I came to with the sound of arguing voices.
“Eliza says she’s pack with her!” an older male shouted.
“That’s against the rules. Only one wolf per pack may enter the Queen Trials,” another man said.
It sounded like the elder advisors were arguing. My body was still sore and I wanted to hear what they were saying so I continued to lie there quietly with my eyes pinched shut.
“I’m the king,” Axil growled. “And I say it’s not. Both women entered the trials from different packs. We told them to survive the task and they did what they had to in order to do that.”
“But—” one went to argue then stopped, probably getting a glare from Axil.
“They would have an extreme advantage in the next task, my lord,” the more reasonable voice added.
“Then so be it. You want me to marry the strongest member of our kind. Well, I think a woman who isn’t even an alpha, and was able to force a pack bond, is pretty damn strong,” Axil said and my belly warmed.
He was talking about me.
There was the sound of shuffling feet then as they retreated from the room and my eyelids sprang open. I was in an elvin crystal healing chamber bed with stark white sheets draped over my body. I realized then that not everyone had left, and I peered up to find Axil looking down at me.
“How’s—” I started but he waved me off.
“She’s fine. You saved her life.” His words were clipped and short.
Why did he sound upset? I propped myself up onto my elbows. “And you’re mad about that?” I growled. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still the same selfish little boy who only cares about his royal reputation!”
I didn’t care that he was king now, Axil Moon needed to be taken down a notch. He didn’t have a right to be angry at me for saving someone’s life.
At my words, he recoiled as if I’d slapped him. “Is that what you think?”
All the pain I swore I’d gotten over as a young teen came flooding to the surface. “Yes, Axil. Did you black out at our break-up? Your brother informed you that I was a piece of Mud Flat trash and you agreed and walked away. Never even came back the next year. Never sent a letter. Nothing.”
His cheeks burned with shame, redness washing over his neck. “I didn’t agree.” His voice was small and he looked horrified, eyes wide as he began to fidget with his hands.
I laughed, a biting sound. “The silence and sight of your back as you walked away was agreement enough.”
He frowned. “You hate me. I’ve spent all of these years loving you and you hate me?” He sounded surprised.
His words were like an arrow to my heart. I sat up fully now, pleased to feel no pain in my ribs, just the aching in my soul at his words. I was clothed, even if it was in a white healing gown, and so I slipped off the bed and hobbled towards him, testing the weight on my ankle. It was tender but nothing like before. It made me wonder how long I’d been out, but I no longer cared in this moment.
“Loving me?” Instead of feeling joy, I had never been more pissed off in my life. “You think that walking away after those two months at camp—”
“I—”
“DO NOT INTERUPT ME!” I shouted like a crazed maniac, pulling dominant power into my voice and his eyes flew wide. “I’ve waited five years to tell you this, Axil Moon, you will let me speak my truth!”
Axil looked scared of me and deep down that made me feel good. I wanted him to hurt. I shuffled closer to him so that I could look him straight in the eyes as I told him what he did to me. He appeared like he was in pain before I even opened my mouth.
With a shaky breath, I held his gaze. “I’m dead inside because of you, Axil.”
Agony crossed his face and he stumbled backwards into the wall until his back hit it. I pushed forward, stepping closer so that I could reach out and touch his heart with my hand. I laid my palm over the spot on his chest that contained his heart, like I had so many times that summer. Feeling the frantic chaotic beating made me feel good.
“I loved you with every ounce of my soul, the entire weight of it was yours,” I told him. “You made promises, knowing how broken I was from losing my parents so young. You told me that you would be my family,” I reminded him.
Shame burned his cheeks but he stayed silent, letting me speak my truth.
“And then you left me. Threw me away like trash!” I screamed in his face, retracting my hand. “And now every man that has come after you has gotten a shadow of me because there’s nothing left!” I beat on my chest hard, as my wolf rose to the surface and Axil did something I didn’t expect.
He covered his face with his hands and burst into sobs.
The raw heartfelt emotion shook me to my core and I didn’t know what to do with it. Axil Moon, the king wolven, didn’t cry. He wasn’t weak. He didn’t break down in sobs over a woman.
Or did he? And was it a weakness?
I stared at him in shock as he broke down and part of me wanted to pull him into my arms and squeeze him so tight until he stopped, but the bigger part wanted him to hurt. So I turned, and hopped out of the room, slamming the door and leaving my past behind me.
