Chapter 121

They were true to their word, something I was still getting used to. We ate the food but I'm not sure if any of us tasted it. Instead it became more like fuel for this. I was snuggled up in our bed, several arms wrapped around me, the heavy lassitude from being satisfied tempting me with sleep, but instead, my eyes cracked open at a harsh bark of a sound.

Silas looked almost innocent when he slept. All the world weary air of him was gone and replaced by a perfect quietness. Creed remained the wolf, always grabbing for me in his sleep and tugging me closer. The prick of his claws against my skin was comforting, helping me drop deeper into sleep. Roan snored, that was somehow expected, but I jerked my head up off his chest at the sound. Arik wasn't here, my eyes took that in swiftly as I pulled myself free.

Hands reached for me, arms went to pull me closer, but I couldn't let it. The madness of just being woken up had me floundering forward, as if I could prevent anything happening to Arik. I had the presence of mind to snatch up a knife from the table as I stalked forward. Out of the room, down the corridor, the rooms now scrubbed clean of all evidence of the king's guard by palace staff, and out here. My nightgown, one of Roan's shirts, swirled around my legs, as I watched Arik lean over the balustrade, smoke curling upwards and away from him.

"Arik…"

I was rushing forward, sliding my hands over his back, raking my nails across it, the red trails on my skin reassuring myself he was still here. He turned then, looking tired, so tired, and yet he managed a smile as he drew me closer.

"Couldn't sleep either?" He smoothed his free hand over my hair, shifting it back off my shoulders. "You need to. Things are going to be hard, very hard for some time. Rest when you can." He took one last drag from his cigarillo, then flicked it out into the gardens. "That's what the army taught me. Sleep because tomorrow you might die."

"No." I took his head in my hands. "No, don't say that. You're not going to the front. I forbid it. My father never rode into battle and neither will you. You'll live forever and ever, ruling over a country at peace and prosperity, always annoying me by leaving your clothes all over the floor and smirking in that infuriating way you—"

He lifted me onto the edge of the balustrade, shooting me that exact smile as my hands slapped down on his shoulders, clinging to him lest I fall over. He tugged me closer, making clear that would never happen.

"Is that right?"

"Yes…" I touched his face almost tentatively, which was ridiculous considering the way we'd just spent the night, but I felt a strange kind of reverence as I traced the planes of his face. All of them inspired this same feeling, that I needed to map every plane, every angle, lest it be snatched away.

"Well, since you are my queen, I cannot do anything else other than obey, but if we're to live forever, can I suggest we get some sleep? We must leave at first light and if we go to sleep right now we might just get…" He squinted at the moon, trying to gauge the angle to determine the hour, but it was his face going slack that had me turning around. Slipping from his arms, my own hands slapped down on the balustrade, the cool of the stone barely registering as I saw her standing on the grass.

It shouldn't have been possible for the golden doe to gleam this way in the moonlight, and yet she seemed to suck in all the available light then reflect it back twice as bright.

"Oh…" I sighed, having half convinced myself that she wasn't real. "Oh, Arik—"

Whatever I had to say was cut off by the same sound that woke me, a harsh cry that cut through the still of night, echoing throughout the entire expanse of grass below, and the trees beyond. Birds took flight, wind stirred and so did I.

"Jessalyn!"

How did I get here? Somehow I'd pulled away from Arik and was halfway over the balustrade, my hands clinging to a trellis covered with climbing roses. "Don't move." He held up his hands like one might when dealing with an irate animal, not his mate. "Stay right there."

But I couldn't.

All of the pain and anger, confusion and anxiety of the past few days fell away. I'd never felt more sure of anything than I did right now. One foot found purchase on the trellis, then the other leg was swung over, right as his eyes widened. He leapt forward, ready to stop me and that triggered something inside me. Not memories of Magnus and his sadism, but something far deeper.

Women had done this before, somehow I knew.

They climbed down the trellis with a speed they'd never possessed, their eyes on their lover who was forced to watch them from the balcony. Arik evaluated the trellis for its structural strength, then his hand shot out.

