Help! Five Beast Alphas Want To Breed Me!!(BL)-Chapter 300: Sapphire Gardens

Song for this Chapter: Human by Rusty Clanton

Zephan;

I hardly bring many people here.

In fact, I never bring anyone here.

The path is narrow, half-swallowed by ivy and silverleaf vines.

It’s curled everywhere like a beautiful defence. Curled along the pasty way and wrapped around the collapsed archway, most of the palace no longer remember exists.

The stone beneath our feet is cracked and softened by moss and time, and. Every step feels like trespass, but how can I trespass in a place I created?

Aunt Selthía walks beside me in silence.

She does not ask where we are going, and she does not rush me. That alone tells me she senses the weight of what I am about to show her.

... How important it is to me.

When I push the last curtain of vines apart, the air changes.

Warmth welcomes my skin first. Then beautiful light bathes me.

My hidden garden opens before us like a slice of a world no man was meant to see.

Golden light is what constitutes this beauty.

Not the harsh brilliance of coins or a crown, but a softer glow.

A gentle, breathing glow. Hundreds upon hundreds of sapphire flowers bloom across the clearing, their petals luminous and golden, catching the sunlight and bending it into something almost divine.

Each blossom pulses faintly, like a slow heartbeat, and the entire garden hums with quiet magic.

Aunt Selthía stops walking beside me, and I hear her breath catch.

I feel what she feels, even after all these years. The familiar prickle begins to form along my skin, subtle at first, then sharper.

Red rashes rise along my wrists and crawl up my neck, with heat itching beneath the surface.

My nose tingles, and a sneeze escapes me.

Then another.

I lift the sleeve of my robe and press it to my face, already bracing myself for the impact these flowers would have on me.

Behind me, Selthía turns slowly.

Her eyes are wide in shock and awe as she stares at my garden.

The golden garden that consists only of Sapphire flowers. These golden flowers go by many names. But Sapphire is the one name I like the most.

"These..." she whispers, with her voice shaken.

"These are sapphire flowers." She notes, and I nod.

"They’re... alive," she breathes, andI hear the longing in her voice.

"I thought they were all destroyed... I... I ordered that they all be destroyed." She says softly, and another sneeze escapes me before I can stop it.

My skin itches, and it’s a familiar discomfort that has long since become background noise.

My poison and antidote.

She looks at me sharply now, noticing my reaction to the garden.

"Zephan—your hands—" She begins, but I cut her off.

"I know," I say gently.

"I’m allergic," I say flatly, and she blinks at me.

"Not like Zethar, but enough," I confess further, and her gaze travels across my neck, my wrists, the heat I can feel creeping along my jaw.

Confusion and something like horror crosses her face as she steps closer to me.

"Then why," she asks slowly, "are you standing here? Why... do you have this garden? Did someone do this against my command?" She questions in worry, and I smile.

I walk past her, deeper into the garden.

The flowers lean toward me as I pass, responding to the magic in my blood. The hum of the garden deepens... it wraps around my bones like a venomous lover, and my skin burns.

However, beneath it all... there’s something else. There’s relief... This... grounding, peaceful feeling.

"Zepha, explain to me." She probes, and I turn to her with a smile on my face.

"This garden," I begin,

"Is the reason I can moult without pain." I whisper, and she stiffens.

I stop at the centre of the clearing, where the light is strongest, and turn back to face her.

"When I was younger, my moulting cycles were... wrong. Too slow. Too rigid. My scales would crack before they shed. It was agony... You know that." I pause, and she takes only a step closer.

"The healers didn’t offer much help. They tried... but failed." I add, and her lips part.

"The sapphire flowers cradle serpentine magic," I continue.

"They regulate energy flow. They soften what hardens too fast... and Anu grind of our magic is an enemy to our curses... so the flowers help me. But at a cost." I explain, and she looks at the garden again.

At the impossible abundance of flowers that ought no longer exist on castle grounds.

"And you grew all of this?" she asks faintly, and I smile in pride.

"Yes," I reply proudly, and the confusion in her expression only grows.

"How?" She pushes in confusion as she takes another step, and I hesitate.

The memory rises whether I invite it or not, and this time I don’t even try to fight it.

"Remember when I was ten?" I croak.

"The first time Father sent Zethar and me back to Nagari to body..." I add, but stop, and her shoulders tense.