Hurt me once. Lesson learned. Hurt me twice … never gonna happen, because I’m not that stupid.
Axil Moon was dead to me.
I RUSHED RIGHT OUTSIDE, through the network of hallways and found my brother.
He started to lay into me about making Eliza pack but when he saw the look on my face he stopped. He handed me a large piece of flatbread with butter on it and my mouth instantly watered. I yanked it from his grasp and then slipped past him and into my hammock without saying another word. I wanted to be alone, just me and my yummy flatbread and my stupid feelings. Sometime later I fell asleep and then woke up early the next morning. The campfire was dying and the sun was barely out.
I stepped out of the tent to find that my ankle could now support all of my weight.
Cyrus didn’t look up at me as he added another log to the fire. “Ivanna and one other made it back late last night. They looked half-starved but not severely injured.”
I nodded, handing him a second log without speaking. I knew Ivanna would survive but I didn’t care right now. I hadn’t been able to get Axil’s words out of my head all night.
I’ve spent all these years loving you and you hate me?
Did he really believe he loved me all these years? The sound of his sobbing haunted my soul. Maybe he did.
I’d never seen a man break down like that. Hades, none of the women I knew cried like that. Unless they were submissive or had just lost a relative in battle. He cried like I’d died. Maybe I’d mourned him all those years ago and for some stupid reason he’d held on to hope? So he’d only just lost me last night.
It didn’t make sense.
I didn’t see how he could be so delusional but alas, men were stupid sometimes.
My brother finally spoke. “You made her pack? Zara, are you insane?”
Eliza. I needed to check on her. “Maybe,” I told him and he finally looked up at me with a little compassion.
“You okay? Was it rough out there?”
I sighed, “If killing two wolves, while fighting off another two, and then being mauled by a bearin, only to walk Eliza out on a broken ankle is rough … then yeah it was.”
He stood then, shifting on the balls of his feet before pulling me into an awkward stiff hug.
My brother didn’t hug. Clearly. He was horrible at it. It actually hurt, he was squeezing my back so hard, but I said nothing. It would probably be another ten years before he hugged me again so I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed him back.
“I was so damn proud of you when you stepped out of those woods, Zar,” he said, pulling back. “Mom and Dad would have been too.”
Did his eyes look wet?
“Are you crying?” I teased him. Something was in the air. All these men crying over me.
“No!” he snapped, wiping at his eyes and then punching my shoulder hard for good measure.
I grinned. “I had help. Eliza kept me safe. We have an alliance.”
His face fell. “That will only work until the final round and then, if she’s still alive, you’re going to have to kill her.”
My body physically clenched at the thought. “Cyrus, she’s pack. I claimed her.”
His fists clenched. “I know. I can feel her,” he argued. “We all can.” He gestured to my packmates who were stepping out of the tent and yawning with sleep.
They nodded.
Of course they could, she was family now. Mud Flat pack.
I shrugged. “I owe her my life. She stood over me and protected me when I was unconscious as Ivanna came for me with a sharp rock.”
Cyrus looked disappointed. “Zara, two people can’t win this.”
“I know that!” I snapped. I didn’t want to talk about this, I didn’t want to think about killing my new friend and packmate. I couldn’t hear this anymore. “Let’s just focus on taking out Ivanna. That bitch has it in for me and I want her gone.”
Cyrus nodded and then I told him I was going to get some fresh air and food. The piece of flatbread I’d had last night wasn’t cutting it.
I knew that Eliza wouldn’t sleep outside in tents so I walked to the castle and when the guard at the front saw me, he bowed deeply.
“Zara Swiftwater. It’s an honor,” he said.
I froze. He knew my name? “Uh thanks.”
He seemed to read my shocked expression. “Eliza is Death Mountain pack. You didn’t have to bring her home on your shoulders like that. You have all of our respect.”
I smiled. “Yes, I did. She saved my life. Speaking of which, do you know which room is hers?”
He gestured down a long hallway. “Make a left and then it’s the last one on the right.”
