Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir
Chapter Nineteen
After a magnificent day and an intimate night, Theo and Marquette resumed their royal duties. Both were blissfully happy and excited as they awaited the birth of their child. But Theo still found himself distracted by wanting to dismiss his obligations and just spend time with his newly pregnant wife. He tried to balance desire and duty and rose to the occasion to handle everything that was required of him. But his continued inner turmoil was a cause for worry as it pertained to the day when he would need to assume the throne.
In the back of his mind, Theo just couldn’t let go of the nagging idea that he would possibly give up his throne and walk away from the kingdom to focus on the future with Marquette and his child. He spoke to Marquette about his conflicting feelings from time to time, and she reassured him that he would grow to see that he could have all things together in a balance in which he didn’t need to walk away from anything. And although her words reassured him, he felt still unsure of what the future would bring. He did, however, feel certain about one thing—his utter devotion to Marquette and their baby, which was now about to be born.
“I don’t want to have the baby here in the castle,” Marquette said urgently as the moment approached for their child to enter the world.
“What? Why?” Cassandra asked.
She and Holly were both by Marquette’s side as the birth drew closer, and Aeron had gone to fetch Theo from the courtyard where he had been training.
“I want to give birth in the forest,” Marquette said as the pain of her contractions began to worsen.
“Marquette,” Holly said as she gauged the look of panic on her mother’s face at Marquette’s request. “It’s too late for you to go to the forest now. Your baby is coming.”
“Why don’t you want to give birth here, in the comfort of the castle?” Cassandra asked. She whispered to Holly to run and find Aeron and Theo and tell them to make haste.
“I don’t know,” Marquette replied. “I just feel the sudden urgency to have the baby enter the world in the forest. He needs to be born in the forest.”
“He?” Cassandra said.
Thankfully, at that moment, Theo and Aeron arrived back with Holly.
“Theo, please,” his mother pleaded. “You need to talk some sense into her. Marquette wants to go to the forest to give birth, but it is too late. She’d never reach it in time. You have to talk her out of this foolish idea.”
Theo went to Marquette’s side and grabbed her face in his hands as he looked deeply into her eyes.
“Theo, please,” she cried. “He needs to be born in the forest.”
Theo hesitated for the smallest of moments and then responded to her.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take you.”
“What are you doing?” Cassandra asked. “She won’t make it there in time!”
“She will if I carry her and run,” Theo said.
“Son,” Aeron intervened. “You can’t run fast enough in human form to make it, and you can’t carry her if you’re shifted. Marquette needs to stay here to birth the child.”
“If she says she needs to be in forest,” Theo insisted, “then that’s where I will take her. I can do it. I can run fast enough.”
He looked around at his family quickly as he lifted Marquette’s swollen body in his arms.
“I don’t have time to argue with you. If you want to support me, then come.”
Theo took off toward the hidden entrance that led from the castle to the forest. Cassandra, Aeron, and Holly looked at each other in shock for a moment, and then went with him. No one knew why it was so important for Marquette that she be in the forest to birth the child, and considering her rapidly evolving condition, they didn’t have time to discuss it further.
As soon as Theo had reached the tunnel that led to the forest, his eyes burned yellow and his muscles bulged. He was shifting without shifting entirely, something that not many shifters were able to do, but that Theo had been doing since he was a child. None of the others could keep up with him in their human forms as he ran, so Aeron, Cassandra, and Holly shifted into wolves and ran alongside Theo. When they reached the edge of the forest, Theo’s human body was being pushed past its limits as he ran faster than any two legs had ever carried anyone, clutching Marquette to his chest.
The center of the forest appeared within sight, and sensing the presence of the others in the woods, Rubius emerged with his pack. There, under the moonlight of the nighttime forest and surrounded by the dozens of glowing eyes of shifted wolves, Marquette birthed the first human/shifter child that most of the shifters had seen or heard about in their lifetimes. Even though there were dozens of pack members around them in a protective and reverent circle in the clearing, it felt as if it was the most intimate moment that Theo and Marquette had ever had. Together, in human form, they brought their child into the world. And as soon as the first cries of the baby were heard, the wolves all around them erupted into howls that carried up into the air and swept through the forest in honor of the new addition to their pack.
Theo placed the baby boy in Marquette’s arms, and then he held his wife and child in his protective grasp as he, in his still half-shifted form, joined in their howls of joy and celebration.