The Alpha’s Exclusive Stripper by Selena Madrid
Chapter 89 (Dean)
Three months ago…
“YOU are the Alpha King’s beta! For crying out loud, do something, Dean!” Ryder yelled as the women in the pack tried to suppress their tears. The men were becoming aggressive and the women were emotional while the howls continued.
My jaw clenched as I smacked Ryder’s c*hest. “You think I didn’t try? Are you blind? In His Majesty’s current state, do you really believe I could do something? Look at him! He is in a destructive mode! If you want to be a hero then go ahead and do it yourself! See if you can ever stop him!”
The King’s wolf could not even recognize me. The wounds I got when I tried blocking his path had already healed but I could still feel the impact of his claws in my shoulders.
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Trying to stop him was like trying to stop a storm.
It was that hopeless.
All of us had woken up a week ago with a terrible headache. Most of us had found ourselves outside the castle. In the middle of our confusion, we saw the king in his wolf form. He didn’t eat, he didn’t take a damn rest, and he didn’t stop howling for seven straight days. He had been running around like he was searching for something or someone.
This was the longest time the king had shifted. He would normally allow his wolf to dominate him a few hours a day. And now the women were scared that he might never return to his human form anymore.
His council was worried too, they had been bombarding us with questions every day. We could h*andle the paper works but not the king like this.
The only advantage in this situation was that since the people were seeing his beast tirelessly running around, no one was making a ruckus outside. They were behaving like good citizens inside their own homes. It had been peaceful.
Too peaceful that almost nobody wanted to come out of their homes.
We tried shifting, we wanted to run or hunt along with the king and just do whatever he wanted.
But he only growled at us.
And when he was like that, we all knew that the best solution was to leave him alone and just stay behind unless we had death wishes.
I looked at the castle and wondered how everything seemed so right but so wrong at the same time. My attention went back to our pack when none of them spoke anymore. Their c*hests were heaving.
I breathed sharply. “I know you all want to help His Majesty. I want to do that, too. But we can’t do anything if we don’t even know what’s going on.”
It took another seven days when the howling had stopped at last. It was raining and we found the King lying in the garden. He was back in his human form.
I grabbed the towel from Mariz and covered His Majesty with it but he didn’t move. He didn’t even open his eyes. We noticed the strange tattoo on his c*hest but we could not ask because he looked so exhausted as he laid there like he had been to war and was defeated.
“Your Majesty…”
When he finally opened his eyes, his first words to us were, “I don’t know why but it hurts, Dean. It f*ucking hurts so much.”
“Where exactly does it hurt, your majesty?” Mariz asked.
He smacked his c*hest. “Right here.”
We glanced at each other, unsure what to say or do.
We had problems in the past, lords and wars to overcome but we never had to worry about our alpha’s heart. Heck, we had all been together for so long and yet we didn’t even know he had one until tonight.
I thought it was just a prop right there, needed to keep the king’s blood pumping throughout his b*ody to keep him alive.
I didn’t know it could actually feel something.
And by the look in everyone’s eyes, I knew we were thinking the same thing.
We were a pack after all.
“Wait. Does this mean the King is in love?”
“What if he has found his mate and he lost her?”
“The question is why didn’t we know this person? How dumb and useless are we not to even know?” Declan exclaimed. “Are we sure we are still his pack members?”
“We should ask that to Dean. Buddy, we are a family here. We would not criticize you if you admit that you are no longer the alpha king’s beta. I mean you looked so damn clueless right now, it’s almost embarrassing.”
I glared at Ryder. “That’s because I am truly clueless. Now, shut up. I am thinking about all the women His Majesty has met so far.”
“What are you saying? His Majesty doesn’t even meet women!”
Everyone gasped.
But only Declan was able to pop the question so innocently.
“So… it’s a man then? Do you think the King is pining for a… man?”
There were still several assumptions thrown here and there but the king didn’t speak again like he could not hear us anymore. He just stared at the sky with that forlorn expression.
I frowned.
Did he really fall in love and lost his mate? Was it a male mate? But then who are we to judge? Yes, it would be h*ard to explain to the council and to the public but whoever that person was, we needed to find her… or him.
