The beast and the blessed novel by Ashley Breanne novel Chapter 22

Twenty-Two: Natalie

Natalie’s P.O.V.

Even after a cold shower, I was fuming. I wanted to give Killian an earful and make sure that he understood just how damaging last night had been to our relationship… whatever relationship we had.

I knew he wouldn’t care, but that didn’t stop me. My first stop had been his office, but when I found that empty, I tried every common room that I knew of, including the gym and the training field. Yet, he was nowhere to be found.

It was like he knew I was on a warpath, and he vanished.

Although the rational side of my brain told me that he wouldn’t be scared of me, a human. Perhaps he was trying to save me from publically embarrassing myself further after I had shamelessly thrown myself at him last night. It was bad enough that the servants would be seeing the blood on the sheets from when his claws had punctured my hips and the proof that we had not been trying for the heir that the kingdom was expecting.

When it was discovered that I wasn’t pregnant and that I didn’t bare their king’s mark, I would be seen as a failure.

I stopped in the middle of the garden, glancing around the grounds and ignoring the eyes on me. There were hundreds of people that I had seen in the past hour, but none of them belonged to my alleged mate.

I turned to Tobias, lowering my voice even though there was no one in my immediate vicinity. “He is hiding. Is he not?”

My bodyguard smirked as he stared at me, refusing to give away any information on his beloved king.

“Fine,” I grumbled as I thought back to where he might be. I had the feeling it was where I would find him, but I really didn’t want to be right. To have him go there after the night we had together felt like it would be the final *to my already beaten confidence. It would destroy me.

But as I turned back into the castle, I found myself making my way toward the infirmary and stopping before the mystery door. I was terrified of what I may find, even more so when Tobias stopped several paces back and took his stance against the wall.

I could feel the hurt in my chest as I worked myself up to open the door. Would he be on the other side, sleeping in someone else’s bed? Would she be wrapped in his arms the same as how he held me while we slept?

“Please don’t be inside,” I whispered to myself as I grabbed the door handle. This was the one place I didn’t want to find him. It was the only bedroom I had seen him sneaking out of, but it didn’t mean it was the only one in the entire castle that he had been sneaking away to.

The room was brightly lit as I pushed the door open, so I knew he wouldn’t be asleep, but he wasn’t there. It was the woman lying in the bed that took my breath away. Her chest rose and fell slowly in time with the machine next to her. The low beeping of the monitor showing her steady heartbeat, made me freeze. I had seen portraits of her before, but I had never seen her in person.

I never thought I would. She was supposed to be dead.

Her dark brown hair matched Killian’s, and I knew if she opened her eyes that she would have bright emerald irises staring back at me. There was no crown on her head, and she was wrapped up in a hospital gown with a blanket tucked around her. But she was just as stunning now as she was at the prime of her life when she had been chosen by the king and had produced his heirs.

There was a thickness in the air, a darkness that felt suffocating, and I knew that she was closer to death than life.