birth of a star

The Alpha King’s Runaway Mate

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Chapter 22: birth of a star

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Regina wakes first.

This time, she awakens with the immediate and keen awareness of precisely where she is - that is to say, not her own bed, but the one she’d just shared with King Mattel.

Alpha Mattel, who, when Regina looks to her right, is evidently still asleep.

Regina can’t help but to stare.

In sleep, the Alpha’s features seem impossibly young - with none of the heavy presence that bears on him like an ever-present weight when the king is awake.

It’s something about his eyes, Regina thinks; those dark, fathomless depths that speak of years much, much beyond the king’s age of twenty nine.

(And there’s a fascination here, too, of being permitted to observe such a feared man from up close - not unlike being permitted into a tiger’s den, when the ferocious tiger is declawed in its slumber.)

“If you leaned in any closer, one would think it is my person people should worry about, rather than yours,” the low, gravelly timbe