"You had a sapphire garden then. Remember?" I continue carefully

"It was... official. Maintained. Guarded. It was beautiful." I add, looking around my garden.

I remember that day too clearly. The day I almost lost my brother.

Zethar had always been reckless. Curious. He hated more than now, being told no, especially by guards who spoke to us like we were fragile things.

I remember his grin as he managed to slip past the guard’s notice.... I remember the way I followed him, with my heart in my throat, because someone had to look after him.

No one knew he was allergic. Not yet...

Not until he collapsed in the middle of the garden nearly died when trying to carry me out.

"He stopped breathing," I say quietly.

"Do you remember?" I ask, and Aunt Selthía’s face drains of colour.

"I remember," she whispers in what almost sounds like shame.

"My brother was dying," I say flatly.

"I remember the screaming. The healers... You."

My voice stays steady only because I have told myself this story so many times it has worn smooth... Too smooth for the impact it left.

"You were terrified, and angry," I note... not accusing.

She closes her eyes.

"You ordered the garden destroyed," I remind her. "Burned. Uprooted... ruined. Every last flower. You wanted none left... Even though it belonged to our Mother, and it was the only thing of hers you felt connected to." I whisper, and a tear slides down her face.

"I was trying to protect you," she says hoarsely.

"I know," I reply.

That is the cruellest truth of it. I understand how difficult it must have been to ask the guards to destroy that garden.

The garden, I was told, my mother tended to every day. Mother was also allergic. But Aunt Selthía was not. Yet Mother loved these flowers, and Aunt Selthi didn’t.

That changed after Mother’s death, and yet to keep us safe, she ordered the destruction of that garden.

We stand there, with the flowers’ golden light between us, and the beat burns hotter under my skin.

"After everything was cleared," I continue my story, "one flower survived."

Her eyes snap open in surprise.

"Accidentally, of course." I quickly add.

"It was hidden under a fallen stone. No one noticed it." I add as I smile faintly.

"I did," I add, and the silence stretches.

"I took it. I hid it. I planted it here. I didn’t know if it would survive." I begin again, and she finishes my sentence.

"Yet it did," she whispers.

"Yes."

She looks around again, stunned.

"I came here every day. I learned how to care for it. One of the palace gardeners helped me. Quietly. He never asked questions. He only told me stories about how his mother loves these flowers..." I smile.

My skin itches harder now, and another sneeze shakes me.

"I grew this garden because of that day," I confess, and she raises a brow slowly.

"Because you felt bad?"

I shake my head in negation.

"Because it was the first time I thought you might love us," I respond, and her breath stutters.

"You were terrified of losing Zethar, so you destroyed something you loved because it almost killed him. And in my childish mind... that meant something." I whisper, and the truth sits heavy between us.

"I thought that if I kept this memory alive, then that feeling might be real. That one day... it might come back... come true." I add, and I notice her hands trembling softly at her sides.

"So I tended to that flower... to this garden. Even when it hurt. Even when my skin burned. Even when it made me sneeze until my eyes watered." I add with a little laugh.

"It felt fitting... Less lonely... warm." I whisper in a tone that drops and dies into the ground like a drop of water.

"Zephan..." she whispers.

"I didn’t grow this garden for anyone. I grew it for myself." I add as I finally meet her eyes.

"For the boy who believed love could exist, even if it hurt."

Tears spill freely down her face now.

"I never knew," she cries.

"I never—"

"I know. That’s why it stayed hidden." I cut her off, and the flowers pulse brighter around us, responding to the emotion in the air.

"I don’t need you to fix the past," I say.

"Let this garden and things of old hold it." I plead, and she steps forward slowly, reverently, like someone approaching an altar.

"I’m sorry," she whispers as she gets to me and cradles my cheek.

I nod.

"I know," I reply before another sneeze escapes me, and despite everything, she lets out a broken laugh through her tears.

"You’re ridiculous," she says softly, and I smile.

"Perhaps," I reply, and I watch more tears spill from her eyes.

"You precious, naughty child." She sobs this time, and I feel tears bite my eyes again.

We stand there together in the golden light, surrounded by memory.

"My precious, stubborn boy." She adds, and this time, I laugh.

She reaches for me and hugs me. And for the first time... for the first time in so long... I feel my inner child.

Released, happy... and held