I entered the stone castle and walked down the lengthy corridor, making a left at the fork until I came to the last door. Reaching out, I rapped my knuckles on the door he’d spoken of. I sensed her. She was inside full of nervous energy. The door opened and then she stood before me with a bandaged ribcage and wearing a cropped top. There were black circles under her eyes and she smelled of raw meat but she was alive. We both took one look at each other and then rushed into the other’s arms. I held her gently, knowing she was still injured, and she did the same.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “You saved my life.”
I pulled back from her. “You saved mine first. Ivanna would have bashed my head open with that rock.”
She smiled, waving me into the room.
I stepped inside, taking in the luxurious digs. “Wait, why did I say no to this in order to sleep in a tent?” I asked.
She laughed. “I have no idea.”
It wasn’t a room, it was a house! Or as big as one anyway. There was a large great room with a small kitchen and what looked like two bedrooms. The floors were a rich brown-stained wood and the walls were painted a light yellow.
My joke had lightened the mood but I could tell by the look on her face, she was about to say something that would bring me back down.
“You’ll make an amazing queen,” she told me and I froze.
“Stop it,” I said.
She shook her head. “Zara, how do you think this ends? I just heard the next round is paired fighting. You and me against Ivanna and Charlize. The winning team then fights each other.”
I gasped. I didn’t know that. Did Cyrus? Maybe that’s what he was trying to say at the fire.
“I … can’t kill you, Eliza. I’m a lot of things but I’m not capable of that.” I was surprised to find that it was true. I thought myself tougher than that, especially considering I’d known this girl only a few days but there was something about her. A sisterly bond I couldn’t explain.
She shrugged. “You kill me or I forfeit and my pack tears me apart. Your choice.”
“Stop it!” I shouted. “Let’s not even talk about that. We could die in the next challenge.”
Eliza shook her head, her blonde curls spilling around her. “You know we won’t. We have a pack advantage. You lead, I’ll follow.”
My heart pinched at her loyalty to me. “We shouldn’t have become friends,” I said, feeling bad once the words left my mouth. I didn’t really mean it but I kind of did. It would have been easier that way. Somewhere in the last three near-death experiences I’d had with this woman, we’d forged an unbreakable bond. “I didn’t mean that,” I said.
She reached over and placed her hand on mine. “I know what you meant.”
“Axil said he still loved me,” I blurted out, changing the subject, not used to having a girlfriend to talk to, having grown up with two brothers.
She gasped and stepped closer to me, full-on grinning. “And?”
“I told him off. And then he sobbed.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “King Axil sobbed?”
I nodded.
“Damn, what did you say to him?” She looked concerned and now I wondered if I’d gone too far in some of the things I’d said to him.
“Just the usual post break-up stuff, that I was dead inside now, that he broke my heart and I was a shadow of my former self,” I teased.
She burst into laughter and then grabbed her bandaged side, wincing.
“You okay?” I asked, hoping she would be healthy enough for our doubles fight.
She nodded. “Still healing. Have you eaten?”
The moment she said it, my stomach came to life. That flatbread wasn’t enough and I’d been half conscious when I’d eaten it. Now I smelled the meat in her kitchen and my stomach growled loudly.
“Feed me immediately,” I ordered with a mock seriousness.
With a smile she walked gingerly over to the kitchen and pulled out a plate of various smoked meats, bread rolls and cheeses. I dug in without even waiting to be offered. Like a crazed lunatic I shoved meat and cheese into my mouth, half chewing before swallowing it down. It was spicy and salty and so, so good.
Eliza looked at me horrified. “I take it back, you would make a horrible queen, you have no manners.”
I gave her my middle finger and she grinned.
We got along so easily, it was like the best friend I never had in the Mud Flats. Every female there was either competing to be the most dominant, and therefore steering clear of each other, or they were so submissive they barely spoke to me. With Eliza, it was an easy friendship, she knew her pecking order in the pack was beneath me but she was dominant enough to give me crap, which I appreciated.
“Could you drop out?” I asked her. “You’re injured.”
She laughed. “You think they care about an injury? A drop-out is the same as forfeit. I’ll be killed and seen as bringing shame to the whole pack. The king’s pack.”
I lost my appetite then, feeling sick thinking about the possibility of eventually having to fight Eliza.
“Thanks for the food. I should probably go.” I suddenly didn’t want to be here, bonding with her only to be pitted against each other another day.
She looked sad but nodded, handing me a glass of water to wash all the food down. I drank it and thanked her, leaving out the door to her apartment.
