Royal wolf box set, p.30
Royal Wolf Box Set, page 30
“I’m really sorry,” Holly said, feeling bad for having worried them and causing them all a sleepless night. “But Mom wasn’t wrong.”
Rubius gave her a concerned look and Holly explained what had happened with the group of human hunters in the woods.
“If it hadn’t been for Dex, they would have killed me. I have no doubt of that.”
The look on Rubius’ face was one of pure and unadulterated fury.
“It was those same men that Theo and I addressed during your crowning ceremony. We should have killed them then.”
“Well, that probably wouldn’t have made a very good impression on the rest of the townspeople,” Holly said sarcastically. “Besides, Dex said that he had seen other hunting groups in the forest last night too. I imagine that they are preparing for the winter feasts, but there are several groups of men who hide behind their titles as hunters but would be better named as assassins.”
“Yes, that’s what Theo and I have feared all along. We need to figure out how we are going to deal with them before something else happens. You are lucky that your rogue wolf was there to save you that time,” Rubius said.
The way in which her father said, “your rogue wolf,” made Holly feel warm in the deepest parts of her stomach.
“You must be extra careful now,” he warned her.
Holly nodded.
“And you must also be careful of Dex.”
“What? Why Dex?” she asked. “I don’t think he would ever hurt me.”
“Nor do I,” Rubius said. “But let me give you a bit of fatherly advice. I know the temperament of rogue shifters. I was one, remember? And I know that they tend to care solely about themselves. Just be careful to protect your heart.”
“But you don’t care only about yourself,” Holly said. “You care about Mom and Theo and me, and your pack.”
“Yes,” he nodded. “That is true. I do care about all of you—now. But during the time of my life that I was a loner, I cared only for myself and nothing else. It’s a way of survival when you are all alone without a family or a pack to hold onto.”
Holly was a bit dismayed by what her father said. She felt as if Dex might have actually cared about her. Not only did he save her life, but there seemed to be something between them. And not only the physical desire which she could see was obvious, but something else—something that lingered just behind both of their eyes when they looked at each other. Then again, the moments that they spent were either amped up with adrenaline after having dealt with the humans or altered by the intoxication of good ale. She didn’t know whether to put stock in what Rubius said or not, but she kept it in the back of her mind as a precaution just in case.
After their return to the castle, Holly returned to her royal duties. If she had been distracted before, she was even more so now. She thought about the conversation that she had with Dex by the fire, and it made her think even more about what she wanted her queendom to look like. She started to daydream during her routine tasks about what her non-traditional rule will look like. The trick was going to be getting everyone else to buy into it with her. The humans in the kingdom had clung to their rote traditions for so long, and just like Cassandra had told her, the humans feared and disliked change. She would never be able to wrap her head around that or understand what an irrational mindset that was. All of life was change, literally every single moment. What a dull existence to want things to always remain the same.
She thought that her mother would probably stand beside her desire to want to change some rules and reconstruct some of the old ways. Cassandra had the same rebellious and wild streak as her daughter, and she was not one to cling to the past if the future could be changed for the better. Theo would likely not care what she decided to do with her rule, as long as it didn’t negatively affect the packs in the forest. And although Rubius was a bit more overprotective and likely to be resistant, Holly also knew that he would usually go along with whatever Cassandra thought to be best. It wasn’t the royal family that she would have the hardest time convincing, Holly thought. It was the humans.
When Holly went out into the market square, she talked to some of the townsfolk and asked them what they thought of the forest. She asked them if they would ever consider having a picnic or a festival in the woods and was surprised to find that most of them were against the idea. Most of the humans were scared of going into the forest, except for the hunters. When she asked them what they were afraid of, many of them began to talk of old stories and tales of beasts that lurked within the trees and would tear them apart limb by limb. Upon even further pressing, Holly was able to get some of the humans to describe what they thought the beasts looked like, and to her horror, they described wolf shifters. Men that turned into giant wolves and tore people apart with their bare teeth.
It was all such an inaccurate and unfair depiction. No wonder the past hunters who had still believed shifters to exist were on a mission to kill them. The humans were afraid of something that wasn’t accurate. And she was determined to bring the truth to light. When Aeron was alive, he had tried to keep the peace between the humans and the shifters, even going so far as to arrange gatherings where the two species of people would be together, albeit not knowing they were anything other than all human. As crazy as the idea seemed, especially after countless years of keeping their secret as if their lives depended on it—which, at the time, they did, Holly wanted to do something drastic and unheard of. She wanted to reveal the existence of the shifters to the humans, and she wanted to show them that there was nothing to fear. She wanted to bring Aeron’s vision full-circle and do something that even he never dreamt possible. She wanted shifters and humans to coexist together.
Chapter Ten
“Disastrous” would have been an understatement in describing the royal family's reaction to Holly’s idea. As soon as she told them, not a single one of them supported the thought. Not even Cassandra.
