Marked By The Mad King Alpha (Phoebe and Perry) novel Chapter 52

Standard POV Format

Tell him. Tell him. Tell him.

The thought beat inside my skull like a drum, but when I tried, nothing came out. My throat locked, breath caught, words tangled until they hurt more staying inside than spilling out.

Timothy waited patiently. He wasn’t the kind of man you could fool—years commanding warriors had taught him to read fear the way others read a map.

“Easy,” he murmured, moving a little closer. His hand rested lightly against my back, tracing slow circles, steadying my shaking breaths.

He’d seen this before on battlefields—men dragged back into nightmares by their own minds. What I was fighting wasn’t a memory of war, but it felt just as lethal.

“Breathe,” he said again. “You’re safe. No rush.”

I tried. Gods, I tried. I wished Perry knew how to handle me like this—with patience instead of anger.

Minutes blurred into what felt like hours before I could finally whisper, “That’s not true… none of it’s true.”

Timothy leaned forward. “Then tell me what is.”

My heart pounded so hard it drowned out the world.

“He—” The word snagged. My hands shook so violently I had to grip the edge of the blanket. Tears blurred my vision. Every attempt to speak felt like ripping out my own teeth, one by one.

“He hurt me,” I managed. “He… did things. Tortured me. Made me want to die.”

Once I started, the words spilled out in fragments—jagged pieces of memory that barely made sense. My voice cracked, rising and falling in a rhythm of panic.

Timothy didn’t interrupt. He just listened, his expression tight with fury that wasn’t directed at me.

“My father blamed me for my mother’s death,” I whispered. “I tried to run. They caught me. They made me an omega because it was the only way to break me.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” he barked at Timothy.

The gamma didn’t even flinch. “Relax, Your Majesty. She needed someone to talk to.”

He clapped the king lightly on the shoulder as he brushed past, leaning close enough that only Perry could hear him. “Don’t be too hard on her. I’ll explain later.”

Then he was gone.

The silence he left behind was deafening.

Perry’s eyes, sharp and unrelenting, locked on me. “What did you tell him?”