His shoulders slump forward, his face growing wary. And then he masks it with an arrogant smirk. He straightens, his expansive chest in full display. “Yes, a wolf that can change when there is no full moon. A wolf that dared to venture outside of his realm. Because I am a royal. And you, Liana, are to be my wife. Be mindful of that and of your words,” he warns me.
“I’ll be no such thing if you can’t defeat my father, and with the way you fight, I’m fairly certain you will only bring more disgrace to your pack.”
“Is that why you’re here, then? To mock me in my own realm? Need I remind you, this is my kingdom and you are trespassing?”
“Shall we fight?” I fold my arms over my chest, the smooth satin of my skin a reminder that I’m arguing with a barbarian who most certainly finds enjoyment in seeing me so exposed. “See who wins?”
“Don’t challenge me, Liana,” he growls. “I may not be able to hold back the next time we battle.”
I inhale a deep breath through clenched teeth, and choke on his words. “You held back?” I whisper. “Why would you hold back? When you fight, Noble, you fight to win. If death is what is warranted, you fight until you are the victor. Until you are drained of your own blood, you fight. Until you expend your last breath, only then can you retreat. You mustn’t hold back. Not ever.”
“We’re done here. Go back to Summer, Liana. Soon enough you’ll have your fill of the cold and wish you hadn’t spoken such careless words.”
Without warning he changes back into wolf form. I study him as he considers me. His penetrating stare digs into me, and I waiver under his silent contemplation. The exquisite black fur feathered together with the deep gray twitches as his long muscles strain beneath the surface of his body. My heart thunders, a loud cadence inside my ears, as sudden passion threatens to explode in lustful craving. He holds me captive and I kneel down in front of him, my knees sinking into the soft ground beneath me. I stroke his massive head and nearly whimper when he nuzzles against it. I stroke the shockingly soft fur, threading my fingers through the strands, our gaze never falling from the others.
I lean into him and whisper, “When you fight my father, don’t hold back, Husband.”
Chapter 11
Noble
Shocking doesn’t cover it. The image is burned into my memory, seared into my eyes, of my future wife, again naked, again fierce, and threatening me. And should I be disgusted? Upset? Challenged and angry? Yes.
But I am none of those things.
As sick as I am, I am more alive than I have ever been. Liana is like a fire in human, well lioness, form.
She doesn’t ask questions without her beautiful face demanding that you answer and answer well. I’ve never met such a creature in all my life. It’s not that she’s a lion. I’ve known many. Bull-headed, and stubborn, and not always quick of wit.
But Liana is none of those things. She is a changeling from her realm, the wit of a wolf matched with the strength of courage the lions are known for. The coldness and calculating woman of my kind, wily creatures, they manipulate at every turn having worked quietly within a pack for rank, for order. Using their cunning, they will maneuver so subtly, that you don’t know they are there until the glowing eyes are right upon you.
The lions, and seeing Liana, I now know, have no such order. True, they have their king and queen, but everything else is left for challenge, and every order is shuffled based on strength. She would be their queen of queens. My mother had already said as much.
And she’s giving that all up and for what? A wounded rogue wolf?
She’s either insane, or pressured into the union.
I’m half tempted to tell them to forget it. That it’s not fair to someone as destined as she, but the thought leaves as soon as it comes. To let go of such a flame after only finding it? Nay, I don’t think I’m nearly strong enough for that. Liana is far too tempting to simply give away.
And she still assumes I will do the lion rituals. Hold true to their way. Liana has said she thinks that I will challenge her father. She tells me to fight her king, her kin, without holding back.
Before, I’d been too cool-headed, far too clear of thought to even imagine such a challenge, but now, seeing her, and hearing her words to not hold back---she’d called me husband--- but little does she know, after seeing her even the first time, after the memory surfaced of her at the pond, I’d fight a thousand lions without holding back. Just to have that tilted chin jut at me in defiance once more, I’d challenge her king for that alone.
My family will never understand, so what I do tonight, I do in secret. They’d already negotiated that there would be no ritual for Liana’s hand, but this is because of Katarina.
If she risked it all for our betrothal, and I failed her, maybe my challenge now will pay it back. Win. Lose. Or draw.
Only there will be no draw.
The king will kill me, or I will have her hand. It is as simple as that.
I dress, careful of my wounds, all the while in a daze at the prospect of a future that is for once not planned perfectly, not laid out before me. Tonight, I leave my realm and everything that’s there, possibly for the last time.
But first, politics. I have to meet with our leaders of the individual packs. I need to assure them that my father, the black wolf, has not lost his mind.
Our southern borders, secure, never infiltrated before, are now being open wide to…lions.
Lions who cry not wolf, but man! Hunters, they say.
Wolves are a suspicious kind of people. None of this will settle lightly, and my father is now away once again in a southern village, handling disputes over missing wolves.
He’s had to help them investigate the truth of this claim.
I cringe to think of my people’s heads in wolf form lining some human’s wall in some hunting lodge. Used to, those were our stories to tell around the camp fire, ghost stories almost, fairy tales, but gruesome ones. A little wolf in red just trying to see her sick grandmother, who’s tricked by a hunter.
But more than humans, there is rivalry that goes ages deep between the wolves and lions. Under my father’s rule and the king lion, we have had peace for nearly a century where once there was great war.
A war that all but ended the bears who live further north.
There might be none left. We’ve not even seen a bear, not truly, in over fifty years. Some say they quietly sank into a word we must never utter: extinction. To think it alone brings a chill to my heart.
But now with Liana, understandably, the wolves are going to be very upset to see our traditions tossed to the side. To see a lion enter our domain and lead, even. It’s more than just an understanding now, it would mean tying ourselves by blood.
It won’t be pretty in there.
I expect Oren, a subline of my lineage, will be the first to comment about my lack of ability to keep a wolf mate alive. That is his go-to in these discussions. Or now, so it seems, he can bring up how I can’t seem to marry one of our kind at all. What a failure I have proved to be.
Then there is the matter of their soon to be king risking his entire line in a fight with the King of Summer, the King of all Realms, the lion king. Suicide, they’ll say.