Chapter 2 Princess Alexandria Hale

Alex stood in the middle of their little towns' vegetable garden looking down at one hundred dead plants in disgust. Yesterday they’d been green and healthy. Thick green lush plants flowering and preparing to fruit. Today they were wilted, laid across the ground. Fainted from some unknown evil force. Bean vines were crispy and stick like. Tomato plants had given up hope. Even the raspberry bushes had lost their leaves leaving its prickly skeleton behind.

They’d been fine last night. How had she killed every single one of them in less than 24 hours?

“Oh no! Wha happen?” Ms. Chen asked from the fence behind her. The little old ladies voice was heavy with the Chinese accent of her heritage.

“I don’t know Ms. Chen.” Alex sighed. Hands on her hips she kicked at the dirt in frustration.

“Is ok. We go market.” Ms. Chen assured waving her wrinkly hand in the air. “You come. Breakfast ready.” Shoulders sagging Alex turned away from the massacre.

“You don’t have to make us breakfast Ms. Chen.” Alex reminded taking her arm while she hobbled slowly across the uneven brick walkway.

“David go get milk. Lou make waffle with Sir Cole.” Ms. Chen said.

The neighbors were out, sitting on their porches, sweeping their walkways. Children ran through yards, playing games that only they knew the rules too. There was a chorus of good mornings and lifted hands in greetings as they walked down the street toward the cottage.

It was the house she’d grown up in with her father and David. It was a modest home for a man who was the most sought-after physical trainer. He’d even done work with the Kings elite knights. Even now four years after his death the name Hale was spoken with reverence. He could have made a lot of money and lived in a big mansion if he had wanted to. But Stephen Hale had not been one for luxury houses, sparkling pools, and servants.

Alex’s childhood home was a simple stucco cottage. Wooden floors were worn and stained with time and the occasional scorch mark from a temper tantrum. Single pane windows with wooden frames that rattled and let the wind sneak through when it stormed.

He’d picked, cut and planed the tree that made the kitchen table. Carved the fireplace mantle from a 100year old burl his mother had found when she was young. And the post between the kitchen was notched with hers and Davids height from the moment they were born. Years and names meticulously carved into the oak.

The front yard was bordered by lavender bushes their purple blossoms bright against the dark green foliage and grass backdrop. Chickens clucked around scattering dramatically when they walked past. A calico momma cat was stretched out on the front porch nursing her kittens. Perfectly content and unafraid of the dog that sat at the edge of the yard desperately wanting to chase her.

The sounds of Lou’s soothing creole filtered through the open windows. Talking nonsense, his deep baritone contrasting three-year-old Coles lighter tone. Cole was explaining how he had gotten yet another skinned knee.

He’d been an accident but was in no way unwanted. A drunken night at a bar that had ended in a motel room with a man Alex didn’t know but couldn’t forget. It hadn’t been long after her father had died. She’d been overwhelmed with grief and the heaviness of his confession.

She was the Princess.

David wasn’t her brother; he was her bonded guardian.

Everything about her childhood had fallen into place. Stephen had always been excessively worried about her safety. As though she was somehow sought after more than any other person in their little town.

He’d trained her like one of his soldiers. Ruthlessly building her strength. Forcing her to master everything. Hand-to-hand. Weapon handling. Strategy. Accepting nothing less than perfection. She hadn’t been able to go anywhere without David. Tethered to her like an appendage.

Being the Princess put a target on her back. She would be coveted and hunted by not only rogues wanting to take power but by the future winners of the Blood Race.

An unforeseen problem two people in love hadn’t considered. Their love affair had started when they’d been teenagers. When Cassandra had still been the Princess. Long before she had become Queen. A secret friendship. A forbidden love. One of those sweet gestures and moments people only read about.

When Cassandra had come of age she’d been banded and handed to the Hierarchy like a brood mare going to market, taking over the thrown for her mother who’d passed in childbirth. Power hungry. They used Queen Cassandra and discarded her. A possession that gave them control. A symbol. A status figure to stand next to them and give them an heir, give them their power.

When Alex had been born the Queen’s hand maiden had snuck the baby out of the Palace and delivered her to Stephen. To this day there was still a bounty for whoever found the Princess. It had been a lot for a twenty-one-year-old to hear with her fathers last breath. Everything she’d ever thought she’d known shattered in an instant.

She’d run. Run from home. Run from David. Just run.

By the time she’d stopped all she’d wanted to do was forget. So, she’d stopped at the first bar she’d come to…and drank. Heavily. Concoctions of alcohol and fairy dust. She drank so much she didn’t even remember the man approaching her. She just remembered him being in front of her. Bright silver eyes that seemed to glow in the dim light. The breath stopping desire to have him.

Almost four years later her skin tingled when she thought about his strong hands on her body. How they’d been firm and demanding, but velvet soft and gentle. Her skin had been on fire. Everywhere he touched lit up.

She remembered the curl of his dark hair over his forehead. The feel of the cheap sheets at her back, his rough palms against her thighs. The way he’d held her eyes when he’d pushed into her, and how it had felt like it had completed a part of her she didn’t even know what incomplete.

He’d groaned into her neck with an edge of desperation. His hard body shuttering with every move like he was struggling to wait for her. The feel of his lips and tongue possessively claiming hers. How it felt like she had broken into a million pieces.

She could feel him humming under her skin, a constant sound in the back of her mind. Not annoying so much as present. She didn’t even know his name. She hadn’t stayed to ask. Slipping out with the early morning sun streaking bright yellows across the sky.

But she saw him every day. In the curl of her son's dark hair. The way his gray eyes flashed silver when he was excited or angry. That little sassy smirk he got when he knew he was getting away with something.

They flashed brightly when Cole saw Alex step through the door. He launched himself from the stool, abandoning his breakfast to throw himself into her arms. Alex caught him lifting him high in the air.

Lou stood at the counter pulling a final waffle out of the waffle iron. A giant of a man with dark chocolate skin. The Griffin looked awkward and out of place with an apron tied around his waist. His smile warm. His voice smooth.

“Come sit Cher, foods ready.” His Cajun accent thick warm honey. Cole ran back to the bar, climbing up on his stool, launching into a detailed explanation of how plants grow. Not in the technical way an adult wood. In a way only a child connected to the earth could.