Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir
Chapter Seven
“What are you doing?” Theo asked as he pushed through the crowd toward Marquette and pulled her away from the man she was talking with.
The man had his arm around Marquette’s waist while they were talking, and she was giggling. At first, the man was getting ready to confront whoever had pulled Marquette from his grasp, but as soon as he saw that it was Prince Theo, he immediately backed away. Theo had a searing look of anger in his eyes, which even unsettled Marquette.
“I was just talking with some people,” she said.
“You weren’t talking with some people,” Theo said. “You were only talking with him.”
He pointed to the man who was now trying to steadily back away. The man didn’t want any trouble with the royal family. Marquette looked surprised that what Holly had told her to do had worked. It was very apparent that Theo was jealous and that his jealousy was continuing to ferment. But whether or not it had been a good idea was becoming questionable.
“I don’t understand what the problem is,” Marquette said.
She stared at Theo, and he stared back without anything to say that didn’t sound accusatory.
“The problem,” Theo tried to begin with. But no sooner had he started to talk than he felt his eyes start to burn and his wolfish nature start to rise to the surface. He looked at Marquette for one more desperate moment, and then he turned and ran from the market square.
“Theo, wait!” Marquette shouted as she started to run after him.
Theo was much faster than she was, and as soon as he got to the edge of the forest enough to be hidden within the trees, he shifted and became even faster. There was no feasible way that Marquette could catch up to him.
But that didn’t stop her from trying. She ran until she got to the forest, and then she kept running deeper in past the trees until she was so deep inside the forest that she was disoriented. Her lungs burned, and her legs ached, and there was a pang of pain in her side from doing more running than she had ever done at one time.
She stopped and looked around her. Even though it was still early in the day, the canopy of trees made the forest seem dark and foreboding. Unlike Holly and Theo, who longed for the dimly lit peace of the forest, Marquette became uneasy. She anxiously looked in every direction around her as she tried to figure out which way she had come from and which was the way out. But all the directions looked the same. She also felt as if she heard the low thrum of purring or growling, or some sort of noise that didn’t sound human.
Something at the corner of her eye seemed to move between the trees, and she became frightened. She gathered up the skirt of her dress and started to run in the first direction that her feet carried her, but she didn’t make it too far before she was met with several pairs of glowing yellow eyes. As Marquette started to step slowly backward, the pack of wolves crept closer on stealthily padded paws in crouched, prowling postures. The largest one in the front of the pack looked as though it was ready to pounce at any moment. Without being able to look both in front and behind her at the same time, Marquette tripped over some of the roots that were protruding from the ground and she fell down against her hands and backside onto the mossy ground. As soon as she had lost her footing, the wolves began to descend upon her, and she raised her arm to cover her face and keep from seeing what would likely be her last violent moments.
Just as Marquette let out a scream and prepared to feel the gnashing of teeth against her flesh, the low growling turned into a very audible sound of aggression. She opened her eyes and saw a giant black wolf right next to her. But this wolf wasn’t trying to attack her; it was trying to protect her.
Theo’s wolf form was every bit as large and muscular as his human form was, in fact, much more so. He stood between Marquette and the pack of wolves, and the ferocious growl that she now heard was coming from him. The other wolves made a low sound that seemed to vibrate within their chests as if they wanted to go against Theo but couldn’t. Not only was Theo a formidable foe, but he was also the son of the alpha of the most powerful wolf pack in the forests. None of them wanted to cross Aeron, and because of that reason alone, none of them would cross Theo.
Slowly, the other wolves backed away until, finally, they turned and went back into the forest altogether. Theo stayed looking away from Marquette at the forest until he was sure that they had all left. Even after that, he didn’t turn around for a few long moments to face her. When he did, he saw Marquette’s wide brown eyes staring at him in awe.
He shifted back into his human form and stood before her nakedly. He saw Marquette’s mouth drop open, and the rise and fall of her chest became labored and exaggerated. He wasn’t sure whether she was reacting in fear to what had just happened or reacting to his nude body standing before her. Being unclothed was the least of the reasons that Theo felt exposed, though. It was now completely undeniable that Marquette knew exactly what he was. She had seen with her own eyes that Theo was a shifter. She had watched him transform from wolf to man. There was no way that he could deny to her that he and all of his family were shifters, even though he knew that his sister had been correct in saying that Marquette had already known anyway.
But Theo felt more exposed and rawer in front of her than just having his secret revealed. He felt as if she had seen all sides of him: the scary, the uncontrollable, and the wild nature of who he really was. He breathed heavily and his heart pounded against his ribcage as he waited for her to get up and run away from him. How could she have feelings for him now? How could such a gentle and fragile human girl have tenderness for such a brutal and primal beast?
Marquette got slowly to her feet and stepped toward him. Her eyes were wide with a feverish look that Theo was certain was terror, or disbelief, or perhaps a mix of both. She stood just a few inches apart from him and lifted her hand toward his bare chest.
“Don’t,” Theo warned.
Marquette stilled her hand at the harsh utterance of his word.
“You should stay away from me,” he said as he diverted his eyes away from hers. For the first time in his life, he felt a tinge of shame at what he was. He felt different from the one person that he wanted to feel the same as. “I am dangerous, and so are all of the people that would kill me—and you—if they found out that I…”
Theo’s voice trailed off as he continued to look away from her.
“That you what?” Marquette asked him.
He didn’t answer.
“Theo, say it. Tell me. If they found out that you what?” she asked again.
He lifted his face to hers and spoke the words he had been holding in for as long as he could remember. His jaw shook, and his voice cracked, but he spoke anyway as if it was a cathartic release that washed over him.
“That I’m in love with you. Marquette, I’ve always been in love with you. But you need to stay away from me. I’m not safe for you to be around, and neither is my world.”
But instead of being afraid of him, and instead of running away from a world that she knew nothing about aside from the fact that it nearly tried to kill her tonight, Marquette reached to hold Theo’s face in her hand. She put her palm on the side of his cheek and held his eyes with hers.
“I am not afraid of you, Theo,” she said as she softened his heart. “I am only afraid of not being with you.”
At that moment, there in the forest, breathlessly overwhelmed with more emotions than he had ever felt before, Theo finally shed his last thread of restraint.