37. Aurelia

Chapter 37

Aurelia

V emar didn't end up saying it again, not with all the work we had to do.

Throughout the day, I kept looking at the label I'd done up with Weston's favorite color, trying to picture the symbol without the fairy. It would be too plain. Too... simple?

About noon, I realized it wasn't the composition that bothered me, but the single wolf. The image struck me as lonely, like Weston shouldering his duty alone. Solitary, like I had always been before I'd met him. The thought made me sad and a little uncomfortable. I'd need to come up with something else.

"Why the fuck do I always find you fuckers standing over the plants like they might up and run away?" Hadriel pushed into our circle a couple hours later as we stood in the garden, looking down on the Moonfire Lily, snug between the Everlass and happy as could be. Its petals glowed a slow throb, hardly visible in the daylight.

"The glowing is entrancing," Finley said in a hush, nibbling at her lip. "I really want to showcase that in an elixir. Like, really really."

"Fine, think about that later." Hadriel shooed me out of the circle. "You're busy. We're all busy. Come on, it's time for you to go get ready. Finley, my love, get your ass moving. You need to be there."

"What? Where?" I asked as he pushed me away from the others.

"You, my darling, are getting claimed tonight. Time to end all the cumdrop dreams of single ladies and gents everywhere."

My stomach turned over in sudden, dread-laced nervousness. "What? Tonight? Weston didn't tell me this."

"That is because Weston has been patiently waiting for the king, who has been patiently waiting for Finley, who has been patiently waiting for Hannon to return. This is kind of a big deal. Given your true mate status and your power, you have the potential to be signing on as a pack leader. As a commander, in other words, of all the land shifters in the kingdom. So far you've only met wolves and dragons. Dragons don't connect through a bond like wolves, but other creatures do, like birds of prey, or jackals, or wily rabbits, or other shit I don't keep track of."

"Birds are fliers."

"Yeah, so?"

"So why don't they group in with the dragons?"

"Dragons are their own brand of clusterfuck. Don't listen so closely."

"But... I..." I grabbed the door in sudden alarm as we passed through, trying to stop the forward momentum.

I'd been waiting for this, wanting this. I'd thought I was ready. And I was—for Weston. I was ready for the claim, for his mark, for our forever. But coming to terms with the fact it was a super-big deal? Doing it in front of the king and queen and the pack? And what if he finally let me join the pack bond and I mucked it all up? Or what if I couldn't be a commander and it dashed all Weston's hopes? What if I wasn't cut out for all this?

I had the horrible realization that, while I was diligently working on my product, I'd been ignoring the extreme gravity of this situation. Suddenly I was not at all prepared.

"I'm not ready," I bleated, clutching the edges of the door as Hadriel grabbed my legs and tried to pull me through.

Vemar came up behind us and stopped, watching me with a grin.

"Help me, Vemar," I pleaded.

"I really enjoy you, Captive Lady, but I will not stand between you and your panic."

"For such a small fucking thing, she's as strong as a dragon," Hadriel said, wrestling me.

"What in the?—"

A whip crack made Vemar flinch and Hadriel jump away from me. He turned to find Leala marching closer, and balled his fists at his sides.

"I hate whips, Leala! How many times do I need to tell you that?" he yelled. "I do not get off on pain."

"Oh hush, you big baby, I didn't even touch you." She reached for me, but my mind had frazzled and I was already running.

"Do we chase?" Vemar asked as I put distance between us.

"Yes, we fucking chase! Fuck, she's fast. Hurry, Vemar, you have long legs, get her!"

A thrill came over me. I shed clothes as I went, streaking across the grass and leaving my layers behind me. I stopped long enough to shift, and then my wolf and I were gone, darting between the trees and running like fucking hell.

"What are we doing?" she asked, and I was surprised she was going along with this.

"I don't know. Getting away? Giving ourselves some time? Freaking the fuck out?"

"Why is this scary?"

"I don't know! I'm not prepared. The next chapter of my life is really, actually going to start now, but I don't think my baggage is going anywhere, and he might get tired of it! What if I can't handle a pack? What if I let Weston down, what if he is making a terrible mistake and realizes too late that I'm nobody, what if ? —"

"Okay, okay. Yeah, that's all valid. Let's hide."

She didn't immediately hide, though, because shifters popped out of the woodwork like insects, trying to tackle us. Or maybe they were playing? My wolf didn't know, but she knew she needed to avoid them. We cut across a village, darted through a square and then out the other side of it, down a lane and through an Everlass field.

