* Bonus Update! Cheers to 100 collections!
"Fucking hell," King Agust complained for the hundredth time in the past hour since he kicked the Alpha out.
He had tried to get some sleep, however, his Erasthai's unusual whimpers while he threw him out weren't leaving his head. It was haunting him and Agust despised that state. It reminded him of how much of a monster he had become.
He knew he was too cruel with his erasthai, and yet he had still done it. He so desperately wanted to blame it on his lack of sleep for the past fifteen days, but he had watched the Alpha fall asleep on him and for seven hours he had held the Alpha safely in his arms.
He had made the poor Alpha feel safe only to throw him out like yesterday's trash. It wasn't fair, and the worst part of it was that Agust knew it too, and he didn't know what the fuck he needed to do to make things right.
"He should be sleeping anyway," Agust said as he looked at the trail of blood from his bed to the door. It pissed him off and he wanted to punish himself, but this time, no amount of punishment could make up for the fact that he had been unnecessarily cruel to the man he loved.
It was crazy and the fact that he thought back to his damning confession, made Agust wish to die that instant. He tried choking himself with his magic, in the hope that this would help him out of his guilty conscience, even though he knew he could only knock himself out.
He was so close to succeeding with choking himself when he heard the Alpha's faint broken voice.
"Help me, please," Agust heard and he didn't waste any time rushing out of the door stark naked, as he conjured clothes along the way and put them on. He could smell the blood and he could hear the whimpers.
He wanted to remind himself he was a monster, but then he already knew that.
What he wasn't going to do, however, was to let someone hurt his erasthai. In less than five seconds, King Ming Xiao Zhu was right in front of Alpha Park whose tears were rolling down his face as he threw his hands around like he was defending himself.
"What?" Agust whispered defeatedly, as he watched his erasthai sigh in defeat, before the poor Alpha's hands fell to his sides, his eyes letting out even more tears. He could see the terror in the Alpha's eyes, even though they were shut. He could smell the Alpha's fear.
It was too strong, as was the sound of the heartbreak, again.
"Wake up, Jiminie,'' King Agust said softly to the Alpha who was trapped in his nightmare.
He could see the pools of sweat on the Alpha and he could see how shattered the Alpha looked. Agust could see a few broken bones that were outside the Alpha's flesh and he sighed like he hadn't been the one to do that.
Of course, he was at least smart enough to know that the whimpers weren't because of the intense physical pain the Alpha was feeling, but because of something else, something so out of control that he had to figure out a way out of this for the Alpha, and fast.
"I'm sorry," the Alpha said sadly as he gave up, an act that didn't sit well with Agust because he tapped the Alpha to wake up, but all he got in return were pleas, pleas of being better, pleas of how he wanted to be forgiven. Pleas of a bat being put away.
It was all so confusing to the king that for a moment, the mad king thought he was hearing things. Agust wished it was just his imagination, an illusion so impossible, an illusion that his pretty little Erasthai was in immense pain, the kind that even he would never be able to help him out of.
All of this was unexpected and King Agust thought of the endless things that could have gotten the Alpha to this point. Of course, he was certain that he had been the bastard in all of this, but as devilish as he was, he had never hurt the Alpha intentionally.
Or had he?
It was hard to tell, given he was himself, the mad king anyway.
"It's me, Jiminie. Wake up, my beautiful baby, please," Agust said softly and lovingly, as he shook the Alpha in a hopeless bid. However, even he could tell that the pretty Alpha was far too gone in his nightmare. So Agust did the only thing he could at the moment.
He invaded his mate's subconscious. He knew it wasn't a good thing to do, but he knew he needed to wake his Jiminie up, and if it was a nightmare that was keeping him like this, then he could make the nightmare go away.
However, what Agust saw there, made him snap himself back to reality, as if to see for himself whether it was real or not.
"I'll kill them all," Agust promised as he tried to catch his breath from the intensity of the horrors he had witnessed.
He had been sure his father was the worst and the trashiest of all fathers in the universe, but he never thought that Alpha Park's father was the dirtbag that needed to be cleaned instantly, something he would do himself, even if the Alpha pleaded for the bastard's life.
Stuck between instant revenge and making the broken Alpha before him feel better, Agust decided to fix his Erasthai first. He would have enough time to deal with Alpha Park's father and he wouldn't forgive the atrocities he had witnessed.
No child needed to go through what Alpha Park had gone through, and Agust was going to make sure no one ever fucked with his mate again.
'You ruined him too, remember?' his subconscious haunted him and Agust let out a low growl as if this wasn't the time for his guilty conscience to be eating at him.
Diving back into Alpha Park's nightmare, the Lycan King used his magic to stop everything that was in there. If anything, he created a lock box in the Alpha's subconscious and filtered out every little terrible thing that anyone had done to the Alpha, and put it in there.
Of course, he knew that the Alpha wouldn't ever forget the harsh experiences he had gone through, but the King hid those memories in such a manner that they would never recur to the Alpha in the form of nightmares or cruel horrors again.
They would never be the memories that scared his little Erasthai. He was protecting the beautiful Alpha from himself.
'Will you hide your guilt there too?' his conscience bothered him again, but the King had an answer to that.
'No,' King Agust said to no one in particular, once he was done filtering and healing every broken piece of the Alpha. He made it seem like the Alpha had managed to heal from his past traumas and that he could live his life as a normal healed and powerful Alpha.
However, King Agust didn't hide the cruel things he did to the Alpha. If anything, despite the thorough memory cleaning he had done and the lock boxing of the Alpha's horrible memories, Agust left the cruel memories that involved him intact.
It was almost like he wanted the Alpha to remember what he had done to the man. He knew that would make the Alpha despise him more, but to adjust to having Alpha Park hating him was better than having the Alpha love him. He didn't want love. He couldn't have love.
"Let's get you cleaned up, my beautiful," the King said as he snapped back to consciousness, cast a sleeping spell on the Alpha, cleaned him up, healed him, and then put the Alpha in bed.
He took one long look at the frail pretty Alpha in his bed and his heart clenched at what he had done earlier. He had ruined the Alpha's innocence and done worse than anyone could have, but was that Agust's current regret?
Once he was done, Agust left.
He left his lonely, highly fortified palace and went to the one place where he would shamelessly release his anger.
He was going to Kiyoto, to Alpha Park's father, Park Dae Hee.
Agust was going to avenge his mate.