Filed to story: The Alpha Kings Hated Slave
THE KING’S DILEMMA
One week passed. Sally was doing better. Danika helped her do everything, no matter how much Sally protested she shouldn’t.
Danika became Sally’s arms and legs-mostly legs. She walked with Sally everywhere, with Sally leaning into her as they traveled. Danika wrapped her arms around her waist to support her fully while her legs healed properly, and the sexual wounds the kings inflicted healed too.
Uyah spread the rumor well. Everyone in the palace knew that Danika had been introduced, but the kings hurt Sally worse because she tried to interfere to save her princess. What surprised the maids, slaves, and servants was the bond between Danika and Sally-the love Danika had for her former personal maid, who had become her best friend. They never expected it.
They never expected the slave princess to take care of a low peasant like Sally, and the sight of them taking a walk with Danika fully supporting her-the sight of Danika reading to her and brushing Sally’s hair, always robbed them of speech. Not only in the palace. They’d gone to the library three days in the last week, and the people of Salem found it hard to believe what they saw. They stared at Danika and Sally.
Danika never seemed to notice it. Her focus was always on Sally, making sure she didn’t fall and that she healed correctly.
Danika had taken her to the medicine man’s house twice in a week.
Now, a month later, Sally was doing so much better. She could walk properly, and most of her wounds had healed; the bruises had faded. Just a few scars remained, and Madam Baski was doing everything she could to make them disappear like the scars that would’ve formed on Danika’s back.
Sally did better during the day and was almost back to her old self. But at night-most nights-her subconscious replayed the royal court to her, and she screamed in her sleep, crying and pleading.
Danika had fallen into the habit of waking her and soothing her while doing her best to keep the guilt at bay. She hoped Sally would be alright again-even in her mind-even while she slept.
Danika had heard less from the king in the past month. He’d summoned her three times only, and those times he made her sit on the floor beside him, and he gave her a brand-new scroll and a well-written parchment. He ordered Danika to rewrite everything in the parchment to the scroll as a way of duplicate.
At the very core of her being, Danika nursed the fluttering feeling and peace in her heart whenever she sat beside the king in silence and transcribed. It had been a favorite activity when she was still a princess. And now she had fallen into a routine with the king. No words. No noise. No slavery. No tasks. Just both sitting and writing.
It also gave her a deep sense of satisfaction because it was the one thing his mistress could never do with him. It was the one thing he could do with her alone.
He’d summoned her one day and announced that they were going to the Kingdom of Ijipt for a court meeting among the kings. They rode in the royal carriage, which surprised Danika-and still surprised her whenever she remembered it. The king had let her ride the carriage?with him.
Slaves did not ride the royal carriage; it was impossible. Slaves walked on foot while their master rode in the carriage, and the guards rode the horses. An excellent master might allow the slave to ride on a horse.
Not the carriage-unless he wanted to take pleasures from her body in there. Never the carriage.
But the king had let Danika stay in the carriage, and even though she sat in that space on the floor of the carriage, it didn’t matter. It beat walking and riding on a horse.
Also, thankfully, the meeting in Ijipt went well.
When they first arrived, the kings had taken one look at Danika and their lips thinned in displeasure.
“You survived,” King Moreh had snarled.
Fear had Danika inching behind the king’s back, even before she knew she had taken a step.
King Moreh and King Philip’s look of disapproval was blatant on their faces, but the other kings just stared at her thoughtfully. The two king’s anger came from the oldest of the laws.
*Any slave that escapes death in a certain tradition shall never again be subjected to it as a demand or an order, unless as a punishment from her master.*
All the kings knew they could never subject the daughter of King Cone to another introduction, just as an order or a demand. She could only endure another introduction by these kings if it was an order or a punishment coming from her master.
King Lucien and all the kings knew this, which was why he had brought her along. The kings had no right where she was concerned anymore.
“I’ll have to say, I admire her strength,” King Pesih finally said dismissively while they walked into the royal court and took their seats and positions.
Danika was glad that it was all over. They wouldn’t try to force her to go through another introduction. King Lucien had toldher coldly during the journey that the kings didn’t have the right to do so.
As the kings shrugged and started into the royal court, dismissing her presence, she finally realised that he was right. It made her happy. Danika didn’t have to hide from them for the rest of her life.
She’d sat in her usual position beside the king during the meeting, trying to pretend that she didn’t know that the meeting was about the petition for slaves, which King Lucien was fighting for. Danika was a slave, and a slave was supposed to be an object. She wasn’t supposed to know that.
But in the past month, she found out things about the king she never knew-things that disturbed her.
The king wanted to create a better life for the lowborn. He petitioned to abolish some terrible laws on slaves and enforce some new ones that would help the lives of the lowborn. That knowledge had only strengthened the forbidden thought in Danika’s mind that the king was really a good man. He was hard on her because of what her father did to him, but that wasn’t his nature-especially with other slaves.
It was the first time Danika allowed herself to think of the fact that the king didn’t enslave any of the people of Mombana except her. All of her people still had their lives intact and normal.
She had sat and listened to everything that went on in court. The more she found out all that about him, the more the bitterness in her heart for him seemed to disappear, much to her own chagrin. She discovered that the hate that squeezed her chest the first time she came into captivity was no longer there because, as days passed, it was apparent that the king was not the monster she’d first thought him to be.
He was just a damaged man, broken. If he was ever a monster, he was the monster her father created…for her. He was never that way with other people.
The last week had been relatively good for Danika. Sally was getting better. She hadn’t seen much of the king’s wicked mistress. And they had stripped Karandy of his post as the mine’s slave trainer after they flogged him.
Danika had only gone to the mine twice, and the new slave master called Korag wasn’t particularly mean to her. He treated her like every other slave.
Life was being good to her. At least for now.
King Lucien was writing some fresh developments in the lower market to take to the royal accountant on the morrow. The sun had been down for a while, and it was relatively quiet for the night. But sleep eluded King Lucien as usual.
For the past week, he hadn’t been able to sleep as well as he did on that first night with Danika.
What was it about her?
He’d asked himself countless times in the last week.
Having tasted what a good sleep felt like, King Lucien wanted more and more of that peaceful dreamless state, but he had done his best to make sure he didn’t summon Danika for that.
How could the daughter of the man that took away his sleep become the reason for his peaceful slumber after fifteen years?
The deities would never play such a cruel joke on him. The joke was too expensive. Too merciless.
He’d summoned Vetta and took sexual pleasures from her body and even allowed her to spend the night in his bed. He never slept.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?