Chapter 38

Roan

Having to jump through yet more hoops to get what I needed, that's what I thought about as we all walked towards the elders' meeting house. It wasn't as if the experience was a new one. The army proudly spoke of its martial traditions and discipline, but a lot of the time it felt like I was working my way through labyrinthine chains of command to get the right man to give the right order. As we drew closer, I saw Arik sitting on the steps of the meeting house with a face like a smacked arse, and I remembered that sometimes the obstacles came from within our unit, not without.

"I was told we need to present ourselves to the elders," he said upon rising. "Didn't we do that when we arrived?"

"We—" Creed replied, but I cut him off.

"Don't fucking ruin this for us." As I frowned at him, our commander stared back, something I was well used to whenever one of us questioned his orders. He didn't reply, just waited me out, giving me all the rope I'd need to hang myself. "I mean it, Arik."

"And what exactly do you mean?"

He stepped forward until we were almost nose to nose, his arms crossing his chest.

"Don't ruin things with the princess."

"You mean our future queen? My brother's wife-to-be?" He shook his head and snorted. "Fuck, maybe she's already married to him depending on how you view the legality of that sham of a ceremony her father prepared."

"Don't." How the fuck did my hand end up wrapped around his throat? Arik was my brother-in-arms, but there was more to our bond than that. We'd been through so much together, stuck by each other's sides even as the world had tried to tear us apart, but now he… "Don't fucking say it. Don't even—"

"Ahh…" We all turned to see an older man standing on the steps, taking everything in with a faintly amused eye. "Creed's pack. I hear you've found your fated mate. A princess, no less."

"And the future queen of Khean."

Arik was like a serpent dripping poison in the paradise that was the wolf shifter packlands, and just like poison, one drop was all it took to sour everything. The elder sniffed, then nodded toward the meeting house.

"We will see, Prince Arik. If anyone is aware of how the best-laid plans go awry, it's you, Highness. Come inside and take a load off. Have some breakfast with us. The kitchen staff have cooked up the most wonderful bacon. It was smoked using a special wood that gives it a tremendous flavour."

The elder's voice washed over us, forcing muscles to unlock, including those in my fingers. I loosened my hold on my brother then stepped away, something that had the old man nodding, even as Arik's eyes flashed. This was a fight we still needed to have, just not while we met with the elders. No fights took place in the meeting hall, lest you face expulsion from the packlands. So I followed my brothers up the steps and into a large room that smelled of dried lavender, fresh hay, and bacon.

"So, you've found your mate, Creed, son of Saffron and the Chase pack," an older woman said, leaning forward in her seat as she clasped her cane.

Creed's fathers had died some years ago, on a battlefield they had no business being on, at the behest of the Kheanian king. Creed showed no sign of pain at hearing his fathers' names, bending low at the waist in a show of respect each one of us replicated.

"I have, Elder Wren—"

She waved her hand as she snorted.

"No Elder this or that now." Wren straightened up and fixed him with her gaze. "So, the princess is your fated mate?"

"And the wife-to-be of the bastard that sits on the Emerald Throne," one of the older men said, stroking his thick grey beard. "This is a difficult business."

"A hopeless one, you mean, Elder Ford."

Arik afforded the elder his title, but his tone was too sharp, too insistent, for someone who'd been summoned to the meeting house. He got what he wanted, though. The older men and women sitting around the table all looked at each other, their mutters indicating their concern.

"Nothing is hopeless, Highness." This was Elder Poppy, a woman who had been promoted to the role of elder before her time because her sons and daughters were all dead and buried, as were her husbands. There was something brittle about her smile, but she held our gazes with little effort. "Even when all seems lost, there is always hope." Arik wanted to say something about that. I could see it in the stiff set of his shoulders, but he stilled his tongue. "Though this is a situation that deserves further consideration."

"But first, breakfast," Wren said, smiling up at the servers who entered the hall with platters brimming with food. "This smells incredible. Thank you, my darlings."

Breakfast was deposited on the table, plates were handed around, and I prepared myself to force some down. Refusing food when it was offered was a grave insult in wolf shifter culture, so to be polite, you had to at least make a show of eating something. My stomach had been tied up in knots, sour with acid and burning all the way up to my throat, since the moment Jessalyn fainted. We'd thoughtlessly gorged ourselves on her body like wolves… No, like pigs, with snouts shoved into the trough, snuffling her up, right as she… The muscle in my jaw started to twitch again, like it seemed to near constantly. Loosening my jaw to chew on something was a relief, and then the taste hit my tongue.

"Good, yes?" Poppy said with a smile as my eyes went wide. "Starving yourselves thin will not help your performance during the mating games. A princess…" She shook her head. "A human woman and one of royal blood. You will need to be at your very best to convince a woman like her to take you four on as her mates."

"Even if we manage it, the Kheanian king thinks he has a claim on my mate." Creed went still as he regarded the table. "They do not see women the way we do. Her father, the king of Stormare, handed her over like he might a tonne of coal."

