Empress Khione: Her Revenge

The Wolf King and Fox Spirit

Khione stood stunned for a few moments before she asked, "Your mate marked you before he rejected you?"

Princess Electra's eyes held a distant look to them, as if half of her soul just escaped to the past.

"My lover took what he needed from me and then left me to die," she said in a heart-wrenchingly sad voice. Her eyes darkened even further before she continued to tell her story. "Unlike wolves, foxes don't have mates so we fall in love just like a regular human. I was young and naive, and I fell for someone who lied to me only to betray me. He was a wolf, and he told me that although I do not feel anything, I was his mate. He also told me that because of my nature, we needed to keep our relationship quiet. His family and friends couldn't know because he was afraid they would kill me. Foxes are evil by nature after all. I loved him, so of course I believed him. That was my first and main mistake. 

"I later found out that there was a prophecy about a wolf king and the fox spirit. Fox spirits, or nine tailed foxes, are shape-shifting foxes that have nine lives. Each of our tails represent one life."

As Princess Electra said that, she made her tails visible to Khione. However, Khione only counted six tails.

"According to the prophecy, if the wolf king mated with the fox spirit the same way he would his true mate, her tails would be his and his life would lengthen nine-fold. The condition was that the fox spirit must be truly in love with him."

Princess Electra scoffed and looked down at her hands in anger before her dark gaze met Khione's eyes once again.

"It was your mother who told me what the king was doing to me. But I was so hopelessly in love that I didn't listen to her. I just thought she had an agenda against me because I was a fox spirit. But it turned out to be true and I was just an ignorant fool. I ended up falling for his lies and so I mated with him. But he killed me right in the middle of it." 

Khione gasped, shock more than clear on her face. She didn't understand how the nine-lives concept still worked so she couldn't figure out how Princess Electra managed to come back to life. 

"Once the fox spirit's life ends, our tail that is responsible for our current life transfers all its magic to the next tail. However, before the magic could transfer to the next tail, it was stolen by the wolf king. So instead of me coming to life, his life was extended." 

"How did he do that?"

"With the help of the royal alchemist," she spat. "Because I had mated with him, my fox spirit was in a sense, connected to him. So it wasn't a difficult transfer at all. My fox willingly handed over our life to him." 

Khione was not aware that alchemists had such powers. Jassper and his father were the only alchemists she had ever known, but even her textbooks hadn't ever described such powers. 

"How did you end up waking up?" Khione asked. Surely if they wanted all her lives, they could have easily taken it. There was no way she would have survived however, Khione had seen that Princess Electra still had six of her tails left. 

"The fox spirit's power is too strong. No one, no matter how much of a powerful being they are, could handle such power. They King's body managed to handle the power of three tails, after that, his body shut off and needed to recuperate. What you need to know is that the process of the transfer is very fast. As soon as we die, the magic beings to transfer straight away. So when he passed out, the alchemist lost the chance to transfer the magic to him and so I woke up.

"When I woke up, I was locked in a dark dungeon. I don't know how long I stayed there but it must not have been very long because I'm sure the King would have returned to finish what he had started." The princess stopped speaking and her dark expressed lightened a little bit. "It was your mother who found me and saved me from that Hell. I'm not sure how she did it, but she managed to help me escape undetected. She brought me to her family and that did not end too well." 

"What do you mean?" 

"Fox spirits are known as evil spirits who are out for blood. Your mother's pack were superstitious so they believed that having an evil spirit in their pack would bring calamities upon them. Your mother fought hard with her parents until they agreed to let me stay as long as I resided in the mountain and never stepped foot outside. It worked out for me and kept me safe this entire time. But your mother was so angry that she left and told them she'll never return. And she really didn't."

That was an entirely different story than what Khione had always known. She was told that her family didn't accept her relationship with Khione's father which was why she was not welcome. Khione couldn't believe the reversal in the story.

"But looks like she has not forgotten about her good deeds since she sent you to me." 

