He walked right up to me and his advisors pushed the crowd of other women back as his brother Ansel began to talk with them, giving us privacy.
I steeled myself for this interaction, for the chance to speak to him after he so cruelly left me without a word.
In every other culture you bowed before kings.
Not ours.
I held his gaze even when it hurt. As my breath hitched, I stared into his blue eyes for as long as possible, as he continued to hold mine in his line of sight. I knew from the moment that I’d met him, when we were fifteen, that he would be a future alpha, but I’d had no idea he was a prince and would one day be the king.
I wanted to show him now that I wasn’t the weak little girl from the Mud Flats that he and his brother thought I was back then. And I wanted the first words out of his mouth to be, I knew it would be you, I knew you would be the strongest among your pack. I had clawed my way to the top and now I had a chance to be his equal.
“Zara.” He breathed my name like a prayer and all rational thought left me. “I don’t know whether to be happy you came or horrified.”
I paled, not expecting that response. “Horrified? You … invited me?”
He swallowed hard and then leaned close, his familiar scent washing over me which caused a whine to build in my throat, but I swallowed it down. Lowering his voice to barely a whisper, he pressed his lips against my ear.
“Now I regret it. You shouldn’t have come,” he said and pulled away from me with a heartbreaking frown before he stalked off, leaving me in a world of hurt and confusion. This was not exactly how I imagined my reunion with Axil, but the bastard had clearly changed. He was no longer the sweet teenage boy I’d tongue kissed for hours under the moonlight while we’d dreamed up a future together.
Horrified to see me? Regretted inviting me? That fool was going to have some regret. I was going to make him regret the day he met me and every day thereafter.
Now I wanted to win this and to become his wife just to deny him every time he asked to bed me.
Wolven mated for life and were monogamous. I’d force the bastard into celibacy as payback for how he treated me.
Never underestimate a woman who’d been scorned.
THREE
Cyrus and I refused the living accommodations inside the castle and preferred to sleep in the large tent outside with our packmates. After seeing Axil, we’d left and I’d slept in one of the eight hammocks set up inside of the sizeable shelter. I’d much rather have my packmates watching my back while I slept than sleep alone in a room inside the belly of the beast.
To be honest, hearing Axil tell me that I shouldn’t have come had shaken me. I felt as unwanted as he’d made me feel all those years ago. I shouldn’t allow it to bother me, but it did. After the cruel way he’d broken up with me at camp, to now tell me that I shouldn’t have come was awful and I hated him for it. My brain chewed on it all night until I was fuming with rage.
How. Dare. He.
I was quiet all through breakfast as my packmates made a meal of fresh rabbitin and quail eggs they’d hunted that morning.
Cyrus leaned into me, looking across the camp at a familiar woman. She was the one who had been wearing the gold dress the night before.
“Ivanna Rivers. Crestline pack, second in command,” he said, and chills ran down my arms. Second? She made second in a pack full of dominant males! Crestline was known for its brutality. A formidable group of wolves who lived in the harshest climate in Fallenmoore. They sometimes got up to six feet of snow in winter and had to go days without food. They were even rumored to eat their own kind in a famine. She would be hardened and probably my biggest competitor.
She too had chosen to sleep in the tent with her packmates, a stone’s throw from mine. I watched as she and her battle coach walked together to the check-in tent across the lawn. She held my stare the entire time, which stirred my wolf.
“Come on, let’s go check in with the red robes,” Cyrus said sarcastically, gesturing to the wolf advisors.
I dipped my chin and we both stood as our packmates wished me good luck. I followed my brother over to a check-in table where I was given a blue-colored card by an advisor and told to go to the corresponding colored challenger tent.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” Cyrus told me. I nodded curtly and stepped into the blue tent.
Ivanna was there, standing in the middle holding a blue card as well. She glared me down as I entered and I moved in a circle around her with predatorial instinct.
She spun to match my movements, never allowing me her back. She was taller than me, and lean, with about the same muscle mass. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. Her long dark hair hung down her back in thick glossy curls and her golden skin was riddled with scars up her arms from fighting. It took a lot to scar a wolven. Her chin was perfectly pointed, as was her nose and her pink lips were full and puckered.
There were two tents, red and blue which meant Ivanna and I were not fighting each other. Not today at least. For now, it seemed we were on the same ‘team.’
Eliza stepped into the tent then and I noticed how pale she looked. I broke eye contact with Ivanna and glanced at the too-nice wolf.
“We’re going to be allowed weapons,” the Death Mountain wolf announced with far too much nervousness in her voice.
“Great.” I stood and rolled out my neck.
I loved weapons of all kinds. Swords, daggers, throwing stars, a heavy mace. My blood pumped just thinking about it.
Ivanna stood up straighter, apparently not liking my tall stature next to her.
“I am a weapon,” Ivanna announced to the tent as more women trickled in. “So I’ll pass.”
Chills broke out along my arms at her declaration. Did she say that just to get in my head? Or was she really going to pass on the chance to have a weapon?
That was crazy, but also something Cyrus would approve of because it had gotten in my head.
Should I pass too? I didn’t want to look weak for my first fight, especially not if the king was watching. After our run-in last night, I wanted to show him what he had been missing this whole time.
“King Axil is outside right now, making his way to the combat ring,” Eliza said as if reading my mind.
Ivanna and I shared a look and then we were back in a locked stare.
I can do this all day, I thought.
She was clearly looking to see if Eliza’s comment had elicited a reaction from me but I stayed completely void of any facial expression.
More competitors filtered into the tent and then one of the wolven advisors to the king strode into the space, wearing his long red robe. Ivanna and I finally broke our stare-down when the advisor stood directly in front of me, forcing me to look up at him. He held a small wooden box with tiny stone replicas of over a dozen weapons.
“Zara, for the Queen Trials you have been ranked in order of dominance. Because you are number one, you may pick first weapon. Once you have chosen, you will go to the weapons tent where they will exchange this with you for the life-sized version.”
My heart pounded in my chest at that shocking announcement. So it was a dominance ranking. And I’d made number one? How? Ivanna was second in command of her pack. Did Dorian give them an assessment of me or something?
Who cares, I thought to myself.