"The gods determine who is fated and who is not," Ford said, his voice full of a confidence that I was envious of. I wanted to feel that sure about… anything really. "If this girl truly is the other half of all of your hearts…" He paused and inspected each one of us, his gaze lingering the most on Arik. "Then this is meant to be. It is not a matter of quibbling about whether this should happen or that, but a call to action to ensure that the will of the gods is fulfilled."

I let out a sigh, letting my body slump against the chair I was sitting on, something the elders closest to me noted. An elderly woman patted my hand, just like my nan used to when I was a boy.

"Leave that all until after we eat. Come, let's not let this wonderful meal go to waste," Wren said, gesturing to the food on the table. "Eat up, and then we will consider your problem."

My teeth sank into bread as soft and white as a cloud, and, with the sharp salty crunch of the bacon coupled with thick yellow butter, it was a wonder even the grandest chefs from the capital could not match. My body's needs had been ignored for two days as we'd sat vigil over Jessalyn, but they would not be denied anymore. I inhaled a bread roll stuffed with bacon, then several wobbling fried eggs, and a chunk of cheese before I could even stop to catch a breath. Wren nodded at me with a smile, then bent her head to attend to her own plate. But at some point, I was satisfied, and the raging hunger in my stomach settled.

Which didn't explain the ache in my chest.

I hadn't wanted to leave Jessalyn in that room. I hadn't wanted to cede ground to Creed's womenfolk, even when I knew I needed to. What I wanted was to set up, sword in hand, on her doorstep as her guard dog, ready to protect her now. To make up for all the ways that…

I'd failed.

Suddenly my mouth went bone dry, and the thought dropped like a stone in my mind, creating ripples I couldn't stop from washing over me and dragging me under.

I'd failed when I hadn't stood up to Arik the instant we'd ridden into that courtyard. I'd seen the red spots of fear—of anger—in Jessalyn's face when we'd reined in our horses. I'd watched her bristle with fury when we'd escorted her in or out of the carriage. It was only at the moment when I cut that blasted catamount's head off that I felt any sort of relief. We had been arrogant, overweening idiots the entire time, and now—

"So, a princess as your fated mate." Elder Wren wiped her hands on her napkin and put it aside. This appeared to be some kind of unspoken sign that the meal was done, and around the table, cutlery was set down and plates were pushed away. "The gods have presented us with a wicked problem to solve."

"But we must." The words burst out of Creed before he realised what he was doing, his head only belatedly dropping down to show respect. "Elders, I throw myself upon your mercy, but I… we must find a way."

With his head still bowed, he didn't see Wren look at the others or catch those long looks, those pursed lips. Finally, she nodded.

"We must. This is a divine challenge: an opportunity for us to demonstrate that we are worthy of the gods' graces." Her gaze swept around the table, communicating her expectations of all those gathered before it settled on Arik. "And Prince Arik, you have made clear your reluctance to confront the threat your brother poses to wolf kind; indeed, to all of Khean. Each member of your pack will have a role to play in convincing the princess to accept your suit, but what happens after that?"

Elder Wren's eyes held sadness and a little fear, coupled with determination. All of them were emotions that made sense. But I hadn't expected to see empathy and the softening of her gaze as she looked at Arik.

"I fear… that burden will fall to you, solely."

At her words, the pain in my chest flared up hotter. The world had tried to get Arik to take the place his father had vacated on the Emerald Throne, including the king himself, who'd recognised Arik, not Magnus, as his true-born son, but even the word of a king meant nothing in the face of the machinations of the Kheanian court. Arik knew it. We all knew it. And so I knew how my brother would respond to this call to action. I watched his back straighten, his chin rise as he met Elder Wren's eyes, and felt that burning ache inside me grow so much I had to fight to take a full breath.

He was going to crush it—crush us—crush every hope and fear. We'd go right back to the grey haze of hopelessness that each one of us had been floundering through, not even aware of it until we met her: the seventh princess in the long line of girls we'd delivered to their deaths. I knew I wouldn't survive it if Arik made us hand Jessalyn over to his brother to break, just like all the other girls before her. Their deaths were stains on my soul that I'd wear until my dying day, but hers would be the end of my spirit entirely.

"I know." Arik's voice was a ragged facsimile of his usual smooth tones. "I've always known this time would come, and I…" He glanced down the table, meeting Silas' eyes, then Creed's, and finally mine. "I swore I would spend my life with this pack from the moment we were recognised as such by the elders. I hoped I'd never be called upon to…"

The smile that had always come right when my spirits were at their lowest and lifted them. Usually it was on a battlefield, with the screams and cries of our enemies around us. But while my heart leapt to see it, here and now, I could not echo it. Not when I realised that the challenge in the battle ahead was far worse than any we'd faced before. For though I would always add my sword and strength to his, to keep our pack safe from any fucker who dared raised a weapon against us, it was only Arik—only the true King of Khean—who could fight in such a treacherous theatre of war as the royal court.

"But I said then that I'd do whatever it took for our pack to be safe, and I will." He nodded sharply at the three of us. "I always will." His focus shifted back to Wren and the rest of the elders. "So, revered elders, what do you propose?"