.

When the king was sure there was nothing else he could do to the boy, he let him be. Cole soon came to know, after numerous attempts to get his father’s attention, that he was not meant to be in his presence.

The sad part about coming to this realisation was that he couldn’t blame him. After all, he’d heard the stories about his father and mother before he was born.

It was his birth that had brought about the demise of the king’s wife. Resentment towards the concept of a mate had almost grown within him, but the new queen, Margaret had curbed it from him before he could begin to hate them.

.....

‘Call it weird... but in my eyes. A bond that was so strong that it left a man as powerful as my father stranded was beautiful,’ he tried explaining his reasoning.

'

‘The story about my father and how he came to lose his mate was known through the castle. There was nothing he could do to prevent her from dying. He watched her lose her life while the doctors tried all they could after my birth. She’d lost a lot of blood and was fading fast.

The king was not strong enough to protect her, or at least, that is what I chose to believe on that day. In order to train me to be able to do what he couldn’t.

I had faced the bitterness that came from his loss. He might have put me through a lot, but once I had gained my resistance to torture, I continued to see him in pain. The only difference this time was that he couldn’t put all his frustrations onto anyone else.’

Cole narrated as the images of the boy training with the pack warriors, challenging the beta alphas and extra in the woods when he was supposed to be relaxing.

Katie almost found something similar between the two of them, but Cole, unlike her, knew when he’d hit his limit. Once he did, he would retire for the day.

‘I challenged pack warriors to duels and lost many times, but with time, my skill and strength grew. By the time I left home, the only ones I couldn’t beat were the king’s beta alphas and the top warriors that came second only to the beta alphas,’ he continued, showing the numerous times that Alpha Cross had thrown him across the training arena. The boy never gave up and kept getting back up until he couldn’t do so anymore.

During this time, he made two friends who would stick with him through it all, Caden and Jason, admiring his spirit.

The two of them trained with him and did their best to keep up with their alpha. The intense training got them out of their peers’ league fast enough, but it was still not enough to beat the beta alphas even when they teamed up.

‘When did you and your father start to...’ Katie was still asking when the images stopped rushing and started going back in reverse.

‘It might be the most vivid memory I have of him. It was also the day that everything changed for us. When he started acting like my father for the first time and started making up for the lost time. I was about eleven at the time,’ Cole said to her before going quiet and letting the memory play for his mate to watch.

The eleven-year-old version of Cole had gathered his nerves and was finally going to talk to his father. It had been a while since the man had even looked him straight in the eye, but Cole was confident that he had to talk to him. He reached the king’s office and knocked at the door. When no answer came through, Cole pushed the door open.

To his surprise, the door budged and let him through. He was stunned by what he saw inside. Papers lay strewn across the ground. Bottles of alcohol were randomly scattered about the room and the office stunk of booze. His father had his head on the desk, snoring very loudly.

Cole entered the office and looked about the room, trying to understand why the king would subject himself to this kind of life each and every day.

It wasn’t the first time he was hearing of something like this, but the first he was seeing it for himself. His father’s beta alphas had made a comment or two about his cringe-worthy habits.

Cole walked up to the sleeping royal and froze at the item in his hand. Under the man’s hand was a picture frame of a stunningly beautiful woman.

Cole knew the picture well. How couldn’t he? It was the picture of the person that had brought him into the world. His mother and the former queen of Lycaon, Helena Lycaon.