Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir

Chapter Eleven

The next day at the castle, everything seemed normal. Theo and Marquette had made it back undetected, Rubius had covered up all traces of what had happened the night before in the city, and it seemed nothing could scare Marquette away. And that was exactly why Theo decided that he had to push her away instead. It felt as if he was pulling his own heart out of his chest.

But Rubius had been right. This was about more than just going against a few rules to be together; this was about keeping Marquette alive. It was way too dangerous for her to be with a shifter. His title of royalty wasn’t the real problem, but a human and shifter together was. If either side found out about their relationship, they would both be hunted. Theo wasn’t afraid for himself. He wasn’t a little boy anymore and he could easily take on any wolf hunter that came for him. But Marquette would be in real danger from both the biased humans and the pure-blooded delusional wolf packs. As much as he wanted to think that he could keep an eye on her every second of every day, last night proved that he couldn’t. There would inevitably be times that he had to let her out of his sight, and those would be the times when she would be attacked. He had to let her go to keep her alive.

When he came across her in the castle, he ignored her. At first, she thought that he didn’t hear her, but then it became clear to her what he was doing.

“Don’t you dare do this!” she cried. She was speaking loud enough that other people could hear if they were nearby, and Theo tried to calm and hush her.

“No!” she said through her tears. “You promised! You promised that you wouldn’t push me away again, not even if it was for my own good. You lied!”

“I’m sorry, Marquette,” Theo said as he tried to remain strong and callous toward her spiraling emotions, even though he felt as if he was dying inside. “But it’s just not going to work out.”

“You are a coward!” she said.

After she got over her initial anger, she tried to appeal to him and plead with Theo to reconsider.

“We love each other,” she said as the tears streamed down her face and she reached for his hand.

But Theo pulled away from her and started to walk away.

“Not anymore,” he said as he turned and left.

He heard her softly crying behind him and felt as though he were the worst person on the face of the planet. He had just hurt the one he truly loved and lost Marquette forever. As he walked through the empty hallway, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find Rubius walking beside him.

“You did the right thing,” Rubius said to him.

“Yeah? Then why does it feel so awful?”

* * *

Holly stumbled upon Marquette as she was still whimpering and drying her tears. When she asked her what was wrong, Marquette turned to her for help, and after she explained the entire situation, she begged Holly to tell her what she could do to get Theo back. But there wasn’t much that Holly could do except give her a hug and offer her comfort. Neither of them had any idea that Cassandra was aware of her son’s affections for Marquette. And when Cassandra came in to find the two girls despondent, she offered her advice.

“Just give him some time,” Cassandra said to Marquette, who had broken down into another round of crying. “Theo will never truly leave you if he loves you and if the two of you are fated to be together.”

“Fated?” Marquette said.

“Yes, in our world, we believe that love is fated. That it calls two people together in an unrefutably powerful way that cannot be denied. If you and my son are fated in this way, then you will be together, and nothing can stop it.”

“But I am not a shifter,” Marquette said. “Maybe fate doesn’t work the same on me.”

“Fate works the same for every living being,” Cassandra smiled gently. “Trust that it will be the same for you and Theo.”

Just as Cassandra said her last words, the three women were interrupted.

“Cassandra!” Aeron called in through the doorway.

His voice was agitated, and it was unusual for him to address his wife in such a tone. Cassandra knew immediately that he had heard what she had said to Marquette, which meant that Aeron now knew of Theo’s love affair with the human girl. She got up to walk with him out of the room so the two of them could speak privately, and she gave Marquette a reassuring smile before she left.

When Cassandra got into the bedroom with her husband, he no longer hid how furious he was.

“Did you know about this?” he asked her as he paced the room.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew that you would react like this,” she said.

“Of course I would react like this,” Aeron yelled. “How else would you expect me to react when I hear my wife consoling a human girl and a hidden love affair that our son seems to be having with her?”

“It’s really not that big of a deal,” Cassandra said. She knew that she was at least partially lying in her attempts to downplay.

“How can you say that?” Aeron shouted. “It’s a huge deal! Theo’s actions yet again put our entire family in danger. He has even put Marquette in danger.”

“I am aware of the risk,” Cassandra said. “But you cannot deny our son the ability to love who he has chosen to love. Or if the love has chosen him, then he cannot even deny it himself.”

“Cassandra,” Aeron said as he tried to calm himself down and came to sit on the side of the bed beside her. “If any of the other packs were to find out, especially the pure-blooded pack, there would be an attempt on his life.”

“I know that,” she said. “Which is why we will all make sure that it stays a secret.”

But unfortunately, as was true with most castles, the walls had ears. It wasn’t long before word traveled to the other packs without a clear knowledge of how it managed to get there. The means of transmission was not of consequence, though. What mattered was the ears upon which the information fell. It just so happened the pack to hear of the love affair between Theo and his servant was the pure-blooded wolf pack that considered such relationships to be an abomination.

In the shifter world, if a pack and their alpha felt so strongly about something, then they would challenge it. In this case, since the offense came from the highest ruling pack, the pure-blooded pack’s alpha, along with his entire pack, came to challenge the rule of the royal family. Not only did the rival alpha and his pack consider the relationship to be an abomination and a complete disregard of shifter law, but they also considered Theo to now be ineligible to be heir, and they claimed that since Aeron and his family had tried to cover the whole thing up, Aeron was no longer fit to be the ruling alpha and the royal family were no longer fit to rule the human city. The entire situation erupted into a very volatile mess. Rubius came to stay at the castle as an extra measure of security, and both Theo and Holly were forbidden to leave the castle grounds until the matter was settled. Cassandra even spoke to Marquette and told her that she was not to go into the city until things cleared up, for fear that it wouldn’t be safe for her either.

In an effort to diffuse the situation and reach an amicable and diplomatic decision, as Aeron was well known for, he invited the rival pack to the castle to try to work out a resolution without bloodshed. The entire royal family, along with Rubius, would sit to discuss the matter with them in the hope of maintaining a civil peace and solid leadership.