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[AGUST]
When the door opened, Agust stilled.
It had been a while since he had been on this side of the realm; a while after he had walked into Jiminie's room again.
And now that he was here, he wasn't sure if he deserved to be here or if this was just another reminder of how treacherous a mate he had been to his Erasthai.
Jiminie was everything good in his life, and the kind had never once had the courage to forget that which was lingering.
For two years, he had stayed out of touch with Jiminie, only ever showing up to remind Jiminie that he was just one of the many people that the mad king cared about.
That he was just a man with a pussy that the king could sheath his cock into and have pleasure of the moment.
But memories were horrors for the mad king, even as he gently put his Erasthai on the bed, his eyes softening and cleansed of all lust. It was as if he needed this bout of clarity to realize that Jiminie, his Jiminie, deserved better.
That he had been the worst Erasthai to the alpha, who had almost given him a child. The king had run away back then. He had left without acknowledging what was between them.
He had insisted on leaving, and despite the lingering truth of what had gotten them to that point, Agust never once talked about it.
All he ever offered were apologies.
General apologies.
Most of which were not precise because the king could definitely have done better.
He could have protected his Alpha mate.
He could have protected the child that was coming and his Erasthai, and yet he failed. That was something she couldn't run away from anymore. Not right now, when life didn't seem to make so much sense.
"Xiao Xiao," Jiminie breathed when he realized the king had stopped in his tracks.
It was as if he had been clouded in cold water, and that nothing was bound to help them through this. The King looked horrified, and yet at the same time Jiminie swore he saw grief in the mad King's eyes.
"She would have been two today... A little princess born of power and love. She would have united our people more than I ever managed to. Our baby... Would have lived, if I had the balls to face that truth," Agust whimpered.
Jiminie felt life get knocked out of him.
He had not wanted this to happen like this.
Not here.
Not at this point.
Not after they had suffered through an attack that cost Kiyoto so many lives.
This wasn't how shit was sound to be and as he looked at the king, the man who had been his form the onset, Jiminie didn't know how to feel. He had thought that he was okay with the way things had happened, but grief never came with a manual.
Grief did have a way of chucking them up over an ad again because even though two years had passed, even though a lot happened in between, there was no denying the emptiness was still there.
And it cut through the void like a lady that had been sharpened for years on end.
"She?" Jiminie asked softly.
He didn't have the strength to be mad at Agust anymore.
He didn't have the will to keep fighting with Agust over what had happened back then.
Sure, losing a child was the worst thing that could have happened to them, but then they were not ready for it, and there was a chance that the baby would have suffered.
They were still new to it all back then, but right now, as Jiminie watched Agust fall to his knees, he couldn't fight him.
They had both lost something that day.
And as much as Jiminie wanted to blame the king for his miscarriage couldn't. Because so much time passed since their baby been killed, not by the people that the king be fucking over the years but by the king's twin.
The evil Ming Chang Zhu.
Of course, Jiminie never once told the king that he knew that little truth, but it was one that he was never going to forget. Perhaps the king also would have to find a way to deal with the grief they both shared, right?
"Funny, right? How I spent years trying to imagine what our child went through and concluded that she was a fighter, one who couldn't let go. A fighter like her Alpha father, a warrior like her Kiyoto family;
"… a survivor like her strong alpha father," Agust said as he sat on the ground.
He had always wondered about a lot of things, but there was no denying that losing their child because of his brother was the one thing that he had never thought would happen.
And it filled the mad king with a kind of rage that even monsters would pay to watch crumble. It was an unfortunate precedent, a reality that didn't make it any better because war was coming.
Hell, it was probably here, and all that the king could think of was his possible little girl and how he would have spooned her shirtless.
How he would have burned everyone to the ground for her.
How he would have killed everyone for her.
How he would have hunted her haters to the ends of the world.
How he would have made sure their daughter remained pure and strong at the same time, despite being born of the devil himself.
Oh, Agust had let himself be haunted and hunted by his lonely thoughts, and now, as he knelt right before Jiminie, he couldn't find a way to make it all better.
"It was an unexpected loss, Xiao Xiao. Neither of us wanted that, and I know you wouldn't have let anyone hurt her. You're protective, and if you had known that we had a child, I know you would have done everything to keep us both safe.
"I know you would have moved heaven and hell just for both of us. I don't blame you anymore, Xiao Xiao. I used to think that you never felt the loss, that it was just a phase for you, that our child meant nothing, but I only just saw your grief.
"I didn't know you grieved the child we lost, and it makes me feel better to know that I was never alone in this. That maybe we handled it all differently, but we were both in pain," Jiminie said softly as he got off the bed and sat on the ground right beside Agust.
He then lay on the floor just enough to rest his head on Agust's lap. It was something that surprised Agust even as the king sat upright and allowed his Erasthai to lean on him.
It was a shocker, but he didn't know what to say to that.
He didn't know how to embrace the loneliness that had been forced upon them.
Agust had always been cruel, controlling, and manipulative, and yet here… he was just a man.
A father mourning his child.
A man mourning his greatest love. He was just Ming Xiao Zhu and the gates knew he wished to remain so. But life isn't always as kind to Agust. And the king knew it too.
"Still, I should have been a good Erasthai, instead of constantly begging for forgiveness only to go back and wallow in my depression," Agust bit back in defeat.