The Princess And Her Alpha Bodyguard

7~ WRONG CHOICE OF WORDS

I didn’t know how to react after Valdemir told me about the tree roots.

Should I laugh? Or should I act shocked? The problem was...my brain just froze like it had been iced. It didn’t know how to process. I was expecting to hear about bears, tigers, or lions. Or the most realistic one, soldiers, since they had been chasing me. But what I heard was tree roots.

I repeated.

Tree roots.

“Your jest, surely?” I asked, finally unable to hold in this ridiculous thought anymore.

He leaned back in the chair and folded his hand across his broad chest. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

“Can you please stop returning my question with your question?” I groaned, feeling the frustration within me almost go out of control.

“Fine.” He lifted his right leg and rested the ankle on his left knee. “No.”

“Huh?” I tilted my head to the side in confusion.

“The answer to your question. No, I’m not joking,” he said in his usual calm voice. I had to say I admired how serene this guy was. In every situation, he acted like everything was fine. But it wasn’t. At least not what I found it to be.

“It didn’t make sense.” I frowned. “Trees are indeed living things. But they aren’t to that extent.”

“To what extent do you refer to?” He asked.

“Attacking people.” I punched the mattress next to my thigh. “Trees can’t move, and their roots dig deep into the ground. So, how did they attack me?”

“You aren’t wrong about this.” He adjusted the wolf’s shape mask on his face. “But you’re only half correct.”

“Meaning?”

“Have you forgotten that the trees we’re talking about grow in the forbidden forest?” he asked in a challenging voice. It was as if he wanted to remind me again of what I had missed. “Haven’t you heard of the rumor?”

I thought back to the story I’d heard since I was a child. My nanny used to tell me that there was a haunted, dark forest near our border. There weren’t those who went in and came out unharmed. The hunters ended up dead while the villagers came out as lunatics. Yes, they were alive, but they lost their minds. When we brought them in for questioning, they only spoke nonsense. That left us not a single clue about what had happened in the forest. We also sent soldiers to investigate this matter, but only their corpses returned. For decades, there had been no answers to what caused all these strange accidents.

Not until...now.

“It can’t be,” I murmured. My eyebrows that were drawn together went back to their original places as my brain finished solving the mystery.

“Judging from your expression, I believed you’ve had,” said Valdemir without bothering to hide the condescending tone.

“Don’t tell me that tree roots attacked those missing people?” I looked up at him in shock.

“Yes.” He nodded. “I believed you’ve heard the rumor. The reason no one dared to trespass the forest.”

“For real? Tree roots killed all those innocent people?” I still couldn’t wrap my head around the whole thing.

“They aren’t innocent,” he said in a gravelly voice.

“What do you mean? What have they done wrong?” I asked.

“You don’t have to know that. It's none of your business.”

“Hey!” I said, feeling anger crept up to every inch of me when he brushed me off like this. “How could you say that?”

“Don’t you want to know what happened to you instead?” He pointed his finger at me.

“I want to know both.” I lifted my chin and stared right at him.

“This is an indecisive person’s answer. I’m not even surprised that you’ve said this.” He let out a pearl of laughter that clearly meant he was patronizing me. I parted my lips and prepared to talk back, but he beat me to it. “I don’t have much spare time to waste on you. So, I’ll give you only one. Do you want to know what happened to them or you?”

“I... I…” I trailed off, not knowing which one I should choose. I wanted to know everything. Why couldn’t he just tell me?

“Choose. And hurry. If you make me wait any longer, I might change my mind and stop answering completely.”

I groaned in frustration. What a control freak he is! I thought to myself.

“Your answer. Now,” said Valdemir, as he prompted me for my decision.

“I want to know what happened to me,” I said with a sigh. He left me with no choice. If I could choose only one, I wanted to know the most recent one.

“Wise choice. Then I’ll get to it.” He adjusted his legs, letting both the soles of his feet on the floor. “When you first saw me, I was standing at a respectable distance. That alone already proved that I meant no harm. I was only watching you.”

“Why were you watching me? And why were you even there?” I asked, finding things getting suspicious.

“The forest and what lies beyond it belongs to Ascian. My kingdom. I was there with my soldiers to hunt down rogue werewolves before they crossed the border and caused trouble. But I sensed a foreign presence, so I went to search for it. It turned out to be you. I have to say that you really surprised me. Normally, outsiders could only walk three steps inside the territory, and tree roots will start to attack.”

“Hold on.” I raised my hand to stop him from talking. “Did you just say werewolves and kingdom?”

“Yes. What’s the problem?”

“Every word is the problem!” I shook my head in disbelief. “None of them makes sense. I mean, tree roots are enough to confuse me. But now there is Ascian, a kingdom I’ve never heard of. And werewolves? I thought they only existed in folklore.”

“No.” He shook his head. “They are rare and almost extinct. Still, they are real. If I’m not mistaken, Ascian had the largest number of werewolves right now. They take refuge here, since other kingdoms keep hunting them down. People think of us as threats, calling us cursed creatures. But that was only an excuse to hide their inferiority. They’re afraid of us. Yet, they refused to admit it.”

“I don’t understand. When I was in history class, why didn’t my professor mention anything about your kingdom? I’ve never heard of Ascian before. It didn’t appear on the map.”

“Because it is new. Ascian only existed one hundred years ago when my grandfather and his pack fled from the attack that killed more than half of our kinds. We came into this forest and created a territory of our own. The one that we hid from the rest of the world.”

“So, that’s how it is. It makes sense now.” I nodded. “But I’m surprised you can hide so well.”

“We’ve got help,” he said.

“From who?” I couldn’t help but want to know more. Ever since I was young, I had always believed in things I couldn’t see. Things like magic and spirits. Now, I finally confirmed one supernatural element.

Werewolves.

“I can’t tell you that. It’s the secret of my kingdom. You’re just an outsider.” He turned to look at the window. “I couldn’t risk the exposure of my people.”

“Oh,” I dropped my eyes to the floor, feeling guilty for being intrusive. “So, how do you catch werewolves? You need a special weapon for that, right? It should be something made of silver.” I changed the topic, hoping it would take away the awkward atmosphere. But it only seemed to make it worse. When he turned back to me, there was a fierceness in his eyes that left my blood run cold.

©️StellaKMary | The Princess And Her Alpha Bodyguard