"Stay there, Jessalyn." But I couldn't. Another barking cry from the golden doe as the dew on the grass kissed my feet had me taking a step away from him, then another. "Jessalyn! Gods above…" His voice trailed off, whisked away by a breeze that lifted my hair from my neck. Goosebumps pricked my skin as I watched him pace back and forth. "Don't take another bloody step, I'm warning you…"

That sharp crack of his voice, the growl of warning, it evoked so many other things. Creed's savage snarl as he decimated my enemies. Silas much more feline one as he threw his knives. Roan's brutal sword strike as he lopped off the catamount's head. That all should've had me moving towards him not away, shouldn't it? But that same mad impulse that had ridden me back at the inn was back and twice as fierce. My lips curved into a smile, something that had Arik stopping still, right as I turned and ran.

Why the hell was I running off into the palace grounds?

That thought was the last conscious one I had as my hands sliced through the air, my feet skimmed over wet grass, because the golden doe turned tail and bounded off, leading me further into the trees.

The quiet of the forest had me skidding to a stop for just a second. The doe wasn't as apparent in the green gloom as she was in the trees. A small flick of an ear, a rapid thud of hooves, had my head jerking around, my eyes finding her path right as my feet moved to race after her. Jumping over rocks, sailing over logs and twigs, she'd lent me her speed, her strength. I'd need them it appeared, because a long drawn out wolf howl alerted me to the fact that I was being pursued. The doe and I were of the same mind, freezing on the spot, her large brown eyes mine as we both looked back over our shoulders to try and determine where the threat came from, right as we sprinted forward. Between trees and through ferns, past bushes, onwards I ran.

"Jessalyn!"

My name was like a leash, trying to wrap itself around my neck and jerk me backwards, but I resisted its pull. They'd need to prove themselves to me if they wanted to make me theirs. Where the hell had that thought come from, I wondered, but not for long. My stride lengthened, air filling my lungs with hardly any effort, my body a machine, right up until I ran into him.

The doe's hooves, my feet, came to a skidding stop as a massive shape loomed up out of the undergrowth. Wolf, my now primitive mind supplied, the jumble of images that followed a confusing mix of pleasure and fear. Neither were appropriate, it seemed, as I realised it wasn't Creed or any of the other wolf shifters in the palace, but a stone carving. Worn smooth by the weather, half destroyed by the inexorable growth of the forest, I saw both the artwork itself and what it had been.

This area once had thinner undergrowth, and men with the heads of wolves installed the newly carved sculpture here, sending up howls of appreciation when it was free standing, but it was a howl now that had me running onwards.

"Jessalyn…"

My name was a hiss on the wind, and I couldn't tell if it was the moon calling my name or them, but in the end, it didn't matter. It forced me on and on, almost running at the doe's side now, before another shape appeared in the dark.

This sculpture was better preserved. I could count each one of his claws, each fang in his mouth as the wolf shifter was frozen mid snarl, but stone he was. He didn't move forward, seek to attack me, which couldn't be said for others. I heard noisy steps behind me, the sound of a man—several men—crashing through the undergrowth. No, men and a wolf shifter.

I understood Creed's how now. No words were needed, not when pure emotion throbbed within it. Of longing, need, but also rage that I would try to slip free of his grip, a promise that I would never again in the edge of the sound. I grinned, my mouth taking on the same snarl as the sculpture before I shot off again.

The next sculpture I saw I didn't bother to stop for. The doe sailed past it because we knew what they were. No man would dare to come this deep into the forest, the space protected from poachers by the king's law, but it was more than that.

This was a sacred space.

Something that became apparent as I skidded into a clearing not made by the demise of trees. My feet hit stone pavers, not dirt or leaf litter and that had my steps slowing.

The doe made a strange little sound, the reason soon evident. The golden stag, the beast kings felt the need to kill to take the throne stood within the remains of the stone circle, with two fawns pressed into his side. Their ears flicked and their eyes searched the woods as the sounds grew louder, their haunches bunching, ready to leap away as another howl went up. I thrust my hand up instead and shouted, "No!" Every muscle in all four creatures quivered at that, the need to run, to get as far away from predators as possible pumping through their veins in a way I knew all too well.

That was when I saw it.