“But it is time for the shifters and the humans to coexist in peace,” Holly pleaded. “It’s achievable. I know it is. We just need to remove the fear from both sides.”
“It’s a horrible idea,” Theo said immediately. He couldn’t believe his sister would even consider such a thing. “Did you forget about how a human is responsible for the death of Marquette’s mother? And that if not for her sacrifice, I would not be standing here with you now?”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten that,” Holly said. “But that doesn’t mean that things cannot change and move forward now. Wouldn’t you like your son to grow up in a world where he doesn’t need to fear hunters?”
“Of course I would,” Theo scoffed. “But that world will not exist. And doing what you are suggesting that we do will only result in our annihilation before my son reaches adulthood.”
“Your brother is right,” Cassandra said.
Holly was surprised that her mother was so quick to shut down the idea.
“It is much too dangerous a risk. Even on the slight possibility that some humans might accept us, there will still be those who will not. It is those that will cause fear to spread and death to follow.”
“Then we will take down the ones who are the bad seeds until they are weeded out and only the peaceful humans remain,” Holly said.
She was frustrated. She wanted to make decisions of weight and merit on her own, and she didn’t understand what good If was to be queen if she couldn’t decide what to do in the best interest of the kingdom.
“Aeron would have wanted this,” she said in a last attempt to get them to hear her out. “He would have wanted the humans and the shifters to coexist, just as he had tried to do when he was alive and king.”
“Yes,” Rubius said. “But Aeron attempted to bring unity in a safe manner. There was a reason that he never revealed the shifters to the humans, and that was because he knew what would happen. He attempted peace and unity within the constraints of what needed to be done to prevent carnage from ensuing.”
Holly felt that using the word “carnage” was a bit overly dramatic, but she knew the point that her father was trying to make. After they had talked some more, Theo and Rubius went out, and Cassandra had a more intimate talk with her daughter alone.
“I know that there is a wild ambition within you,” Cassandra said. “And I am very familiar with that feeling myself. I know what it is like not to want to conform to the meaningless royal duties that have been in place so long that no one even questions their worth anymore—and they should. You heard what we all said to you about this idea, and I stick by what was said. It is too dangerous and too risky for everyone involved—our family, the shifters, and even the humans.”
Holly again felt discouraged.
“But,” her mother continued, “I will always tell you to follow your heart. Your heart will always lead you right, and you must listen to it. So take the guidance that has been given by everyone and think through it within your own mind. You will come to the right decision, and when you do, your family will support you.”
Holly didn’t know what she wanted to do. What had at first seemed like such a good idea now seemed to be too reckless, even for her. She was supposed to be a temperate ruler and wise queen, even at a young age. That was what made great rulers, not the willingness to risk your people and yourself. She needed to clear her head. And the only way that she really knew how to do that was to take a run through the woods in shifted form. It was daytime, and she would stick to the areas of the forest where the packs were so that she would be safe. Holly took the hidden tunnels out of the castle this time to avoid any questions.
When she reached the line of trees, Holly shifted and disappeared into the woods. She ran until she could feel the tingling sinew in her muscles and the fiery air burning in her lungs. She ran until it felt as though her fur was rippling like ocean waves in the breeze. And she thought about nothing other than the run. This was exactly what she needed. Holly stayed to the pack territories and avoided straying too far from where she knew someone could hear her if she called. But then, while she was running, Holly saw the black wolf.
Dex. How did he know that I was here?
He ran alongside her and turned his head until their muzzles were nearly touching, and she looked into his reflective eyes. When he ran outside of the pack territories, she followed. She was with him, and so Holly was not fearful of the hunters or anything else. She had listened to what her father had said, but Holly believed Dex did care about her. And like her mother had said to her—she would follow her heart.
They ran together for as long as she wanted to run, and then when her pace started to slow, they ran back toward his den. They hadn’t spoken a single word in their wolf forms, but intuitively, she followed him. When they reached his den, Dex shifted, and Holly stayed as a wolf for a stalled moment as she looked up at him. He was beautiful, dark, handsome, and bulging in every way. Holly hesitated to shift back to her human form. She hesitated to stand there nakedly with him out of fear of what she would be tempted to do. Dex turned and went into his den, and when he emerged a moment later, he not only had pants on, but a shirt that he put on the ground for her to wear. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to not be naked.
When Holly shifted back to human form, she reached for the shirt and slid it over her head. She could feel his eyes trailing over her body as she did. Dex handed her water, and then a blanket, as the two of them went to sit down by the fire that he started to light. They still hadn’t spoken a single word since their run, but it was almost as if they didn’t need to. There was unspoken trust, a comfortableness that had suddenly emerged between them almost instantly, which was inexplicable and amazing. Once the fire was lit, Dex sat down beside her.
