The Forbidden Wolf King: Kings of Avalier, Book 4(18)

I never wore dresses but my friend Maxine had convinced me to wear one to the skills camp registration day. It was mostly a meet and greet with the other dominants. The dress I’d worn was white with small pink flowers embroidered on it. Way too girly for my usual style and yet I’d felt beautiful in it. A lot of teenagers went to the summer skills camp in Eagle Cliff territory to hook up and I had hoped to find a boy with whom I could share my first kiss, but I’d had no idea I would meet the love of my life.

I was fifteen, dominant and incredibly naive.

After registration, I’d made my way to the food tent. There was a full band set up and as the sun set on the first night, I was dancing my heart out with Maxine. My arms were up in the air as I threw my hips side to side and laughed with a carefree joy I hadn’t had since my parents died.

That’s when Axil made his move.

The first thing that attracted me to him was his confidence. Most dominant men had an annoying level of confidence but Axil’s was tempered with something else. Something I couldn’t put my finger on at the time.

Respect. He respected me even before he’d touched my hips and stepped in front of me, looking down at me with those piercing blue eyes.

“Dance with me.” It was more of a command than a question but I knew I could say no if I’d wanted. He was the most handsome boy I’d ever seen, so I nodded and threw my arms around his neck.

That’s when he leaned forward and smelled me. His nose went to my hair and he moaned. I’d never met such a forward boy in my life! These things were not done at a first meeting in my pack, but with him … it felt right.

“What do I smell like?” I asked him with all the innocence of my fifteen-year-old self.

He pulled back and said something I’d never forgotten. Something that still plagued me today.

“My future wife.” He grinned.

In that moment, I’d fallen instantly in love with him. A puppy love with no depth but it was love just the same. First love. The reckless, careless kind that you jump into without much thought or fear of consequence.

I was the first to kiss him. Right there on the dance floor after he told me I smelled like his future wife. I captured his mouth in mine and our tongues danced. We alternated between kissing and dancing for hours until the camp organizers finally told us to head back to our tents.

The camp was a two-month long event and Axil made me promise to meet him the next day.

I did. And we’d fallen deeper. After our classes he took me to the river and we went fishing and talked until the sun went down. I told him all about my childhood and he shared some things but never about being a prince.

On the fifth week of the camp, he braided some string together and slipped it over my ring finger. He promised to one day make me his wife. He said that he had to go back to Death Mountain and deal with family business but when he was a man, he would send for me. Dorian didn’t allow us to get married until we were seventeen at the youngest anyway, so I knew I would have to bide my time to get my alpha’s permission.

I nodded enthusiastically. I would have agreed to anything, I was head over heels in love with him. We both planned to meet at the next skills camp the following year and then we spent the rest of the night dancing.

We snuck away from our pack tents that night and met on a blanket under the stars. We didn’t have sex, we just wanted to fall asleep next to each other. We did this for the last two weeks of camp, sneaking out of our tents and falling asleep together under the stars. And that’s how his older brother Ansel, the king at the time, found us the next morning.

Nausea and anger roiled through me as the painful scene flashed through my mind. The way his brother talked about me like I was trash. The way Axil said nothing to defend me. How he’d cowered to his brother and walked away without even looking at me. It made me sick and then I never saw him again.

I went to the next skills camp at sixteen, fully planning on dancing with another guy to make Axil jealous, but he never showed.

That bastard broke my innocent little heart into a thousand pieces and I’d never loved since. I’d had two boyfriends, but saw each of them as someone to warm the bed, not a person I could envision a life with. My heart felt raw for five years and never healed enough to let anyone in again.

Now here I was, fighting to be Axil’s wife. The irony was not lost on me.

Eliza rustled next to me then and I pulled myself from my thoughts. She stood, shaking herself and then indicated with her head that I should lie down.

If we were packmates we’d be able to speak into each other’s minds, but we weren’t, so we’d have to make do with head gestures.

I nodded and walked over to the warm spot she’d been lying in, plopping down immediately.

When I saw that she was fully awake and walking around and wasn’t likely to be surprised in an ambush, I closed my eyes and tried to push thoughts of fifteen-year-old Axil from my mind. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about him so deeply in years. Going back to those memories hurt, and I realized that not getting closure, not being able to tell him how he hurt me was what killed me. I’d felt bound and gagged, unable to share my side of it. Sleep pulled at my limbs and I pushed Axil from my mind but those piercing blue eyes kept coming back to me.

My future wife.

Did he have any idea that I would actually be in the running one day for such a thing? No. How could he? With a deep sigh, I lowered my head and then I was out.