His Alpha Warrior

Hurt Her

Shaun turned away from her, desperate to make eye contact with Simon again but the other Omega shook his head, disgust in his eyes, before turning away from him. 

“It seems they know you better than you know yourself,” Akuji chuckled. “Is that true?”

Shaun forced her out of his mind to follow Simon, but then she spoke again, “Did Mara?”

Akuji didn’t have far to go to get under his skin. Being on his toes this whole time, waiting for his kingdom to rise up and defeat him for his treason. Killing his missing Mate wasn’t something he was prepared to do. It wasn’t even in his realm of thought. All he wanted was Mara by then and she did not want him. 

“Are you really that insatiable that one woman is not enough for you?”

Shaun stamped down the temptations rising in him to answer her. 

“It’s unlike a demon, such as yourself, to ask such righteous questions.”

“Mmm… I would call them personal questions, thank you,” she corrected him sharply. 

“You don’t have a right to the answers,” Shaun began. 

He could feel rather than see her smile stretching across her face. He knew they were already there at the end of all things.

“They are Mara’s wishes. Each and every one of them, to be exact,” Akuji interrupted. “You have no right to deny me of what’s mine and been promised to me. You WILL answer,” she snarled. 

“Mara’s questions?” Shaun winced. 

They couldn’t be. She had her own life with him. They had a family together. They…

“You’re so undeniably slow, your Highness,” Akuji sighed. “Yes, this is what happens at the end.”

Shaun’s frown only deepened while he listened to the demon run her mouth. 

“...Mara is irrevocably dead inside that she can’t respond to even me. It’s how I witnessed her storm inside of her.”

“What storm?”

“You don’t deal with death often, and why would you as King? But to urge the feelings that you had from Mara,” Akuji shook her head in disgust. “I’m surprised she made it out to Lucifer’s gates on her own.”

“That’s where she is?” Shaun demanded, ignoring her scowl. 

Akuji spread her fingers then waved her palm from the left side of her body to the right. It called forth her dark essence blackening the space between them. 

“What the hell are you doing?” 

“Going to hell. Are you coming?” she asked condescendingly. 

“I’m already there without her,” Shaun began.

While his response was cut from the same cloth his love for Mara was, Akuji blew him off. 

“It’s not time to be poetic,” she said, heading through the doorway. 

Shaun looked back into the hellish night, expecting to be surprised by some entity but it stayed black. Not even the space between the edge of the door and the space around it varied. He had never seen one before, a door to hell, but it was most clearly that. 

“And this is going to take us?” he asked as his daughter, Opaline burst through it.

She was their second heir, the first to survive hatching. She was the spitting image of her mother, less her dark blue hair and shimmering accents. That, Shaun isn’t specifically sure how that happened, but he does blame Mara’s side of their family for it. 

He watches as the boot seems to recede around her. Opaline doesn’t look phased by it either, he frowns at the thought. 

“I’m not calling children into hell unless you’re giving her soul too,” Akuji tutted. 

“You’re not!” Shaun growled back. 

“It’s not like you have a choice!” Opaline shot back, pulling her father’s attention back to her. “You should be proud of me! I was accepted on my own accord.”

Shaun shook his head. What was she going on about? 

“What is that?” he asked, horrified at the scale edged markings down her neck and shoulder. 

“It’s my traditional bond to this world. The one that…”

“No. No! You’re not doing that. It’s not time!”

“But Mother said I…”

“You’re not ready!”

Opaline’s blue green eyes flashed hazel with a burning yellow flickering inside them in response. 

“It’s not up to you,” she growled her challenge like Mara would. 

“I am your father! It is entirely up to me!” he exclaimed. 

“No.”

“Pardon?”

“I said no. You treat me like you treated Mother. Like nothing.”

“Opaline…” Shawn warned her.

“…She may have taken it, but I refuse,” Opaline replied, lifting her chin in defiance. “My marks are what make me a dragonkin…”

“I am what made you a Dragonkin!” Shaun roared, as he swiped at her. 

His large palm connected with her cheek with a sick slap. It burned his palm and immediately burned his heart as well. Shaun’s eyes widened in horror of what he had done. He struck his daughter. Hard. 

