All The Queen's Monsters (The Queen's Slave, Book 3)

Twenty-Two: The Plan

"I see things in people, and I feel like if I can touch it, even if the rest of the person is rotten, I can take that good thing and make it part of me."

-Rip Wheeler (Yellowstone)

"Monsters"
-Camylio

A Z A L E A

I sat in front of the fire, staring into the crackling flames while everyone moved around me. I felt dazed, dreary, like I was stuck in a loop of daydreams. My fingers slid over the small bundle of fur in my arms, little Cami's head resting on my arm, and I was grateful that I wouldn't be waking up anytime soon. My lips twitched, seeing Rueben and Iris sleeping on the couch, limbs tangled together and drool falling from their mouths. A twisting pain caught my chest, something between a sob and a sigh of deep release. I was gone, lost to myself and my animal, a prisoner inside my mind, a thing between human and wolf. To see them spared from such knowledge, able to sleep so soundly and deeply, I was unbelievably grateful to my family and my wives for giving them a chance to be children without the burden of fear and chase of starvation. I never resented my parents for the way they raised us, and although it hadn't been easy, I knew it was a thousand times worse for them. I had been so ignorant to what a mother was, until I gave birth to my own. Their pain, their fear, and their happiness was my own. I understood my parents better now because of that knowledge, and it broke my heart all the more to know the lengths I would go to to protect them.

"I never thought I'd live to see my grandchildren." My mother spoke to the side of me, her legs folding beneath her as she sat by the fire.

My lips turned up in a sad smile. "I didn't think I would live to see them again, either." My soft admission didn't scare me, but I felt her gaze burning into the side of my face, a tendril of worry brushing against my mind. "I haven't had hardly a minute alone with Elizabeth or Kore since our reunion, and to be honest I'm kind of grateful. I don't know how to tell them how close I had been to letting go. I am ashamed of that part of me, mamă. How do I live with the knowledge that I have such weakness inside me?"

Gentle fingers turned my face, and the understanding in her deep blue eyes had tears brimming in mine. "But you didn't. That is what matters now, fiica. You live with it the same way I did, for them." She jerked her head to the couch, flicking her gaze to Cami next. Memories of her torture and rape flashed through my mind, and her jaw tightened. I fell out of her hold, glancing away, breathing heavily through my nose. "If I could take those memories from you, I would. It is my greatest regret. I tried to spare you from it as best I could but-," she broke off, her voice cracking with emotion and a tremor wracking her frame.

Her pain and fear, though old, tore at me, and my wolf clawed at my skin, determined to hunt those memories down and tear them limb from limb. My chest tightened, my canines tearing through my gums. I could see my yellow gaze reflected back at her and knew now was not the time to lose myself in a memory, but apparently my wolf had something to convey.

"You are Alpha, you are strong. Only weakness breeds monsters." My voice was guttural through my sharp incisors, and she held my mother's gaze until her azure gaze flicked down in submission. I felt suddenly weary and somewhat confused by her urgency, when she relented control, slipping back into my skin like ripples smoothening over the surface of a pond. We sat in companionable silence for a while, digesting my wolf's words. I chuckled, and her brows lifted in question, lips curling into the barest of smiles.