BENEATH HER DARKNESS: The Alpha’s Little Demon
Chapter 71 – Future Ruler of Kalmerus
LUCIUS…
I transported us to Lucija’s chamber, and I helped her put Stone in her bed. I knew she had many questions, but at the moment, she wasn’t asking any. She was busy attending to her mate and it was to my advantage. I didn’t want to tell her anything more at the moment than what she needed to know.
“I have to go now. I have other things to do,” I told her after a while of watching her clean up Stone’s body.
He looked like he was f*uc*king dead to me, but his chest was moving, which meant he was still alive.
“But… what if I need you?” Lucija stood up from the bed and faced me.
“Then reach out to me. I won’t block my mind.”
“Do you think Lucien will come back soon?”
“I don’t think so. He wants to find the witch, so I’m sure he will search the whole North for her.”
“Will you let me know if he returns?”
“Of course. But what are your plans? Will you return Stone to his cell?”
“No. Definitely not. I just want to be prepared when he comes back because I’m sure he will raise hell if he finds out I took him out of the dungeons.”
“Raise hell? You’re already in hell.” I chuckled before I let out a deep sigh, and my expression turned serious. “Lucija, you need to control your fire. If you snap and your fire comes out, you can burn the whole place. And it won’t K*ll Lucien, me, or any other demons, but I am sure it will affect the man there, and it will backfire on you.”
She nodded her head, but I wanted to make sure she understood the severity of letting out fire uncontrolled.
“If I’m not around to remind you, you need to remind yourself to calm down. You have a wolf, right?” She nodded her head.
“Make her useful. Tell her to remind you so she has some use here and not just resting there in your head.”
Lucija’s mouth twitched as her eyes dilated, but it was just for a few seconds. Her wolf was trying to surface, which impressed me because, despite the enchantment around the tower, she was able to show me a glimpse of her through Lucija’s eyes.
I chuckled as I pointed at her. “I made your wolf angry. Remind me to stay away once you can shift.”
“My wolf is not useless.” She glared at me.
“Whatever,” I said before turning around and disappearing from her room without saying anything else.
I transported my body on the stairs going up to my room. I could have gone directly inside my chamber, but I wanted time to think, and walking helped. My mind had been racing for the past few days. I literally had no idea what my next move would be. There were many speculations in my head, and I didn’t know what to believe anymore. But one thing I knew for sure: I needed Lucija on my side.
I might be older than her, but I knew she had a power far greater than mine. How did I find out? I wasn’t born yesterday. If you’d been living around my father, Lucien, for decades, you would get to know him inside and out.
He had never behaved strangely until Lucija moved in with us. I had always known that by the time he retired as the ruler of Kalmerus, Guillermo was most likely to take over. Guillermo was three centuries older than me, and Lucien had always favored him over everyone else, including me.
Of course, why would he choose me? I was nothing. My mother was a she- demon sl*ve. She left me at the gates of the tower on the very same day that I was born and never came back. I didn’t even know her name. Lucien was responsible enough to take me in but other than that, I didn’t receive any personal attention. from him.
He probably didn’t know how to raise his own son.
Almost all my brothers were brought up by their mothers and were only summoned by Lucien the moment they turned fifteen. Some of them stayed in the tower with us, but the moment they came of age at eighteen, they moved away and made a life of their own.
I also moved out and had my own place, but I came back here most of the time.
And like me, some of my brothers had come back and made their intentions clear they wanted our father’s crown. Not that it bothered Father at all. We all knew he had his eyes set on Guillermo. But it did not stop us from still wanting it. Guillermo was already a tough compet*itor to beat. I didn’t need more. So, I eliminated some of them as many as I could.
If you asked me how many of my brothers. d*ied in my hands, I couldn’t count anymore. I couldn’t even remember their names.
And no. I didn’t regret any of the K*llings. They’re weak, otherwise, I would not be able to K*ll them. The only one I couldn’t touch was Guillermo because I knew my father had his eyes on him. But I waited patiently until it dawned on me that he was no longer the apple of his eye.
It was the moment that Lucien found out that he had a daughter. I thought his fascination with her bordered on the fact that she was his only rose among throngs of thorns. But as the years went by, I felt there was something more than the fascination of having a daughter.
Although my father was never hands-on with me or cared about my existence, he did provide me with everything I needed to be stronger. Something he never gave to Lucija. Lucija was trained on the basics, but never on how to discover other powers within her. She was never taught to explore many more possibilities.
And no matter how many times Gargon, Lucija’s fire master, requested to upgrade her training, my father kept refusing. He didn’t want her to move forward. He didn’t want her to be stronger. Something was going on, and Father wasn’t telling anyone. So, I made my own move and tried to find the answer. Until it fell on me.
I met Cordelia, the right hand of Orpheus. Orpheus was the immortal seer of the underworld. She could see the future, but she couldn’t remember it afterward, she needed someone to be with her whenever she had her readings. So, Cordelia knew everything.
Since I was the Prince of l*st, I never had any problem making her fall for my allure. I succeeded when no one had. Because the next thing I knew, I was already f*uc*king her and extracting information from her.
She told me the next ruler of Kalmerus was not yet determined, whether a male or a female, but the ruler would be stronger than my father. And K*lling him or her would also end my father’s life.
But it was only one way. If Father d*ied, the prophesied ruler would still survive. At that time, I thought it would be easier to K*ll Lucien’s heir than him. So, I only had two targets in mind. Guillermo and Lucija.
