Page 23 of Claimed By the King's Gamma

“You don’t want to go?”I ask her.

“I want to see Ivy.I hardly see her anymore.”

“You and Ivy are close,” I tell her.

“She is all I have,” she says.I nod.

“What about you?”she asks, and I can hear the curiosity in her voice before she blushes.

“You don’t have to answer.Sorry, that was rude,” she says, and I nudge her with my nose.

“Why is it rude?”I ask her as I start to climb the hill to the cemetery.

“Rogues should know their place, speak when spoken to or not at all.”She shrugs.

“I was raised in the kingdom, alongside the king and Beta Damian and the rest of the royal guard.My father was the King’s Gamma, and my mother was a maid, though Clarice basically raised me,” I answer her.

“You were raised by Clarice?”

I laugh because Clarice raised nearly everyone in the castle.She was like the universal mother.

“Yes, like most of the king’s guards, the titles are usually handed down, then we competed for the best places.All the guards are of Gamma blood or higher,” I answer her.

“Higher?”she asks.

“Yes.”

“But there is only one Beta.”

“Liam is of Beta blood, but we can only have one Beta and he doesn’t want it,” I tell her.

“So, how do you compete?”

“The trials, Liam, could match Damian, but he is a little unhinged and always drunk.”

“Could he beat you in the trials?Aren’t you third in command?”she asks, and I hum.

“If he wanted to, I suppose, but then again, I train daily with the guard, so probably not, but if it came to orders and he chose to use his aura, yes.”

“Doesn’t it bother him that he is of lower rank than you since he is Beta blood.”

“No, he is like my brother, just like Damian and Kyson.Packs are family, united.It doesn’t matter where we fall.We all have each other’s backs where it counts.”

“Sounds like me and Ivy—more than my life,” she says, and my brows pinch together at her words.

“And what does more than my life mean to you?”

“Means I fight, you fight, we fight together, we die together,” she says simply, yet the far-away look she gets, I feel it means more than what she claims.

“I will speak to Kyson and see if he will allow her to see you.We are going away soon.I need to go to one of the neighboring kingdoms with the king.”

“There is another kingdom?”she asks curiously.

“Yes, but it’s a fallen kingdom; the Landeena Kingdom.”I tell her and she nods slowly.

“So why are you going there?”

“The king wants to look back into the old case; they were supposedly murdered by hunters, but they had a daughter who was never found.One who was promised to the king when she came of age.”

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