Sold AS The alpha King's Breeder

Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder Chapter 651

CHAPTER 151 : THE BOOK OF MAGIC

*Maeve*

Winter Forest, One and a Half Years Later

Troy came into our room like a battering ram, his shoulders and hair dusted with a thick layer of snow. He gave me a boyish grin as he shook himself off and began to unwind the scarf from his neck.

“What have you been up to?” I asked as I eyed him from the foot of the bed where I was pulling on a pair of thick socks over my wool pants.

It was another frigid day in Winter Forest. Outside our bedroom window, the stars were dense, the moon casting long icy shadows over the castle grounds below.

“I walked Luke to school,” he gruffed, hanging up his damp sweater near the fireplace.

I couldn’t help but arch my brows and chuckle to myself as I eyed Troy’s snow-coated pants and the damp spots around his knees and elbows.

He caught my gaze and rolled his eyes before continuing to undress. “He fought me the whole way.”

“It almost looks like he won,” I mused, bending down to fetch my warmest boots.

We’d been living in Winter Forest for a year now, and Lucas was worse than ever. He’d been home-schooled by a private tutor when we lived in Avondale, but we thought Winter Forest would be a great place for him to broaden his horizons and make some new friends. He was attending the same school where Rowan and I had once been students, and at first, it had gone well.

But recently Luke had been acting out, even sneaking out of class or not showing up altogether. He was running with a group of boys his age, having sword fights with icicles and throwing snowballs at unsuspecting passersby while hiding behind snow berms on the way to the market square.

One of his friends was named Brady, and he was a vampire. That wouldn’t have mattered much to us at all, had it not been for Brady’s mother coming to the castle, dragging Brady by the ear, to complain about Luke’s “bad influence.”

I didn’t blame her in the slightest. It hadn’t been the smoothest of transitions for the vampires who settled in Winter Forest. Aside from Crimson Creek, Winter Forest was now home to the largest population of vampires, all of them refugees from the Realm of Night. Most were families or women and children who had lost their fathers and husbands during the war. Brady was one of the lucky few to have both parents still living.

His father worked closely with Troy training young warriors. His mother was a seamstress and one of the matriarchs in the community of vampires who now lived amongst us. She worried about fitting in, about her safety as well as the safety of her family.

Winter Forest had been more welcoming than most packs, but there were still a few people who feared the vampires. Having little vampires running around being menaces wasn’t a good look, but neither were the prince’s antics. And Luke was, I was sure, the ringleader in his little gang.

Luke had been acting out, and any attempts to help him assimilate to our new life in Winter Forest seemed to push him further into his devious behavior. He wasn’t used to being an only child. He missed having his brothers around. We missed having his brothers around, too.

“Brady and Luke are starting warrior training today after school,” Troy said as he pulled a fresh sweater over his shoulders, smoothing it over his chest. I blinked up at him, c*****g my brow. He shrugged, striding over to me and kissing me on the forehead. “I have to wear him out somehow. Both of them. Brady’s father is one of the trainers, and it was actually his idea.”

they a

next to me on the bed. “And Luke finished them off. I spent yesterday afternoon talking to their parents. Something has

Troy ran his hand down my back, then put his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. “It’s not your fault,” he

like my fault. I uprooted

been, and always will be. He needs an outlet for his energy, and if he wants to fight like

a moment, then reluctantly released me, a glimmer of longing behind his eyes. “What are you getting all

the bed and striding toward our closet. I opened the door, looking over my shoulder at him. “I’ll be back in

aren’t you?” He rose from the bed as I tossed him a pair of socks, his mouth twitching into a smile that warmed me from the inside out. I hoped to carry some of that warmth with me today while I trekked into the unforgiving chill with Clare, lugging that Goddess-forsaken spell book over ice and knee-deep snow to where I hoped would be its

I replied, taking a shaky breath as I turned back to the closet to finish getting dressed. “It’ll be

of a seldom used closet on the upper floors of the castle for months now, out of sight and out of mind. It was Clare who came to me yesterday, telling me with

of magic didn’t belong in our world. We had no use for it. We prayed we

today, too?” Troy asked,

long, shallow breath. “I did yesterday. I’m taking a break for a few days,” I replied, but he narrowed his eyes at me.

been doing too much,” he said, running his tongue along the inside of his lower lip. “After you get back from your errand, you should take a break for the rest of

know that’s not going to

“You’re burning yourself out.”

was right. The past year had been the busiest year

was the White Queen now. This was my pack, my

only person who could give the vampires what they needed to survive in our

***

softly as we made a path through the snow toward the mouth of the river. The river that looped around Winter Forest met the inlet not far from where we were now, and crossing the frozen mouth of the river was the

replied with a sigh, shifting the weight of my heavy backpack. The book weighed as much as a small

mature vampires need at this point. The children who are taking the supplement are able to

could face Clare, who was walking a few paces behind me. She raised

once a week, and the kids can play

“Then it’s working–”

shoulders relaxed a bit as we caught our breath, our faces lifted to the first inklings of late winter sunshine that

sometimes multiple times a week. There were other people willing to donate the life-giving nutrients the vampires needed to survive, of course, but there

the first spring I’d spent as the White Queen. After a dose of my blood, some of the vampires were able to handle an hour or so of sunlight without their skin reddening and blistering. Plus, just a taste of my blood

so-called “lower vampires” now that we’d been living in close quarters with them for a while. They could eat the same kinds of foods we did. They had a similar culture and lived in family groups like we did. They matured fully around the age of twenty and aged slowly from then on. Not immortal, so to speak, but some of the vampires I’d met who looked elderly were several hundred years old, and even some of the young looking one were

and few between, but there were enough to fill classrooms in the school in Winter Forest. Two vampire babies had been

even been a few weddings between vampires and shifters, and a few of those unions had produced pregnancies. One of

her father, Henry, was a shifter. She had shifter powers but didn’t need blood to survive. Whether she’d inherit the