But then I began noticing Guillermo’s absence in his life. In fact, I haven’t seen him in the last decade. He had probably visited the tower once or twice, but never as often as in previous decades when Father would always summon him to come to him.
Father’s attention had shifted elsewhere. It was then that I realized the heir was not one of the sons, but his only daughter. K*lling Lucija would have been an easy act. She was only eleven at that time and knew nothing about power or the demon world.
She could never fight back. She was supposed to be an easy K*ll, but one encounter changed everything.
***FLASHBACK***
Lucija – 11 years old
Father had left me in the big hall to f*uc*k a female he brought home while I downed the remaining whisky in my glass. Some of my brothers had left and gone their own ways, so I had no companion for tonight.
I had no one to f*uc*k as well. l*st might be in my blood, but sometimes I get lazy.
And unlike Father, I never f0rced any female to have s*e*x with me. I took ple@sure in being treated like a god in bed, so I would definitely go for females who were l*sting over me.
Besides, I never ran out of them, so I had no f*uc*king clue why Father took ple@sure in taking females who refused to f*uc*k him. But tonight was one of those nights that I would rather be alone in my chambers, working on my next move to secure the crown.
“Hello…” A small, but clear girl’s voice reached my ears, and I knew who it was, Lucija.
I turned around and flashed her a wide smile. Just the girl I was hoping to encounter. She was pressing herself against the entryway pillar as if she wanted to get lost in it.
“Hello, little one. My name is Lucius.” I motioned with my hand and asked her to come forward, which she did, but she sat on the Victorian couch adjacent to where I was standing. I’d seen her on many occasions, and Father had introduced her to us, but we never really spoke to each other.
“My name is Lucy,” she stated as she sat up straight, her eyes looking directly at mine.
“You mean Lucija?”
“You know who I am?” I nodded my head as I sipped my drink without taking my eyes off her.
“Do you know a way I can get out of here?”
“You think if I know, I will tell you?” I chuckled in surprise at her question. She nodded her head.
“What made you think that?”
“The others… They never smiled at me.”
“Maybe because you never smiled at them.”
“I didn’t smile at you too… But you smiled at me,” she replied in a very polite. manner. If she only knew what I gave her was a devil’s smile.
“Maybe you’re different from them. So maybe you will be kind enough to help me. She was trying to play with my emotions, but I was not born for sappy things.
“Why don’t you want to stay here? You can have everything you want, just let Father know.”
“He never really gives me what I want.”
“What did you ask him?”
“I want to go back to my house in the human realm.”
“Hmmm… That’s impossible.”
“How old are you?” She asked, ignoring my last statement.
“I don’t know. I stopped counting… and you?”
“Eleven. Are you going to be the King of Kalmerus once our father d*ies?”
“Do you want him dead?” She didn’t answer and just bit her bottom lip. “Why did you ask if I would be the next king here?”
“I want to ask if you will let me go back to the human world if you’re the King already.”
I walked toward her and crouched down in front of her. I was trying to read her to see if she was taunting me. For all I knew, she-demons were cunning even at a young age, but all I saw was sadness in her eyes.
“Will it make you happy to go back there?”
She nodded her head. “Please, let me go back there. I don’t want to be here.” How could I let her go back when I had already planned how I would K*ll her?
“Yes, I will let you go back there if I become the King of Kalmerus,” I told her, but it held no meaning. I was so used to making false promises.
But then she smiled, something I had never seen on her since she arrived here. I saw hope in her young face. She slowly raised her hand and stuck out her little finger, her eyes beaming with happiness. “Pinky swear?”
“What?” I asked, my forehead creasing.
“Pinky swear? It’s a promise. And when we lock our pinkies together, it means we need to honor the promise. I take pinky promises very seriously, Lucius.” She was nodding her head as if she were negotiating something big.
“Oh…”
“Pinky swear?” She asked again. Her brows were raised, but her lips were still curled into a wide grin.
“Fine. Pinky swear,” I chuckled as I entangled my little finger with her.
And I thought that was it, but then she withdrew her finger from mine and flung er arms around me as she hugged me tightly. I almost lost my balance, but I was able to hold us both steady as I held her in my arms. I had never hugged someone. Although I was not supposed to feel like this because a demon never feels this kind of emotion, I must admit it felt good.
“Thank you! I will be forever grateful to you.” She murmured against my neck, and for some reason, her words made goosebumps appear on my skin. “I will pray to Selene to make you the next King of Kalmerus, so you can save me.”
How could I plan on K*lling her when she was holding on to me as if I were her saving grace?
***END OF FLASHBACK.***
So instead of K*lling little Lucija, I watched her every move because I wanted prove to myself that she was not the one in the Orpheus prophecy and that I didn’t need to eliminate her. But everything was pointing her way, and yet I didn’t have the heart to K*ll her. I didn’t even know I had a heart. Maybe because every time she would see me, she would look at me as if we had our own little secret and that she was counting on.
This went on for years until she was sixteen. Perhaps she had grown tired of my promise by that point. I just realized; Lucija never looked me in the eyes anymore. I knew then that I had failed her.
But it didn’t mean I stopped trying to become the next king because up until this moment, I was still aiming for it. And I still had no intention of K*lling the only sibling who had grown on me. But then plan had changed- I wanted her to take down our father and give me the crown.
And even if they kept saying she and Stone were bound together, I didn’t want to take a risk.
Lucija was special. I didn’t think K*lling Stone would K*ll her, the same way K*lling my father would not K*ll her. That was why I was hell-bent on protecting Stone with my life because he was my only guarantee that, as long as he existed, Lucija would never consider ruling Kalmerus.