For our king.
At this rate, even if his mate was an alien, we would welcome him with open arms as long as he or she loved the king, as long as that person could help us keep him in check.
We had no idea how long we stayed under the rain. I just knew that one of us was sneezing so h*ard, another was quivering, and there was someone else cursing the rain by the time His Majesty finally got up. He was still quiet as he walked to his chambers.
After we changed, we all met in the living room to formulate a plan. And since it was about the king’s possible mate, we sent away the servants so one else would hear.
We had been in the room for hours, checking every file of every man and woman the king had an interaction with for the last six months when we heard a loud thud from his quarters.
And then His Majesty rushed to the living room. He hadn’t changed. He was carrying what seemed to be a bunch of letters.
“Priscilla!” Mariz suddenly exclaimed.
Declan scowled at her. “Did you actually mean ‘eureka?’ And here I thought you were smart, Mariz.”
“No, it’s Priscilla, silly! The tattoo on His Majesty’s c*hest meant Priscilla. This is why you failed your final exam in Howard, Declan. You don’t even know the ancient alphabet! It makes me wonder why you are still in this pack.”
Declan scratched the back of his head. “So… it was an alphabet all along? It looked so evil and so confusing that I initially thought it was math or something.”
I cleared my throat and didn’t try to argue with them since I was among the very few shifters who was not that interested in the ancient alphabet. I barely passed the subject. And after I was done with it, I never wanted to look back anymore.
Heck, the symbols for each letter were more complicated than life itself.
“I found notes under the pillow, under the bed, and even in my drawers,” the king stated. “There were also notes in my office and in the library. And I… wrote these notes. I am sure of it. The notes were about a woman. I just don’t remember why or how but I seemed to have forgotten her. Luckily, the past ‘me’ left a final clue.”
“The tattoo,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“We also don’t know what is happening but we will track down every Priscilla in the kingdom if we have to-”
“No, Dean.”
The King lifted a piece of paper. There was just one word written there as if the one who wrote it was in a hurry.
Vampires.
“Priscilla could be in another realm. She could either be a vampire or was taken away by the vampires. There were also some personal notes about her. I need to understand why I wrote these things. I need to find her.”
Present Day
NONE of us got to see what was written in the notes. Only His Majesty knew about them. Every day, he read them as he made entering the vampires’ den his new life purpose.
Amid ruling the kingdom, he made plans.
I still didn’t know how he found the Phoenix or what he traded to make them collaborate with him. All we knew was that every night for weeks, we would hear his screams as the coven resumed the spell to turn him into a freaking hybrid.
It was a huge risk.
Naturally, we tried stopping him.
However, we were the one who stopped when we heard what he had to say.
‘There is this hole in my heart. And every day, I could feel the hole getting bigger. I would rather take a risk than live with this hole inside me for the rest of my life.’
He went on and succeeded.
He had a will stronger than hundreds of men. After the spell, we h*anded him our reports about the vampires. Most of the details were from the mages we bribed. We found out they were after the Order. His Majesty didn’t take a rest until he could locate one of their members.
He practiced spells at dawn, ruled during the day, and hunted when the night came. He had worked tirelessly for months with this Priscilla as his only motivation.
And when we finally got in, he hired someone to find a woman named Priscilla.
I heard he didn’t get to meet the mage.
But when he came to the villa one night, his eyes finally had a glow in them when he said, “I might have just found her.”
The women in the pack asked how he knew.
The King’s answer was simple but it resonated to our hearts.
“When I held her in my arms, I had forgotten about the hole. It’s like the hole has never been there at all.”
Priscilla turned out to be the vampire king’s only heir.
Our questions kept piling up. Our enemies kept increasing. Now, the vampires were looking at us like they wanted to put bullets in our heads.
But the alpha king and the vampire princess didn’t seem aware.
He once said he would punish her for leaving him with a hole in his c*hest. But as I looked at the king right now, as he took the princess in his arms, it seemed that all that had been forgotten.
For the first time after more than three months, he looked relaxed again.
He looked like he could breathe again.