Khione did not have anything to say to that. However, she did wonder how Princess Electra would even be able to help her. She was confined to the mountain. So far she had managed to make Khione forget about her pain with the power of illusions, however, the bruises on Khione's body did not go unnoticed to her. Even though she couldn't feel it, she could clearly see the damage. 

Although Princess Electra was well aware of Khione's thought process, she ignored it. She had a more important question she was curious about.

"What do you plan to do from now on?" 

It took Khione a while to understand what she meant. Once she did, she quickly responded, "My only goal right now is to survive."

Princess Electra looked disappointed by her answer. It was obviously not the answer she was hoping for.

"You're just going to let him get away with what he did to you?" Princess Electra sounded extremely disgusted as she uttered that sentence. It was as if doing such a thing should have been uncalled for. 

Khione couldn't help but feel offended in place of her mate. Sure, he may have done something extremely cruel to her, but she was sure that it was a spur of the moment type of thing. 

"Then why are you here and not with him?" Princess Electra asked, reading Khione's mind. "If you truly think he marked you only to reject you in the heat of the moment, why did you not return to him?"

Khione swallowed the hard lump that formed in her throat upon hearing the princess say such harsh but truthful words. 

Truth was, Khione desperately hoped that he regretted it and that it was truly a spur of the moment rejection. However, deep down she was afraid that he did actually mean it and that he would only confirm what she already knew if she were to see him again.

"I want to give him some time," Khione tried to convince herself. "Once everything has settled down, I'll find him again." 

"You truly believe that he regrets what he has done to you, don't you?" the princess asked, surprised by how naive the young girl before her really was. 

Not only was she rejected, but she was rejected in the cruelest possible way. He basically left her for dead yet she truly thought he would regret it? 

"I believe that he will eventually regret it."

"Do you want evidence that he does not and will never regret what he has done to you?"

Khione felt her heart break by the ruthlessness in Princess Electra's voice. She knew very well that her mate had rejected her and turned her life into hell overnight. However, she also knew just how strong the mate pull was. Even though he did something so ruthless, she was sure some part of him would regret it. 

"You can not prove such a thing." 

Princess Electra scoffed before she pulled out Khione's phone from her back pocked and held it out to her. 

"Call him," she said. "Call him and tell him to come here." 

"I don't have his number," Khione said, taking her phone from Princes Electra. "And he has no reason to come and see me."

He had rejected her after all. Why would he want to see her with out any reason? If he wanted to see her, he wouldn't have rejected her in the first place. 

"Call his beta," the impatient princess said. She had seen Khione's memories so she was well aware of the fact that Khione and Otis had shared numbers that fateful night. "And tell him that you're pregnant." 

"What?" Khione gasped. "I can not tell such a lie!" 

"You can and you will," the princess ordered. "No wolf, especially an alpha, would ever reject their own child. If he accepts the baby, then I will bow my head and apologise for my harsh words."

Khione could not believe that Princess Electra was talking in "ifs". She knew for a fact that he would never reject his heir. The child is his future. He surely cannot hate Khione enough to reject his own heir. So with a determined look, she called Otis and told him what the princess told her to say. 

Although Otis was shocked, and quite weary, he still told his Alpha what Khione had told him. Atlas agreed to meet at the mountain's outskirts. 

"If I go down, won't he be able to tell that I'm not pregnant though?" 

Wolves were able to smell their offspring even before birth. There was no way he would fall for such a lie so Khione was afraid that it would anger him further and cause him to reject her a second time.

"Don't be silly," Princess Electra told her, "I'm not send you down. I'm sending an illusion of you down. I'll delude them into believing she's the real you and that she's pregnant." 

Khione did not have a response to that. It made sense but at the same time, Khione wondered why she didn't just send her down and give him the same sense illusion. But she did not want to question the princess's actions and despite hearing Khione's thoughts, the princess did not elaborate. 

Instead, she told her to sit and wait until he arrived. And by the look on her face, she was confident that everything would go just the way she was expecting it to.