Kiara

It has been a month and a half since Alpha Maseno took me in, and I have never seen him since the day he walked to the ward. The only person I have been seeing is Maria, who is now busy taking care of her new hospital.

Yes, she is no longer Alpha Maseno's personal doctor. I just came to the fact a week ago that, although she was Alpha Maseno's doctor, she wasn't permanent. She was only doing her attachment, and she was assigned to work with Dr. Kedeva, who is the real Alpha Maseno's personal doctor.

Because Maria is busy and she comes to see me once in a while, I made friends with Beta Sony. He is two years older than me, and he has been a true gem.

One day, when we were at his office playing a coffee date, I asked him if he had any idea what Alpha Maseno needed to talk to me about. For the past one and a half months, I have slept with guesses in my head, wondering what it is that he wants to talk to me about.

"You zoned out again." Sony snapped his fingers to get my attention.

I flashed a cheeky smile at him. "I am just thinking, what does Alpha Maseno want to talk to me about?" I sighed.

I watched as he knitted his brows, a smile forming on his lips.

"What's funny?" I asked him while going to sit on his side. He came to my room early in the morning, saying he had a surprise for me. I sprung out of bed, took a shower, and ate my breakfast on the way to his office, only to realize that he needed help arranging his shelves.

His office was nothing but a mess. There was something he was looking for last night—that's what he told me—and because he couldn't find it, he ended up pushing everything away from the shelf. Now that he's found what he was looking for, he's lazy and can't rearrange all the books and files on his own.

"Hello, what are you laughing for?" I snapped my fingers on his front, just like he did with me. He had zoned out, whatever he was thinking about.

"Nothing; I mean, you are such an overthinker." He chuckled while standing to his feet. He stretched his hands, his curly hair, which had now grown so long, falling back to his eyes and behind his neck.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" I stood, copying what he was doing. I pushed my back backwards, smiling that my bones no longer cracked and snapped whenever I tried to stretch.

"Man, it's been a month since Sen said he wanted to talk to you about something important, and he doesn't. In fact, none of us had seen him since that day, but here you are, thinking and pondering. I am sure he has forgotten," he shrugged, bending to sit on his heels.

I sat beside him, my legs crossed, as I picked up a red file, dusted it, and whacked it on top of the other's. We were arranging them according to colors because Sony said if we did that, it would be easy to take them out.

"I am just... you know, I am not used to getting things for free. I am sure there is something he needs from me; if not, why did he save me? Why didn't he let me die?" My voice dropped into a whisper.

Sony sighed and rose to his feet again. "Here," he stretched, offering his hand to me.

Reaching for it, he helped me stand as he pulled me out of his office to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed two cups of ice cream as he led me to the garden.

"Even if he needs something in return, I am sure it won't be that bad," he said after a long silence between us.

"What do you think he wants from me?" I asked, hoping that whatever he would ask for wouldn't have anything to do with my body.

He remained silent for a while, his eyes straying. "I wish I would answer that, Maria, but I can't. I don't know what he wants." He finally responded.

"You don't?" I asked in shock. "But you are the only person he is close to in this kingdom." I told him.

Yes, although Alpha Maseno had a lot of people surrounding him, only Beta Sony was close to him. I don't know how true this is; it was Maria who told me. He told me that Alpha Maseno wears a poker face twenty-four hours a day but only loosens around Sony.

He punishes anyone who questions him or doesn't do what he asks, but not Sony, who questions him in everything he does, even the obvious ones. I heard that he laughs a lot when he is with him too, something he doesn't do when he is with his family or friends.

"Close? Who told you I was close to Alpha Maseno?" He asked while turning to face me.

"I.." I trailed. Maria did ask me not to tell Sony this because he denies his close relationship with Alpha Maseno. "I heard people saying." I shrugged, hurling my now-empty cup of ice cream away.

"Which people?" He pressed on with the conversation. I should have known; he never lets anything slip by. If it were a conversation, he would never stop asking questions until it was done or his curiosity toward it was satisfied.

"Workers." I shrugged my shoulders.

"Mnh," he hummed while licking his lower lip. After a while, he said, "Everyone says so, but we are not that close. I mean, we may be close, but not to the extent that he tells me what's in his head."

"So, you admit you are close to him?" I smiled.

"Maria," he called my name, a soft laugh escaping his mouth, "I am his beta, for fucks sake. How would we communicate if we were not close?" He asked me, and I nodded, seeing the possibility of that.

"True, you guys need to be close since you are beta and alpha." I nodded.

Sony scooped the last spoonful of ice cream from his cup and left the empty cup lying on the bench we were sitting on. I picked it up, since I have always liked playing throwing games to see how far things can go, and hurled it away.

"What the fuck?" A deep and cold voice asked from where I had hurled the cup. I and Sony stood on the bench and turned to see who was there.

