Page 34 of Saved By The King's Gamma

She doesn’t say anything right away, just steps into the shower fully clothed, sitting down beside me on the wet tiles. The water quickly soaks her clothes, and steam billows around us, making it hard to see clearly.

I don’t know why, but her presence doesn’t irritate me the way it should. It’s Azalea, after all. She’s the only one who’s ever truly understood. The only one who’s ever really seen me, even when I didn’t want to be seen. Still, shame creeps up my neck, hot and suffocating.

“I can still feel his hands, Az,” I whisper hoarsely, not looking at her. “Still taste his vileness in my mouth.”

My voice sounds strange to my own ears—empty, hollow. Just like I feel inside. A tear slips down my cheek, disappearing into the flood of water swirling down the drain. My lip quivers, but I bite down on it hard.

Azalea doesn’t say anything at first. She just reaches over and takes my hand, her fingers lacing through mine, gently prying the scourer from my grip.

“Sometimes it’s okay to remember the dark parts, Abbie,” she says softly. “Just don’t stay there too long. Don’t let it trap you. Don’t give him the control he no longer has over you.”

I finally turn my head to look at her, and for a moment, we just sit there, the sound of the water filling the silence between us. I want to believe her. I want to believe that I can take back control. But how? How do you reclaim something that was stolen so completely?

“I don’t want control,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “I want to forget. I want to hate him and not still love him. How can you still love someone even after they do something like that? I should have listened to Gannon. I should have stayed.”

“It was the mate bond,” Azalea says gently, squeezing my hand. “That wasn’t really love, just some twisted version of what you perceived as love.”

I shake my head bitterly, fresh tears welling in my eyes. “I was naive. And stupid.”

“No, you wanted something more than what we’ve been given. And that’s not your fault.”

Her words are kind, but they don’t erase the guilt weighing me down. I stayed with Kade, hoping he’d keep his promise, hoping he’d love like mates are supposed to, hoping that he’d give me back Tyson—the boy I raised, the boy I loved as my own. I let myself believe in that hope, and it destroyed me.

“I can’t live like this, Az,” I whisper after a long moment. “I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to be the broken doll.”

Azalea stiffens beside me, but she doesn’t let go of my hand. “You’re not broken,” she says firmly, though her voice wavers slightly. “You’re my best friend. My sister. You are more than my life.”

I want to believe her. God, I want to believe her so badly. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m nothing more than a burden on everyone.

“No,” I murmur, my voice hollow. “We are nothing. We are rogue. We are whatever they let us be and nothing more.”

“Only if you let yourself be,” Azalea counters, her voice growing more determined. “You are not what he did to you, Abbie. You are not what the butcher did to you, and we are not what Mrs. Daley made us believe.”

But she is wrong. I am everything they said, everything they did, how does she not see that?

“You aren’t,” I say quietly. “You are a princess and soon-to-be queen. You are Azalea Ivy Landeena. I am rogue. I am nothing, and now everyone knows what they did. Everyone knows the dirty things I wish I could forget. I’m sick of them looking at me with pity. Sick of them staring at me with disgust. Sick of being what he made me.”

Azalea’s grip tightens on my hand. “Then be Abbie,” she says simply, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Be who you were before them. Be who you want to be.”

I shake my head slowly, resting it against the cold tile wall behind me. “But I don’t know who she is,” I whisper. “I don’t know how to be Abbie anymore.” I barely remember a time without pain, even the memories before the orphanage, before we lost our parents are grainy, so distant I can barely grasp the image of their faces anymore.

“What they did to you is not you,” Azalea says softly. “It’s a reflection of who they were. They’re gone, and you’re still breathing. They don’t get another chance, but you do. So take it.”

Her words stir something deep inside me—a flicker of something I can’t quite name. But it’s not enough to chase away the darkness.

“You sound like Gannon,” I say bitterly, wiping at my face. “But even he looks at me the same as everyone else. Even you do. I know you can’t help it, but…” My voice chokes off, and I feel my whole body shaking. “I’m tired, Az. So tired of being what they made me.”

Azalea pulls me into a hug, her arms warm and steady around me. “I don’t look at you with pity, Abbie,” she whispers. “I see you. I see my best friend, my sister. The girl I jumped with. The girl who kept me going when she wanted to give up herself. You are not giving up. More than my life, Abbie. I’m right here, and you are staying right here with me. You go, I go. So which is it? Are you jumping? Because if you are, I’m jumping with you.”

“You have a mate and are queen, so don’t say that. I am nothing compared to you,” I tell her. She escaped I never did, and now I am just holding her back in a past she never belonged in.

“You are everything to me. You always have been. My title doesn’t change that. And you have Gannon and will be my Beta. So don’t tell me you are nothing because the only reason I am still here for any of this, is because of you,” she snaps at me.

I chuckle and shake my head before leaning my head against the tiled wall. “I am a werewolf. You are a Lycan, I can’t be your Beta, and I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a Beta.”

“You think I know how to be queen?” She laughs, sitting up to look at me.

“I can’t even read. But we have people here who will help us. I have Kyson. You have Gannon, and me.”

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