Chapter 210: It can't be true

Adelaide was just returning from Riverrock now, after scaring the life out of Beatrice once again.

The girl had become Conan’s personal whore, and Emmett hadn’t come to see her even once. And according to Conan, he would not see his wife till Conan had fucked her to his full and had no use for her body anymore.

Basically, he was going to ruin her before he finally handed her to his son.

And Beatrice struggled every night.

She never got any rest.

She was always left with aching legs, and a swollen face. Plus, the doll was always the cherry on top. Whenever she saw it, she would start apologizing out of the blue.

Her head was really messed up, and she had large bags under her eyes due to spending every night pinned by Conan, and the rest of the day either recovering through tears of getting haunted by the horse doll.

As Della headed back, she decided not to pass through any of the villages to avoid hearing any romors. Because of this in fact, she had intentionally made her wolf tone down the level of her superhearing so that she wouldn’t pick up any of those rumors unintentionally.

And now, she was walking down a lone road.

It was a long way back to the Healer’s graveyard where she intended to spend the night, and transforming would be faster. She would arrive in less than an hour.

But she chose to walk today.

She couldn’t get her mind off what could be happening. She couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that maybe Cassian or Malachi had mentioned that she was still alive during the Supreme meeting.

Or something worse.

She was curious to know what had happened, but she was nervous at the same time.

She heard the sound of a moving carriage heading down the road from a distance along with the galloping of horse. At first, she wanted to quickly move out of sight… but then she decided to screw that idea.

If they decided to stop and harass her, she would not hesitate to break their necks too.

The carriage came closer, and luckily for whoever was inside, they didn’t bother to stop or acknowledge the woman dressed in a black cloak that was walking like she was almost floating.

But whoever was inside that carriage was chattering like an animal, and as much as Della has asked Asteria to make sure her hearing didn’t pick up noise from long distance, she hadn’t exactly told her to completely cut down her hearing abilities.

Which is exactly why she heard a sentence from whoever was talking inside the carriage…that froze her completely.

“… Malachi gave up Eclipse Crown…”

Della slowly turned around and stared at the moving carriage for a while, wondering if she had heard that right.

It was so unbelievable that she simply shook her head and resumed walking. She probably heard them wrong.

It didn’t take long before another carriage came rushing by, and Della caught another heated chatter coming from inside it.

“….He isn’t Alpha anymore. Eclipse Crown is crowning it’s new Alpha tomorrow night!”

Della froze again, and her heart began to beat faster.

She turned again and stared at the carriage. Her hands started to tremble, and she was already trying to convince herself that she had misheard it again.

That there had to be some kind of mistake.

But her instincts were never wrong.

There is no way she would have misheard it two times.

Her lips slowly parted as she turned toward the direction of the nearest village which was several miles away. All she needed to do was let Asteria stop holding back her hearing and move just close enough to the village market.

Then, she would know if all this was true.

The way her chest was pounding and her breath was shaking had her sucking in a deep breath. She couldn’t contain her curiosity for much longer.

Her wolf was moving before she knew it.

In a few minutes, she was lingering around the market area, concealing her presence completely while listening to the latest gossip that has been circulating all over the wolf realm for days now.

“The meeting was supposed to be about the rogues, wasn’t it?” Someone asked.

There were two people.

One was a woman and the other looked like a teenager.

“It was. Moonfire too. Apparently, Malachi brought out some ancient records about Rotbloods that has been circulating around ever since,” The woman replied.

Della’s fingers tightened slightly around the edge of her cloak.

“That isn’t even the strangest part.” The Woman continued.

“What could possibly be stranger than that?”

“The Supreme Alpha of Eclipse Crown gave up his position.”

Della’s heart had never jumped so hard in her life.

“What do you mean, gave up?”

“I mean exactly that. He stood in front of all Supremes and relinquished his title himself.”

A quiet curse followed.

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie about something like that?”

“Because no Supreme Alpha does that.”

“Well, apparently one did.”

“The crown, too?”

“His crown, his authority, his seat among the Supremes. Everything.”

Something inside Della’s chest shifted again, and she didn’t know why.

She didn’t want to know why.

The woman then lowered her voice, “And they say he did it all for a woman.”

Della’s heart missed a beat this time.

“A woman?”

“Apparently.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Some Rotblood. Turns out one is still alive,”

The world around Della suddenly seemed to become quieter, and she heard the next words as though they were being spoken from very far away.

“They said he loved her.”

Della stared ahead, then her fingers slowly loosened from her cloak.

No, that couldn’t be right.

Malachi had refused.

He had told her he couldn’t leave his people.

He had chosen his crown.

His territory.

His duty.

Everything she had asked him to abandon.

“He walked out of the Hall of First Oaths without his crown.” The woman continued.

Silence.

Then, the teenager muttered, almost incredulously, “Can you imagine? The Supreme Alpha of Eclipse Crown throwing away his entire life because one woman asked him to.”

Della couldn’t hear anything else after that. Her ears were buzzing again, and her legs began to move on their own.

She walked back into the forest, still trying to process all what she had heard. Her heart was pounding ferociously and it felt so heavy in her chest that she had to stop and lean against a tree.

She had to close her eyes and silently beg for it to stop so she could continue moving.

It didn’t.

It wouldn’t.

The feeling was too intense!

When she finally opened her eyes, she saw a figure standing in front of her.

The mate bond pulsed.

SHIT. He was here.