Chapter 128
“Your words and actions do not match at all. But then, I never expected much from you.”
Abby’s face was eerily calm, though her gaze was anything but mellow. In fact, her eyes looked colder than the glaciers as they pierced Alpha James’ non existent conscience.
“It is not what you think, My Queen. Let me explain!” The alpha tried to smooth his way out of this mess when he realized the girl before him was emanating unadulterated fury.
After all, by opening and reading a letter meant for his queen, what he did was showing blatant disrespect, and it could land him in serious trouble.
“Then what does it look like, Alpha?” Abby waved the letter, which she was still holding between her thumb and index finger, in his face.
It was so crumpled that it looked like it would tear in half, if she handled it too carelessly.
“Please forgive me, My Queen, I didn't mean to offend you.” James scrambled to apologize as he fired off whatever came to his mouth, without thinking first. “I just wanted to see if it was really for you, so I opened it to take a single harmless glance.”
“Then why does the paper look like it was hanging on its last thread?” Abby couldn’t believe her ears. Did this man think she would eat up just whatever bullshit he fed her? “Should I spell the reason for you? Because, you couldn’t bother to give a damn since it was just written to me, someone you never put in your eyes.”
“No, no, My Queen. You misunderstood me. It wasn’t my intention at all,” James denied it with all his might. He just looked short of slapping his chest to prove he didn’t have any thoughts to disrespect her.
“Then why didn’t you apologize before I realized what you actually did?” Abby snarked, her eyes still glaring at him. He had a good six inches on her, which made him lower his head to look into her eyes but the air around them was so tense that he found himself struggling to hold her gaze.
It was always her who had it difficult to stand tall in front of anyone in this pack, no matter the rank they held. Be it a random warrior or even an omega, no one ever thought there would come a day they had to tamper down their ego in front of someone they treated even less than air for ten years straight, let alone the alpha of this pack.
Even when he felt his beta went too far, he didn’t bother to get down from his high horse and say something to stop him, always turning an blind eye to her suffering and pleading.
“Tell me, Alpha,” Abby probed when he remained silent, looking anywhere but her eyes. “Shouldn’t you have started this conversation with an apology over something you did recently? Like opening and reading a letter that was meant for your queen?”
“It just slipped my mind, Queen Abby,” James almost retorted, as he struggled to keep his voice low. Because he didn’t dare to raise his voice at Abby, who looked like she was ready to take note of every slip up he made and make him suffer for it.
“Which one?” Abby asked him suddenly.
“What?” James was confused for a moment.
“Which fact slipped your mind, Alpha James?” The queen folded her arms across her chest, her eyes narrowing at the man before her. “Did you forget that I'm your queen? Or that you should’ve apologized first?”
Alpha James was visibly startled by her questions, as he gulped hard which only made him aware how dry his throat was facing her like this. Why did he find that it was actually so hard to talk to this
girl only today? He really didn’t think much when he read that letter. In fact, it would be justified to think that he didn’t think of her as the queen either.
Even until he received the king and queen the day before, he was still holding onto the thought that Abby was someone he looked down on before. But after seeing the way King Micah treated her as the apple of his eye, he had to change his tune as well.
He would have even forgotten about the letter, if not for the content he read in it. But he couldn’t admit to her what actually led to this clusterfuck. So he could only resort to sweet talking again.
“My Queen, I was really worried about you,” Alpha James started, but he didn’t expect Abby to pull him from under his feet again.
“You were so worried about me that you couldn’t stop to think why you shouldn’t poke your head wherever you pleased,” Abby scoffed, almost making the alpha squirm on his feet. But the man stopped himself at the last minute. No matter what, he was an alpha.
He felt like that the more he talked the worse his explanation seemed. Only Abby wasn’t done with him yet, because she continued to rip him a new one with every sentence that left her lips.
“You didn’t feel anything wrong with your actions until someone pointed it out for you,” Abby bit out. “It shows how aware you are of your surroundings, and also how little you think of me. Say, did you really forget that I'm your queen?”
“Or you just thought I don’t have a functioning mind to not see what you actually did?” Abby’s questions left the alpha tongue tied.
He opened and closed his mouth several times, wanting to come up with an excuse but he failed to do so. So it was again Abby who spoke.
“See, apologizing isn’t really easy. Especially when you need the other person’s forgiveness at any cost, saying a half assed apology will not be enough.”
After saying that, Abby finally looked at the letter, but she only realized it should be called a note instead when she skimmed her eyes through it, because there were barely thirty words there, amounting up to mere three lines.
However, she recognized the handwriting of the sender with just a single glance and her heart skipped a beat at the face that flashed behind her eyes in the next second.
Because it belonged to her father, Beta Ryan, and the same was confirmed when she found the words ‘your loving father’ at the end of the note.
“Why did he write a letter for me?” Abby mumbled to herself as she quickly read the three sentences.
A frown appeared on her face as she dived into the letter to read it a second time, as she couldn’t believe her eyes. She even rubbed them before the third time, but the words stayed the same, leaving her utterly confused.
‘My daughter, I’ve been captured by the rogues and they are torturing me. Please come and save your father from this hell, I can’t take the abuse anymore.’
Seeing the word abuse, Abby couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Did he even know what he had written? Or whom he addressed this half hearted letter to?
Didn’t he feel any irony writing to her, if he did write this with his mind perfectly working?
He didn’t even know the depth of that word, because it had always been her at the receiving end of her father’s abuse.
He was an abuser, a torturer, who put his own daughter through ten years of unmerciful suffering, so where did he get the spine to act as a victim through a letter right now?
Moreover, didn’t he read it before sending it? Because reading it even once would have made him realize how insincere his attempt to ask for help seemed.
He could have written two more sentences at least to sound more convincing, but he couldn’t even exert that much effort and he expected her to believe this phony shit just like that?
He sounded too cold and callous for someone who desperately needed to be saved by his daughter, whom he abused for years. Maybe it would have sounded more convincing if he just remembered how his own daughter pleaded to be spared by him until three months ago.
Instead, his letter looked like he would be doing Abby a great favor by letting him save her.
But then she noticed something on the backside, and when she flipped the page around, she couldn’t help but scoff.
Look at this, he didn’t bother to elaborate on how he was faring in the hell, but he gave detailed information of the said hell, as if he was luring a clueless mouse into his trap using cheese. All content is property © NôvelDrama.Org.
Even from miles away, she could have guessed that it was a trap to get to her, more so when she already knew he himself joined the rogues along with Hanna.
Why would they torture him when he was already a part of them?
He stooped so low that Abby felt disgusted just at the thought of his hatred toward her. Even when he knew all too well that her mother’s death was purely an accident, he was still holding it over her head, this situation was one more example to it.
On the other hand, Alpha James couldn’t comprehend why the queen laughed after reading the letter. He didn’t get a chance to ask her either when the queen rushed away from there before throwing a glare in his direction, hearing him call for her.
Abby quickly folded the letter and pushed it into her sleeve, as she joined Mirella and Alyssa back under the huge tree in the garden.
She needed to talk to Micah about it, but he wouldn’t be available until late at night, so she decided to continue with the investigation for now.