“I have heard things in the city,” he said as he watched the fire grow. “Because I am there frequently, and because I am at the tavern where people tend to talk as if their mouths are faucets turned on after a few mugs of ale, I hear much talking between the humans.”
“What is it that you have heard?” Holly asked.
“Things that concern me over your safety and well-being.”
Holly scoffed. It seemed that her safety was at the forefront of everyone’s mind, and she was tired of being afraid. She wanted simply to run and drink ale and not worry about humans that she could snap the necks of with her jaw if only she could be in her shifted form whenever she pleased.
“There are people in the city that are plotting to remove you from the throne,” he said with a serious tone.
“That is nothing new,” she replied. “There have been people trying to remove me from the throne since I was crowned queen, and probably those that thought about it before that.”
“That is true,” Dex said solemnly. “But I’m afraid that their ambition is growing.”
She could see the shadows of concern on his face, and she felt that she could trust him with her idea as well. She thought that maybe he would understand and offer a fresh perspective outside that of her family. But she should have known, being that he was already a loner himself, that he wouldn’t.
Chapter Eleven
“I agree with your family,” Dex said once Holly had finished telling him about her idea to reveal the existence of shifters to the humans in Grenvich. “I think that it’s a very bad and dangerous idea.”
Holly rolled her eyes at him.
“I don’t understand why trying to have everyone live in peace together is an idea that is met with such resistance,” she said in exasperation.
“It’s not the concept that is bad,” he said. “It’s the actuality of it. Your family is right to tell you that it would end in carnage—it would, for both humans and shifters alike. If you truly want to have peace, then everyone should just keep to themselves.”
“Spoken like a true loner,” Holly said sarcastically.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But it is an honest answer. You can’t force species to coexist when they are inherently opposed to it. No more than you can force me to join a pack or become a king.”
Holly chuckled for a minute about the thought of Dex playing at being a king.
“But what if they’re not inherently opposed to it,” she said. “What if they just think that they are, and that if they could only see that there was a better way, they might embrace it?”
“That is an awful lot to risk on a ‘might,’” Dex said. ” Look, I admire your ambition and your good heart, but I fear that exposing the shifters to humans will end up getting you killed, and quite possibly getting us all killed.”
They sat together for a while longer, and then Dex escorted Holly back to the tree line of the forest where she went back through the secret corridors and into the castle. She decided to table her thoughts on the matter for now and listen to the advice that she’d been given by everyone, at least until she felt more clear about what she wanted to do.
As the winter snow began to fall in thick and blanketed sheets, the decorations throughout the city were hung and the festive preparations were still underway. While Holly was at the tavern, enjoying an ale while waiting on the tavern keeper to package up a fresh harvesting of figs for the celebration, some of the townsfolk were eyeing the queen’s presence at the tavern. Some couldn’t keep their mouths closed about it.
“You know,” one of the men across the tavern said, in a voice loud enough for the new queen to hear him. “Some kingdoms might look down upon a queen who is seen at the tavern drinking so much.”
Holly’s patience had already been waning since the last incident, and her short-tempered and strong-willed nature was getting more difficult for her to control. She tried to use witty quips to keep her temper at bay whilst still getting the point across. Most of the time, though, the humans that started trouble were the unintelligent ones, so the quips were frequently lost on their inability to even understand that they had been insulted and mocked at their own expense.
“Some kingdoms might think it strange to have a queen who has more balls than the men in its city,” she shot back.
This particular man may have been rather daft and stupid, but he understood enough to recognize the insult in the queen’s comment. The tavern keeper laughed at her cleverness, which proceeded to make the man even more angry and embarrassed. Holly smirked while she finished her ale, pleased with the clever comment she had thought up on the spot. But when she felt someone’s breath against her neck, she turned to find the man standing close behind her with mace in his hand.
Holly did nothing more than roll her eyes at him.
“I really wouldn’t,” she said.
“Oh?” he sneered at her. “And why is that? Are you afraid that the queen with the big balls is going to cry?”
Holly laughed, and the man didn’t quite know how to take it.
“No,” she said, still laughing. “I’m afraid that I will end up beating your ass so hard that you will end up with your own balls in your mouth.”
The man lost his temper immediately and swung the mace at Holly’s head. But she was a much more skilled fighter than anyone there, and she quickly disarmed and knocked the man down onto the floor.
“Like I said,” she reiterated. “I really wouldn’t.”
The man writhed in pain on the floor of the tavern until his friends came and helped him back up on his feet again. There were several glares that were shot at Holly, but she couldn’t have cared less. She made her point in the presence of these idiots—both verbally and physically. And she hoped that this time, the message would stick.
“The problem with this situation to begin with,” the tavern keeper said to her in a hushed voice, “is that the townspeople feel comfortable threatening a member of the royal family at all, especially one that is their new leader.”