Opaline refused to cover her face in response. A challenge resided in her eyes as she watched him remain unsettled because of it. 

“I knew it… you are responsible for her death. You may as well be for mine too,” Opaline bit out before stalking off in the opposite direction. 

As she left, Shaun noticed her growing wings then realized himself. She wasn’t talking about being ready for mating… Opaline was getting ready for flight. 

“Wow.”

“Shut up,” Shaun growled as he turned away from Akuji to return to his fortress.

“World's greatest father…” Akuji snorted, nodding off into the promising darkness of the door beside her. 

Shaun shook his head and continued back, past his throne and furthermore, deeper into his den. Not even it smelled like them anymore. All that was there was the sulfuric nodes that she used to have someone else grind off, and get rid of instead of asking him to anymore. Shaun frowned at the errant thought. A quick question about why she didn’t just take care of it herself slapped him, halting Shaun in place. 

Mara stopped doing a lot before her decision to leave him. It was her’s, he told himself. He didn’t do anything to her. Not one thing that the rest of the kingdom accuse him of…

All the while, his daughter’s glare didn’t leave his mind. Her words burned him like acid. Moving through their den became indescribably difficult as time ticked on and his feet dragged to a halt. 

Those looks Opaline flashed him were so decisively clear it was sickening. He let himself believe someone, maybe even Mara herself was orchestrating the whole thing and waiting for the right time to strike. For what though, he wondered. Mara wasn’t someone who particularly wanted to be in the spotlight, so his popular lifestyle wasn’t at the top of her interest. It did beg the question over just what she thought she was doing as one of the few heads of command. Her profession alone put her hip to hip with him. She had to attend all of the same functions, so why on Dracochen was it so horrendous to be by his side specifically? She knew what she was getting into. It wasn’t like she didn’t. 

“Maybe it’s because your lifestyle blows,” Akuji mentioned as if she was in his head with him. 

Shawn sighed heavily at her intrusion. 

“As if you know anything.”

“Only what she’s told me,” Akuji tutted. 

“...and you think you know more than me? More than her Mate? The one who made her into the woman I knew she could be?”

“You think you made Mara?” Akuji questioned, acidly. “You didn’t make Mara… you broke her.”

“I didn’t break her!” Shaun shot back. “I gave her everything she ever asked for and more. I changed her life for the better.”

“Taking her out of all she ever knew to push her into a life she knew nothing about and was ridiculed about by your servants and those SHE protected is not giving her a life she wanted. Forcing her to stay with you is not being a giving Mate. Mating her and forcing her into broodmotherhood is not a gift… and making her go through it alone is the most cowardly dragonshit I’ve ever had to watch!”

“I didn’t force her to do anything!”

“Lying doesn’t serve you or any super power before you, King,” Akuji spat. “It makes you weak!” she barked. 

“Don’t let your feelings speak for my actions,” Shaun warned her. 

“My feelings have nothing to do with the just and sound accusations coming from Mara herself,” Akuji shot back. “It’s sickening that you don’t know your Mate well enough to know when she’s had enough.”

“And you do?” Shaun argued, shaking his head.

“Unfortunately, I do.”

Shaun hummed at the sound of her response, ready to tear his kingdom to the ground. He wasn’t at fault. He was lied to. Mara didn’t want him the way she said she did. The fact of it was ruining him. None of it was real, or fair, or right. Mara was just toying with him. She would be back. She wouldn’t leave them entirely. She said she wanted this… with him!

“Tell me then. How?” Shaun questioned. “How do you know all of this?”

“It’s hard not to observe what is already there. You’ve been your bastardized way of thinking your whole life, and Mara has had her problems along the way…”

“That she doesn’t talk about…”

“And she has every right not to bring up,” Akuji interrupted. “She does not need to relive something just for your Omega’s satisfaction.”

“That is not why…”

“It is. Your Omega is a glutton for gossip. He wants all of the key ingredients to make his pride soar. He can’t do it alone. So he digs at her until that Alpha’s Omega isn’t the only one destroying her. But please, do enlighten us as to why you think you’re in the clear. You couldn’t have possibly hurt her… right?”