Chapter 194

Carol’s POV

“Please, don’t be mad at me…” Monica said with tears in her eyes.

She sat on my bed with her arm in a sling. She looked pale and exhausted and a part of me felt for the young girl. She was so young that I was surprised she was even working in the first place. She should be in high school living out her teenage years; but instead, she was slaving away in the King’s manor for someone who treated her so badly. I didn’t understand what was going on around here. Maybe I didn’t understand werewolves as much as I thought I did.

I didn’t expect wolves to treat one another in such a horrific way; but then again, I never encountered royals before.

“What are you doing in here, Monica?” I asked her, not bothering to hide the annoyance in my tone. I really didn’t want to speak with her right now; I had nothing to say to her. Maybe if she gave me some time and space, I could come up with some choice words for her, but as of right now, I felt sick to my stomach even being around her. I couldn’t get the look she gave me out of my head as she lay on the ground, accusing me of hurting her.

The lie she came up with on the spot for the King and how she spoke without hesitation as if she had been thinking about this excuse for some time before I arrived. Maybe she had. Maybe this entire thing was planned from the beginning and that’s why Jenna didn’t bother to greet me like the Queen had wanted, because she was too busy plotting against me with her maid.

I pressed my lips in a thin line at the very thought and started to walk towards the doorway. I needed to take a walk and clear my head. But most importantly, I needed to get out of this room and as far away from Monica as I could.

“Please, don’t go,” she pleaded, standing to her feet and then I heard her whimper as she moved her arm in the wrong direction.

I paused and looked at her.

“Please, be careful,” I warned. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself even more while in my room,” I told her coldly as I folded my arms across my chest. “I thought you were a wolf; why haven’t you healed yet?”

I’ve seen with my own eyes that werewolves heal quickly; it’s been a little over an hour since the incident with Monica and it was strange that she hadn’t healed yet.

“It’ll probably heal within the next couple of days,” she said softly, staring at the ground. “I’m not a full werewolf yet. I won’t be until I turn 18 next year. But I have werewolf blood, so I’ll heal faster than a human.”

My heart slammed deep into my stomach; so, I was right. She was only a teenager.

“You are only 17?”

She bit her lower lip and stared at the ground; tears clear as day in her eyes.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I just turned 17 a couple of months ago,” she admitted.

That was even worse; she was freshly 17. She was practically a baby. So, why on earth was she working in the King’s empire and not going to school and doing teenage girl things? How could Jenna treat a minor so cruelly like this?

“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head as I allowed her words to process in my mind. “Why are you working here and not at school? The King mentioned you started to work here a couple of years ago. So, you were only 15 at the time.”

She chewed on her bottom lip and fiddled with her fingers nervously. I wondered if she was going to speak because she had been silent for so long. But then she took a deep breath and lifted her gaze to meet mine.

“I used to go to school,” she admitted. “When I was a little girl, my father died. I was alone with my mother for most of my life and we didn’t really have much money. My mother did what she could, but for the most part, we relied heavily on pack funds to get us through. She worked a little and had some money put away in savings for college. But it was a saving that grew very slow,” she explained.

I found myself hanging onto each word she spoke; watching her facial expressions as she confided in me. I wondered why she was even bothering to confide in me. She had already made her choice, and I wasn’t looking for any excuses. I wrapped my arms around my body like I was trying to hold myself together and I just watched her for the longest time.

“Then, my mother got sick,” she continued, tears filling her eyes again and she had to look away. My heart cracked hearing those words; I couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like for her to grow up under those circumstances and have the one person who cared for you and loved you, falling ill. As a teenager, she must have felt so helpless and alone. “My friend Tilly had told me that there was an opening at the King’s palace as a maid to the princess. Apparently, the last maid didn’t work out… I found out later that she died.”

I gasped and stared at her with wide and shocked eyes.

“How did she die?” I asked, my voice laced with disbelief and grief.

Monica lifted her gaze to meet mine and she narrowed her eyes.

“The rumors are that she fell down the stairs,” Monica murmured. “But I don’t believe it was an accident.”

“You think Jenna killed her?” I asked, a little too loudly apparently because her face paled, and she was quick to shush me.

“Are you trying to get us killed for treason?!” Monica asked.

I took a deep breath, trying to compose myself as best as I could.

“But do you?” I asked, my voice coming out more of a whisper this time.

She bit her lip and looked around the room as if she expected Jenna to jump out of nowhere and scare her. Hell, maybe she would. I wouldn’t put it past her at this point.

“It’s just a rumor,” she murmured. “Nobody really knows for sure. There was one witness, but she kind of went mad and then she died at random. Nobody really knows what happened. But you saw how Jenna treats me… I wouldn’t put it past her to do something as crazy as murder.”

She was right; I could imagine Jenna doing that very thing as well.

“Why exactly are you telling me this?” I finally asked her, ready for this conversation to be over so I could just go to bed and pretend none of this happened.

“Because I need you to understand that throwing you under the bus wasn’t my choice,” she told me, tears spilling out of her eyes. “I’m not that kind of person.”

“Then what kind of person are you, Monica?” I asked, raising my brows.

“I’m a kind person,” she told me, her bottom lip jetting out in a pout. “I’m not the kind of person who would hurt anyone or blame things on someone… I don’t usually lie. But I had to.”

I could see the desperation in her eyes and my heart tugged for her. I realized that I was acting harshly towards a 17-year-old girl, and I wasn’t even sure what her story was. I needed to calm myself down and understand things from her perspective. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself and then I walked over to the bed, slowly lowering myself down so we could talk.

Monica did the same; she tugged at her fingers and kept her eyes fixed on her lap.

“Then tell me the truth about who you are as a person. I need to know if I were to make a judgment call on you,” I told her, keeping my tone calm and collected.

“I’m the kind of girl who would do anything for her family…, especially her mother,” she murmured. “I dropped out of school and worked here full time so I could pay for my mother’s medical expenses. But even then, it wasn’t enough. She needed extensive weekly treatment, and it was too much for me to handle on my own. I couldn’t tell the King about it because he would think of my mother as weak and useless. Some rumors went around the pack for the longest time that the King would turn any packmate into a rogue if they proved too weak to manage on their own. I was so scared of losing her, so I kept her a secret. The pack doctor agreed to keep the secret as well and treat her in private. But it was so expensive; not only for the treatment but buying his silence. It was too much. Jenna overheard me talking about it with Tilly, and she offered to pay the weekly expenses under her father’s nose… but it meant she pretty much owned me.”

Understanding dawned on me as I stared at this young girl.

“Oh, Monica…” I whispered, tears filling my own eyes.

She sat nervously on the bed, still sparing quick glances at the doorway, worried that Jenna would appear at any moment and now I truly couldn’t blame her.

Her mother’s life was at stake and Jenna was holding that over her head.

She wiped the moisture from her tears off her cheeks as she looked up at me.

“She told me that if I didn’t do what she says… she would stop the payments on my mother’s medical treatments and that my mother would die.”