Surrogate for the Alpha Prince in a Coma novel Chapter 345

Chapter 345

Grayson’s POV

After I accepted the crown, I set off to set things right in the kingdom. Uniting both sides of the cause took patience and consideration, but I was determined to win everyone over with my actions. Reducing taxes for everyone immediately helped. Restoring the funds already taken through public works helped too.

Slowly, peace was returning to the land.

As I achieved these professional goals, I also sent out to have the children returned to the palace. Ivory and her son moved back in with them, and I made sure everyone of the town who gave us safe harbor was properly rewarded.

Reginald lingered, and his presence helped soothe the children, who didn’t understand why their mother

was gone.

“She will return,” I promised them, but that did little to soothe them. I understood that reaction, deep down to my bones.

Reginald helped with them, staying to reassure them in the more difficult moments. I did my best, but having someone back me up was a relief.

At least until the children went to tutoring or to sleep, when Reginald would track me down himself to demand, “What are you doing to save my cousin?”

“I have sent scouts to every corner of the kingdom to look for Lone Archer,” I said.

Reginald scoffed. “He will only be found if he wants to be.”

“If he hears of his Lily’s trouble, he might reemerge,” I said. I tried to be hopeful, but I knew that this was running close to fool’s hope. If Lone Archer was going to help, we would have appeared by now.

“You said Lillian broke the necklace that set Lone Archer free? How did she accomplish that?” Reginald

asked me.

“She stole a blacksmith’s hammer and smashed it.”

“Then do that.”

“No,” I said quickly. “We aren’t sure that will work. I won’t chance hurting her.”

Reginald huffed a frustrated breath. “If it worked for Lone Archer…”

“He is one of the original werewolves,” I said. “I’m not convinced the man could even be killed. Lillian, meanwhile…”

“Yeah, I get it,” Reginald said. “There has to be something. I’ll reach out to the scholars in my pack. If the Lone Archer’s lineage traces through my family, we might have more record on these prisons.”

I nodded. “Anything you can find…”

“She is my cousin and I love her like a sister,” Reginald said. “I am an uncle to those children, and will see their mother restored.”

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“Thank you,” I said.

“I don’t need your thanks,” he said. “I need you to find a solution.”

“Yes.”

He lingered in my office, even after the conversation was done. Clearly, there was something left to talk about.

“What is it?” I asked. Reginald wasn’t one for beating around the bush. Whatever he was going to say must have been scathing, but I’d rather he tell me directly than to push off any unpleasantness between us.

“I was thinking about the children,” Reginald said. “Without their mother, it might be better to take them to a place they are more comfortable and familiar.”

“You want to take them back to your kingdom?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Absolutely not,” I said quickly, my entire body reacting on instinct. “Those children are mine, and they will stay here with me.”

“They barely even know you,” Reginald said. “They grew up in my household. That will feel like home to them until their mother is returned.”

I stood up. “They aren’t leaving, with you are with anyone.”

“If I have to fight you for this, I will,” Reginald snapped.

I growled.

“Stop this! Both of you!” Josephine said as she rushed into the room, she placed herself between us. Putting a hand on Reginald’s chest seemed to calm him instantly and he took a step back.

Curious.

I exhaled slowly, trying to regain my composure too. Reginald might have been Lily’s cousin, but I knew she saw him like a brother too. That made him like a brother-in-law to me. She wouldn’t want us to fight.

Though, “The kids are staying here.”..

“Then so am I,” Reginald said.

“We all need to be there for the kids,” Josephine said. “Fighting will only scare them. We need to keep our heads and find a solution.”

“Fine,” Reginald said.

“Fine,” I agreed.

Later, after Reginald went with Josephine to speak privately, I stepped out of my office with a new destination in mind. The time was late, far too late to be visiting the dungeons, but I knew my step-mother wouldn’t be asleep.

She never was.

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This wasn’t the first time I came to visit her, and until I had the answers I needed, it wouldn’t be the last.

I’d visited often enough now that I was used to her mocking, so when I stopped in front of her cell and she started to laugh, I showed no reaction, not even anger. Forced to wear simple rags, she was a shadow of her former self. I had denied her all of her usual comforts – makeup, fine clothes, even a mirror. I gave her books to read, but only ones that taught lessons of humility.

Even without her usual fineries though, she still deigned to glare at me like I was beneath her.

“Still haven’t found a way to save your lady love?” she asked, giggling with delight. “Such a shame.”

“You will reveal to me the secrets of that necklace,” I said, my own voice devoid of emotion.

“You have nothing to hold over me anymore. You have taken everything. What do you hope to negotiate with?”

“I could still end your life.”

She laughed. “You’d be doing me a favor. Facing eternity in this cell is no prize,” she said. “But I don’t think you will kill me, or you would have done it already. My daughter’s soft heart has swayed you from it.”

“She sees something in you that I do not. But perhaps you could convince me to see some of what she sees,” I said. “How did you come to be in possession of that necklace?”

My step-mother rolled her eyes. “It was passed down from Queen to Queen. Even your own mother had it at some point.”

“How did you know what it was?” I asked. “Did it come with some kind of directions? That language you spoke…”

“An ancient werewolf tongue, long forgotten. Well, perhaps the Lone Archer would remember it, though perhaps not even him anymore.”

“You used an incantation to get her in there. There must be one to get her out.”

She shrugged.

Anger rose up hot and fast inside of me. I grabbed at the bars of the cell so hard and fast that she jumped.

“Tell me,” I growled.

“If there is an incantation, I don’t know it,” she said. She was a good liar, and I wasn’t sure if she was lying now. “The only instruction was for capture. Who would want to release a monster once they had it caught?”

I growled at her, but rather than get scared again, she just looked away.

“I have nothing left to say to you,” she said.

Snarling, I pushed off of the bars, turned and walked away.

Fury pulsed in my veins, but most of the anger I felt was pointed inward.

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