"Alpha Maseno I am sorry I.. I.." I trailed off, not knowing what to say. Feeling his cold gaze on me, I bowed my head, biting my lower lip.

"I can see you have regained so much energy; that's why you are hurling objects here and there. Are you a kid?" He asked while coming closer to me.

"I..." he cut me off.

"When I speak at you, you look at me in the eyes, got it?" He lifted my chin, gripped my cheeks, which were no longer sunken but chubby, and forced me to look at his orange eyes.

"It's not a big deal. Release her," Sony said, slapping his hand off my cheek. I closed my eyes, thinking that I and Sony would be punished, but to my shock, he did release me.

He turned to look at Beta Sony and said, "So this is what you do when I am not home? Relaxing and eating ice cream like a kid instead of taking care of the kingdom?" His eyes were now red. They kept changing colors. From black to orange to red, thus making it difficult to read him.

"I am not like you, confining myself in the office all day in the name of working. Don't you know, we are living in the twenty-first century. I can work anywhere as long as I have this," he said, pulling a black laptop from under the bench, which, honestly, I didn't know he had carried with him.

"I see." He nodded, his jawline rising and falling like someone who was gritting his teeth in anger. "It has been a month since I left, but you have learned how to talk back to me." He tore his gaze from him and turned to look at me.

I quickly avoided his gaze, looking at anything in front of me but not him. "Come with me now!" he demanded, his voice raising a bit when I hesitated.

I looked at Sony, who nodded at me to follow him. I wiped my hands at the front of my dress out of nervousness, my heart thumping wildly.

Yes, Alpha Maseno," I bowed while following him.

His office was large and clean compared to Sony's. It was well arranged, and you couldn't see even a whiff of dust lingering on the ceiling, walls, windows, or tables and chairs. It was sparkling clean. At the end, you can pick up any type of food that falls on the ground and eat it.

"Are you waiting for a trumpet?" He asked, his deep voice jarring me from my trance.

"Huh?" I turned to face him.

"Do you need a trumpet for you to sit down?" he asked again, leaning his back on his black leather chair and swiveling on it.

"Uh, yes, Alpha." I bowed, pulled the chair in front of him behind me, and sat.

"How do you feel now?" He asked while leaning forward. He rested his elbows on the table, a smirk playing on his face.

"I am much better," I admitted.

"Good, because I think it's time we get into a real business." He cleared his throat and sat upright, his eyes glued to his computer's screen.

My heart started thumping again as silence erupted around us. The only thing making noise was his fingers as they tapped on the keyboard.

"Do you remember everything?" he asked after a while, his gaze still on the computer screen.

"No." I told the truth. After I got back my energy, I tried recollecting my memories but failed. Anytime I force myself to remember something, my head starts hurting.

I talked to Dr. Kedeva about this, and he said I shouldn't force myself to remember everything because it might cause complications for me. He did promise me that the memories of my past would one day come back.

"Mmh," he hummed, pulling me out of my half-conscious state of mind.

"How did you end up at the dessert?" he asked me.

"I was escaping," I responded.

"You were escaping?" He raised his head to look at me. He brought his fingers under his chin and interjected them. He rested his chin above them and asked, "I thought you didn't remember your past. How come you remember that you were escaping?" He raised his brow.

My heart faltered. I cleared my throat, and after a while of thinking, I said, "When I first came here, I used to have nightmares every night." It's from them that I know I was escaping from someone."

"What kind of nightmare was this?" He asked, his full attention now bestowed on me. I nearly thought he was a doctor and not an Alpha.

"Some people are chasing me. Two men. One holding the same axe as the one that was extracted from my shoulder." I explained.

"I see, so why were they causing you trouble?" Are you perhaps a drug dealer?" He asked me.

"D-drug dealer? No, I have never done that." I said, shaking my head in denial.

"But you don't remember your past, Maria. How can you say you were not a drug dealer? Or perhaps..." he trailed off, his gaze sweeping over me, and said, "You were a thief. You stole something from them, and that's why they were after you."

I choked on my saliva. I couldn't say anything anymore because, as he had said, I don't remember my past. So either of these things must be the truth. I doubted, though: how can I be a thief or drug dealer?

"Anyways, let's get into the real discussion." He cleared his throat. I nodded while waiting to listen to whatever he had to say.

"It's a del Maria. If you want to stay here in my kingdom and have my protection from whoever you are escaping, you have to pay. I bet you of all people know this." He tilted his head sideways.

My heart nearly jumped into my throat. "Y-yes, A-alpha Maseno. I know."

"Good. Now here is the deal: I need an heir for this kingdom, but I don't have one yet. So, I'll need you to be the surrogate. After you give birth, I'll give you everything you need, and you will go to whatever place you want." He paused, waiting for his words to sink into my brain.

"What if I don't want it?" I wanted to ask him but remained silent.

"If you don't want," he started as if he had read my mind, "I will throw you out of this kingdom and let the man whom you were escaping come after you. Deal?" he smirked.