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.
FIVE
The sound of deep growling pulled me from my slumber. I was so tired. I couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour given how groggy my body felt. I blinked rapidly, popping up onto all four paws and looked around.
Oh no.
Eliza’s hackles were up as she crouched in front of me and faced the oncoming pack of wolven. Four of them.
It must be Ivanna and her new crew. I was suddenly overly alert, blood pumping through my veins as all sleepiness fled from my system. I stepped forward, next to Eliza and peered over at her.
She looked scared and I knew why. Fighting a pack of four wolves when you couldn’t communicate was a death sentence.
If only she were pack.
A wild idea hit me then and before I had time to overthink it, I lunged forward and bit into her hind leg lightly, just enough to draw blood.
She yelped and tried to jerk away from me.
‘I claim you, Eliza Green, for Mud Flat pack,’ I said in my mind and then released her, biting my own leg next. The second our blood mixed in my mouth, I pulled up every ounce of dominant power I possessed. I wasn’t an alpha, but I could be one day if I wanted to. Dorian was training me as such and he’d shown me how to claim a wolf. Normally it was a power only an alpha or second in command possessed but I was hoping that I had enough magic to pull this off and that Dorian wouldn’t mind me doing so.
A blue dusting of light fell over my fur, flickering like fireflies, and then Eliza looked up at me wide-eyed.
‘Did you just claim me?’ she shrieked into my mind.
It worked!
‘Yes. Incoming.’ I barely had time to communicate before the wolves were upon us. They spread out in a circle, surrounding us and now that they were closer, I could smell which one Ivanna was. A medium-sized black and gray wolf.
‘We attack together. Taking each one down separately, that will hopefully frighten the others off,’ I told her.
‘Okay.’ Her voice was shaky, even in my head.
I didn’t want to take Ivanna down first because the other three would jump in to protect her, as she was the most dominant. Instead, I aimed for the smallest one to Eliza’s left.
‘Her.’
I lowered my head and growled low as they circled, trying to intimidate us.
Without another word Eliza lunged forward and yanked the small wolf by the hind leg, dragging her into the circle. The other three wolves lunged for Eliza but I got into the fray first. While Eliza was dragging in the small wolf, who howled in pain and tried to claw at the ground and run out, I went for her jugular.
I bit down on her throat and tore it out in seconds as her body went limp. She didn’t even know what hit her. It was the same tactic that my pack used to take down cougarin.
Suddenly a wolf landed on my back. I shook vigorously to dislodge her before she could bite me and felt her slide off.
‘Help!’ Eliza called and I spun to see Ivana tearing into her flank. Eliza kept her head low to the ground with her throat covered by the dirt as one of the other wolves tugged at her ear, trying to get her to expose her neck.
I leapt into the air and came down on Ivanna’s back hard, knocking her to the side. She rolled three times, out of the way.
‘Attack!’ I told Eliza and without hesitation she stood from where she was protectively cowering and we both went for the wolf who’d been pulling on her ear. This time I pulled her hind leg to pin her down and Eliza tore out her throat. It all happened in a matter of seconds. There was nothing compared to fighting with a packmate. Not only could we verbally communicate but I sensed things. Her flank was hurting and she was hungry but she was also roaring with fighting energy and there was a trust between us.
She would do as I asked, letting me take the lead.
We both turned then, just as Ivanna and her final wolf stepped before us, lips peeled back in a snarl. Ivanna looked at the two dead wolves and then at the both of us.
She knew. She knew we were pack. It was the only way we could pull off such a coordinated attack.