I was just the first in many girls sent into the forest. Some found the stag and some didn't. The pack whose mate found the stag, the one that used their love to bring the beast to ground, they emerged as victors. The massive span of the stag's antlers was chopped up with ragged axes then bound with twigs and greenery to create not one antlered crown, but as many as there were packmates. They were elevated to a role within the packlands that now would've been called king.

"No…" I said again, much more gently. I saw death after death, of wolf shifters falling on the stag like a pack of wolves. Red of teeth and claw, they tore into the stag, reducing it down to blood and meat. As if summoned, they came bleeding out of the tree line, each one with eyes gleaming green in the moonlight.

"Jessalyn, you ran from us…"

There was no trace of gentle-eyed Master Creed. Instead a wolf shifter at the peak of his power stood before me. He wore the face of his wolf, the white fur gleaming in the moonlight, growing brighter and brighter as he took one step, then another step towards me, but it was the body of a man that drew my attention.

I had never really looked that closely at his beast form. It usually came out when we were in danger, other people's blood matting his fur. There was no blood now as my eyes trailed down.

Every muscle was delineated because as a wolf man, there was no softness in him. His chest seemed broad enough to block out the moon's light, his gentle hands now claws with wicked talons that could rip the doe, them, me apart. He flexed them now, the dull clack of them against each other forcing my own body to shake with the barely repressed need to run. But it was the vein that snaked down his taut abdomen that my eye followed, right to where his manhood swelled.

I knew he was different to a man, but we'd skirted around that, almost pretended that it wasn't the case. When we made love, he was careful, so careful, yet somehow I knew the beast man wouldn't be. His muzzle curved, flashing his fangs at me in answer. Teeth that had buried themselves into my neck, claiming me as his forever. My hand strayed to the bite, a shiver of pleasure twining with the one of fear that coursed through me. Run, run, run, my instincts told me, sure I knew exactly what we needed to do to survive this.

But my body?

The most primal part of me knew Creed on a whole other level. He was my mate but it was only now that I understood what that meant. He was mine, I felt that in the savage beat of my heart. Every step I'd ever taken was towards him, so I did that just now.

"My mate."

I need that growled assertion. I needed his complete certainty as I reached out to touch his chest. Fur and skin I felt as I slid my hand down. He felt hot, far too hot, the muscles jumping under my touch, that involuntary movement reminding me of something else. I didn't drop my hand as I looked back, seeing the stag had put himself between his family and us now. His head was dropped down, his rack of antlers brandished but he did not charge.

He couldn't while I was here. There was something about my presence that forced them to stay exactly where they were in this uncomfortable holding pattern.

"The stag…" Roan, Arik and Silas moved closer, their focus shifting from us to the small herd of deer. "It's a sign."

"This is your opportunity to take the stag in truth, brother," Roan told Arik.

I watched my mate's hand drop down to his pants, a knife pulled out, but I stepped in their path.

That was when I realised what role I had to play here.

I was never going to just submit: at first to fate then to their will. All they saw was a symbol, but I… I turned and stared at the deer and saw why they were such a potent symbol for Khean. That primal instinct to mate, to procreate and then protect the family you made, in their minds it translated to this. By killing the stag they proved that they were the ones to protect all others, that they had the gods' favour, but what if…

"No, Arik—" I said, putting my hand up, and he linked the fingers of his spare one with mine.

"Jessalyn, this was always meant to be."

I stared into his eyes, the effort dragging tears from mine, because I could see it happening on repeat. The death of the stag, so many stags. It felt like Khean was soaked in blood, but what if…?

What if we chose life rather than death?

"No, this is the way it was, Arik." His eyes jerked down to meet mine. "Killing the stag caused this problem in the first place. Don't keep repeating the mistakes of the past."

Mistakes he didn't realise went back to the first of his bloodline that got it in his head to tear apart a sacred creature.

"Rather than death." Roan's voice caught in his throat, his eyes darting from the stag to us and back again. "Gods, Arik, there's been so much fucking death and more to come with this war. Can't we just stop?"

"How do we succeed without shedding blood?" Silas seemed almost confused by the notion, but that made sense due to his upbringing.

"So what do we choose instead?"

"Life," Creed and his wolf rumbled, both staring at me through his yellow green eyes, the fur receding as the man pushed forward. He strode forward, collecting me up into his arms, smiling as my legs locked around his waist. "We choose life."