"Have you been keeping track of where we are?" I asked.

"I don't know where we are. I've never been over here before."

"Can you get back?"

"You want to go back now? We're still trying to get away!"

She ran through the trees and then into deep brush, thorns scratching along her sides. She went deeper still and found a berm with a hole in it, big enough for her to squeeze down into.

"This isn't a good idea," I said as she wound her way into the earth. "This isn't a good idea at all. How the fuck are we going to get out of here?"

"It's okay—this'll work out."

"I really don't see how. Back up! Seriously, stop going forward and start going back. What if there is something in here?"

"It's a really good idea you're not in charge right now," she said.

"I fail to see how!"

At the end of the animal tunnel was a little den, big enough for her to turn around on her belly and face the way we'd come. She finally stopped.

"What if someone comes down after us?" I asked, our heart pounding.

"Who would be stupid enough to crawl down into this hole ? "

I was mute for a long moment. "I wish I could punch you in the face."

"Sharing a body with you is like being punched in the face over and over, constantly."

I needed to take some deep breaths, but I wasn't in charge of the body.

"Breathe," I told her, needing to feel our lungs filling with air. "Just breathe for a second. I need to breathe."

Thankfully, she didn't push back, humoring me and sucking in air. The den smelled musty and old, like it hadn't been used in a while. That, at least, was positive news. Silence filled the space, and she laid her head down on her paws.

"We need to talk this out," I said, trying to clear my head. "We're overreacting."

"You were the one that ran."

"Did you not also run? Are you not hiding out in a random small hole you found after crawling through a bunch of thorns?"

She didn't respond for a while. "You make some excellent points. We're nobody. We might have power, but our dad didn't want us, our mom had no magic, and you don't even know how to eat soup properly. We don't know how to exist in a real community because we've never been properly welcomed in one, and now suddenly we are supposed to be the head of a kingdom-wide pack."

She wasn't doing a good job of talking this situation around, nor did she stop there.

"I don't know my ass from my teeth, and training hasn't been going well. I know he said we were waiting for the king's go-ahead, but I think I'm actually the reason he was delaying. I bet Hannon was just an excuse. I can make a bond with Weston, but I take over the bond when I try it with Hadriel. I have no finesse with it. What's going to happen when there's a whole pack to connect to and I fumble it? He's going to have to tell me that I'm not good enough and can't participate. Then what'll become of me? You have a job as a human, but I won't be of any use as a wolf. I'll let them down. What kind of alpha would want a mate that is useless? He could have anyone, literally anyone, and he got stuck with me. Love isn't enough, not for an alpha."

"Breathe," I said, and this time it was for her, not me. "Why haven't you said any of this before?"

"If you'd been paying attention, you'd know."

"I thought you were doing well in training. You catch on really fast. There's a learning curve, but you're handling it really well."

"I'm great for a new wolf, sure. I'm not so hot for a twenty-seven-year-old wolf who is about to take over a fucking pack."

She had a point.

"We can't hide here forever," I said, though I had no idea what to do now. What if she couldn't rise to the occasion? What if the wolf part of us was useless? Did that mean we would be forced to go to the fairies?

"We're not going to hide here forever," my wolf replied. "We're going to hide here until you, as the more positive half of this terrible partnership, do your job and talk this situation around."

So we sat there for a while, me trying to get a handle on things and both of us running from our uncertainties.

"You know," I said at one point, "if a dragon wanted us out, all he'd have to do was blow fire on the thorns and stuff covering the hole until we ran out of air. That would be an easy way to kill us, actually. Or just blow fire right down the hole. We'd be fucked."

"What the actual fuck—and I mean this genuinely—is wrong with you?"

We sat in silence for a while longer.

Concern radiated through the bond, and we felt Weston drawing closer. Not panicked or hurried, he made his way to our not-so-hidden location. It was hard to get away when your bond-mate could feel your whereabouts. Hell, everyone could probably smell where we'd gone.

He paused at the surface, way too big to fit down here. There he stayed, patience settling in, waiting at the mouth of our hidey-hole. He could've howled down at us, or yelped, or shifted and shouted for us to come out. He could've even sent a bird or something down to peck at us until we had no choice but to crawl out to flee. Instead, he waited for us to be ready.

"I really do love him." I thought about all the things he probably had to do, a claiming he had to get ready for, and realized maybe he was nervous himself. He'd put all that aside to come for us. "I really, really love him. I want to be with him."

"We have a lot of baggage."

