40. Arran

"High King of Annwyn?" I shook my head, refusing to believe it.

I hadn't decided who I was going to strangle first. That white-skinned faerie who had followed me all the way here, but would not tell me anything beyond her name and a few vague details about the Faeries of the Fen being more than a bedtime story. Or maybe the glowing, moon-haired elemental who looked at me like she fucking owned me.

My beast was clawing to get out. It had guided my journey here, through the lake lands to the rift in the foothills of the mountains. The rockslide was nothing to my bounding paws. How the faerie got through, I did not pause to see. Once I emerged on the other side, I could practically smell the misty waters of Eilean Gayl.

"Indeed," my mother nodded sharply. It had been too long since I'd seen her. Decades since I'd been to my ancestral home. She looked exactly the same—dark hair, graceful bearing. But she was being utterly ridiculous.

I crossed my arms over my body. "No."

"Yes," she said simply.

As if any of this was fucking simple. My father sat in the chair beside the fire, his fingers tapping an irritating rhythm on the book in his lap, which he had no intention of opening. He just needed something to hold. He'd always been so damn fidgety.

Whereas my mother stared at me with unwavering stillness.

"How?" One word. A command. Never had I needed to use such a tone with the female who'd given birth to me. But the veneer of control that slipping into the battle commander's form gave me was the only thing keeping my head from spinning right off my neck and onto the floor.

My mother glanced at the other chair before the fire.

I remained standing, arms over my chest, every muscle at attention. Every muscle aching from the unrelenting sprint to reach Eilean Gayl.

She pursed her lips and took the seat herself. "King Arthur was murdered, and his twin sister Veyka Pendragon ascended to the elemental throne. You were appointed the terrestrial heir and sent to Baylaur—"

"What about Gwen?" I cut in.

Guinevere was the terrestrial heir. She had fought in the pits, killing every other contender in order to achieve the title. I'd witnessed it myself.

"She went with you," my mother continued, her voice sharper. Reprimanding me for interrupting. Ancestors. Why did it feel like I was twelve years old again? "It is my understanding that she became a guard of sorts, and that she remains in Baylaur at this time."

I actually laughed at that. "No. Gwen would never debase herself into being a mere guard. She was supposed to be the High Queen of fucking Annwyn."

This was all a joke. It had to be. I must have taken some sort of head wound in battle… though I could not recall which battle… and this was the result.

"Guinevere has always done her duty. As have you, my son," my mother said. Pride rang in her voice. Pride… because I was the High King of Annwyn?

Ancestors… Could it be true?

Another detail of what my mother had said clicked into place in my mind. "Veyka Pendragon… the female who looked at me like…"

My mother did not finish that sentence for me.

Like I belonged to her.

And my beast… recognized her. Wanted her. A female I had never met.

"The High Queen of Annwyn," I said slowly. "My wife."

"Your mate."

The beast inside of me surged. I yanked back on the restraints I always kept around it, keeping that side of me tethered. Even as pressure contracted in my chest, around my heart. What the fuck was that?

Another possibility occurred to me. Not a joke, but a plot. I'd been targeted my entire life. I had been stolen away from this very castle when I was a mere child, locked in a dungeon, and tortured for the prophesied power in my veins. This was another attempt, and I would kill all of those involved, like I had every time before. I loosened the hold on my beast…

"I don't know who has convinced you to do this, or to what purpose, but I will slaughter them for you, Mother. Tell me what is really going on—"

"It does seem more the sort of jape I would orchestrate," my father interjected. Rarely, so rarely, did he step in. He'd always been the beta to my mother's alpha. Which gave his words more gravitas as he said, "Your mother speaks the truth."

This was madness. I was the commander of the terrestrial armies. I had earned the title of Brutal Prince by killing my way across battlefields for the last three hundred years. I was a weapon of terror and death, not a king. Certainly not the King. Nor a husband. Least of all the mate of a female who had simply vanished in the middle of a conversation.

"And she can just disappear? What cursed elemental magic is that?" I'd drawn my axe at the quick flash of movement, ready to fling it against whatever magic she—Veyka—had rallied against me. But she was just gone. As if she'd never been there at all.

My mother stiffened. "That is for your mate to explain."

"Mates do not exist," I growled back.

"They have not existed for seven thousand years," she said. "But they do now."

I bit back the snarl that rose in my chest, the need to gnash my teeth. I needed to shift, to run, to claw something apart. The fell creatures of the lake would be a good place to start. Blood. Blood would clear my mind.

Blood—her blood. I'd scented it and known she was different. My beast had wanted to lick it off of her lips, and then lick the rest of her as well. But a mate… no.

My mother rose, smoothing the folds of her silk skirts by habit, as I'd seen her do thousands of times. "Look inside of yourself, Arran. The bond between mates… it is the stuff of legend. You must feel it."

The pressure in my chest. The unexplained urges of the beast inside of me.

"Why did you wake from an enchanted sleep and come here? Why not Cayltay? Why not go to the war camps? You were drawn here, because she is here."

Even now, that feeling in my chest was painfully intense. It had driven me to Eilean Gayl, bound by bound, softening fractionally with every mile. But I thought it satisfied, it had eased—

In her presence.

Veyka.

If she was my mate then why did her name mean nothing to me?

My father rose to stand beside my mother, the two of them a steady wall, one strengthening the other. As it had always been. I had never seen their alliance falter.

They walked in tandem to the door, my father stepping ahead to open it for his wife, my mother letting him.

But she paused to look back at me, assessing. Reproving. "You look terrible. Go up to your room. Bathe. Sleep."

She did not wait to see if her order would be obeyed. The door shut behind them, and I was alone. Me and my beast.

Scolded like a child.

The Brutal Prince. High fucking King of Annwyn.

I slammed my fists into the wall hard enough that the room shook around me. But the stones of Eilean Gayl did not care about my anger or frustration. They held steady.

My head fell forward to join my fists.

Sleep.

My mother was right in that at least. I'd made plenty of battle plans, led armies to victory on less sleep and more exhaustion than my body was dealing with now. But this was more than I'd ever faced before. I was a hairsbreadth away from losing control to my beast. And if I did, there was no telling what havoc he would wreak.