King of the Alphas

Fifteen; The Evergreen Room

"I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river. To me you are everything that exists, the reality of everything."
-Night and Day by Virginia Woolf

Chapter Fifteen ; The Evergreen Room

It was both the human, and the Alpha Kings first real day together. For Adrian, nothing was going to get in the way of spending his time with his little mate.
She followed him, as they walked through the cool and quiet hallway hand in hand.
Abigail's curiosity broke the silence between them, as they walked to the dining room and the connecting kitchen.

"How many people actually live in the castle?" Abigail asked, her eyes darting around the halls, trying to take in as much as possible. She was just starting to get to know her surroundings, and the quicker she could do that, the better.

"Just the servants. There's about 150 of them living in the castle, and other beings that live in the forest surrounding the castle too. They each have their own jobs, in return I give them protection, and a free life, access to food without any cost, and health care." Adrian said softly, his mind wondering where his mate got her questions from.
Abigail thought to herself, her mind swirling in many directions.

Abigail nodded her head as a reply, in understanding. She had remembered what Isaac told her, about all the endangered beings that lived within Adrian's protection. 150 of them wasn't actually a lot. Adrian had been hiding and protecting their existence.

Are there any other humans?  she thought to herself.
Humans by blood were a minority, to say the least. In an average sized pack of 300 members, there would be about 6 human families. The rest of the humans lived in the free lands, where her mother had gone. There were still few of them.

"Why do you protect them?" she went on with the conversation, oblivious of Adrian's discomfort.

"The magic left in this world needs to be protected. There's only so much of it left. It's almost extinct." Adrian answered softly. It was quiet after that for a few moments. Both mates were lost in thought. Their faces both melancholic, and their minds adrift.

Abigail nodded once more, stopping herself from continuing the subject, though she did not want to. She wanted to know more, she wanted to understand who the King was, what the world around her was, how it came to be. For so long her only truth had been the narrative that the werewolves were in control, that she was just a weak human, and the world had no more and no less than that. For so long she thought her world small, she thought of it as unchanging.
Unknowing of the magic that had once surrounded the land many years ago; Unknowing of the hiding King that had been waiting in the woods for hundreds of years;
Unaware of the lessons and the stories in school she had to learn were all but just a shallow and ignorant interpretation of how things are.
As a child she grew up dreaming of freedom, believing it was out of reach.

Knowledge is freedom.
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave (Frederick Douglass).

Adrian sucked in a breath as they walked down the halls, his throat in knots, his chest feeling heavy. The tingles he felt creep up his arm from the beautiful girl walking beside him.

Things were different now.
Things could change.
There was hope.
And although the mates would not admit it, they gave each other hope.
The two walked down the halls in silence, comfortable silence, as they were both lost in thought. Thinking of each other.

"Here we are." Adrian smiled softly down at his mate, and opened up the dining hall doors. There was an amazing smell of fresh foods that consisted of fruits, breakfast meats, pancakes, and eggs. The set up was beautiful. There were some people that worked in the castle sitting and eating. The morning sun shined in through the glass roof, and there was chatter echoing from the connecting kitchen.