"But so does he, right? We've heard about his struggles, and not just personally, but as an alpha. In the first pack he ever ran, he basically stole people for the crown. The next pack essentially brushed him off after he came back from the demons. He's dealing with baggage, too. He's combating it by growing, by ensuring that he is better going forward. He has trauma he is working through, too. He's just further along in the process."

"Yeah. True, I guess."

"He knows you are new. But this whole kingdom is mostly new. Didn't that guy in the village say that? They were all suppressed until, like, a year and a half ago. It's a kingdom being rebuilt. Even those from elsewhere are new to each other. We're behind, but we work hard, we learn fast, and we don't give up. If we have training—and everyone agrees he's an amazing teacher—we can do what is needed. I can learn to eat soup like a king, and you can learn which end of your body the shit comes out of."

She issued a soft growl at that last bit, obviously annoyed with me, but all I could feel was Weston up there, waiting. Hoping. He wanted this; I knew he did. I wanted this. So did my wolf. My past was terrible, and I didn't have a very good pedigree, but neither did the queen of the kingdom. She came from a tiny village, she hadn't had a penny, and she'd probably had to learn to eat soup, too. I wasn't alone in this, and more, I had something to bring to the table. While my wolf learned, I could prove our value in other ways.

"We can do this," I said, feeling better. "This is right. Being with him, starting this new life, finally shrugging off the chains that bound us to Granny... We can do this. Crawl out of this hole."

She didn't budge for a moment. "But now they'll think we're cowards for running."

"Get out of this fucking hole!" I shouted at her.

She went slower than she probably could have, but finally my wolf made it to the top. Weston's wolf waited there, lifting his head off his paws when she showed herself. He whined softly and licked her muzzle. Support and encouragement radiated through the bond. His gray gaze met hers, and then he started backing out, the thorns digging into his sides. She followed, smaller and not as troubled by the passage.

Outside of the thick brush no one waited for us; anyone that had followed had been "told" to head out. Weston shifted back into his human form and waited for me to do the same.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his tone hushed and his movements slow. He didn't make a move toward me.

"Yes. Sorry, I had a mild freakout when Hadriel mentioned what we were on the way to get ready for."

He nodded slowly. "I'm sorry. I found out this morning after you'd left. I should've made sure someone sent word to you. What can I do to help?"

"It's fine. I'm good."

"Aurelia." His tone brooked no argument. "What's going on?"

I sighed and then just let it all flow out—my concerns, my wolf's. We walked through the brush, finding a game trail and then following that for a spell. One of the towns, probably the one we'd run through, appeared up ahead, and he veered, intentionally avoiding it.

"I would've had all these worries parceled away if I'd known what the plan was," I said. "I just got a scare, is all."

He took my hand and threaded his fingers through mine. "I didn't know why the king was stalling. He didn't mention it was Hannon, probably because he didn't want to say where Hannon had gone. Did they tell you?"

"Yes. He was in the work shed today."

"Good. You're not alone in your anxiety, Aurelia. I doubt myself as well. It's natural. I worry that I won't be a good mate to you. That I won't be a good father. But then I see your beautiful face, or smell your mouth-watering scent, and I know none of those worries matter. Regardless of what could go wrong, I'd be lost without you. I never really cared about being solitary—it's the nature of the job—until you. Now, if I'm without you too long, it's overwhelming. I have to ask you to brave my inadequacies because, even though you don't know the proper decorum regarding eating soup, I need you. My life is pale without you."

I stopped him and turned, pulling him into a hug. "And mine without you. But who mentioned the soup?"

He laughed and kissed me on the forehead. "Finley. She had a similar experience. I think you two will end up good friends." He kissed me lightly on the lips. "As for your wolf," he said as we started walking again, "there is nothing to worry about. This is just an introduction. I will claim you, and then we will shift so that your wolf can formally enter the pack bond. Only that. If the need takes them, the pack might have a run, but only if it feels right."

"What if she is heavy-handed with the bond? She worries about that."

"I don't think that will happen, but it'll be fine. My wolf can help her back out, and we can try it again another time. Listen, this first time will not be kingdom-wide. We're going to start with the palace army and guard. They all know you're a new, powerful wolf. Dante and the others have done the rounds, making sure everyone is clear on what to expect. We won't have any dragons except the king and queen and Vemar, and the king knows not to challenge. Everyone knows not to challenge, actually. This is only the formality of my mate joining the pack, nothing more."

"What's expected of me?" I asked.

He looked down at me. "You're going to keep your eyes on me as I knot you in front of the pack."