Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir

Chapter Five

After their night of racing through the woods, the angst between Aeron and Samar grew with each passing moment. He started to spend more time around her despite how difficult it was for him to continue to resist her. It was a delicious self-torture to be around her while trying not to give in to the urgency between them. And as much as he tried to contain his thoughts and feelings, even the rest of the royal family began to notice that there was something going on between Aeron and the new woman.

Cassandra was happy, albeit a little bit sad as well, to see that Aeron was interested in finding another possible mate. She knew that since she had chosen to be with Rubius, that Aeron deserved to have someone else beside him as well, and he deserved happiness and fulfillment of the desires that they no longer gave to each other. Cassandra couldn’t pretend that seeing Aeron with a human mate hadn’t shocked her at first, but she was happy for him. They all were.

* * *

One evening at dusk, a pounding knock resounded from the castle gate. Cassandra was the first to arrive at the door, Rubius shortly behind her.

“They’re shifters,” Rubius said, and as soon as he said it, she saw it too.

Aeron arrived on the scene, and the three of them welcomed the unknown shifters into the throne room to meet with them, curious about where they had come from and whose pack they belonged to.

“It’s unusual, isn’t it?” Cassandra whispered to Aeron. “To have so many strangers come to the kingdom in such a short period of time?”

Aeron eyed the shifters as they sat down and nodded his head slightly in response to his wife. It was unusual, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Theo walked into the room with Marquette a few moments after everyone had been seated and joined his place at his father’s side. The strangers seemed to be waiting for someone else to come into the room, and one of them almost jumped to his feet when Holly walked in to sit next to her brother. But after realizing that Holly wasn’t the person he was hoping for, the shifter settled back down against the back of his seat.

“How can I help you?” Aeron asked diplomatically. He sensed a brewing conflict – could these shifters be from Samar’s kingdom?

“We came to collect one of our own,” one of the shifters said. “A female named Samar.”

Aeron tried not to display any reaction, but the tone in the shifter’s voice, and the way that he phrased his choice of words, was nothing short of offensive.

“What do you mean by collect?” Aeron asked.

“She is one of our pack members,” he answered. “She went, shall we say, astray a bit ago, and our alpha would like her returned. We have reason to believe that she may have fled here.”

“Fled?” Rubius interjected. “Is there reason that a shifter would desire to flee your pack?”

The shifter made a sound like a low growl that uttered from his throat. Rubius echoed the sound with a much superior posture—he didn’t much like being challenged, and considering that Rubius was twice the size of any one of them, they quickly backed down.

“We aren’t here to start a conflict with your packs, nor your kingdom,” one of the other shifters picked up. He seemed to be the calmest of the bunch and was probably the best one to do the talking. “But Samar is one of us, and she needs to return.”

“What if she doesn’t want to return?” Cassandra asked.

But before he could answer, Samar walked into the room. As soon as she saw them, she ran to get behind Aeron. And as soon as the shifters caught a glimpse of her, they all stood up and positioned themselves in a way that looked like they were ready to attack. Aeron stood up from his throne and put a hand behind him to hold Samar in place behind his back so that he could ensure she would be safe. The rest of the royal family stood up beside him.

Rubius looked as if he was ready to take on the visiting shifters at a moment’s notice. It had been a while since he had engaged in a good fight, and he was more than ready to drag their carcasses out the door.

“I will remind you,” Aeron said in a deeply dominant voice that oozed the kind of royal calmness that only the best of kings have, “that you are in my home, within my kingdom, and it would not be wise to cross me.”

“I assure you, King Aeron, that we are not trying to offend you in any way. We are from the kingdom of Balavia, and we are simply here to claim what is ours,” the shifter said.

They seemed to back down a bit, realizing that it would not be wise of them to go against the king while outnumbered.

“Claim?” Cassandra said with a sarcastic inflection that showed she was clearly offended by the insinuation that a woman could be viewed as the property of a pack. “Samar is her own person, and she can decide for herself whether or not she would like to return to your pack.”

No sooner had the words come out of Cassandra’s mouth than she realized what she had just said.

“Wait a minute,” she said as she turned around to look at Samar. “Pack? Are you a shifter?”

Samar looked at Aeron, unsure of what to say or do in her current situation. Everyone else in the room who had previously thought that Samar was merely a human was now staring at her in complete confusion.

One of the shifters laughed, and his face wrinkled up as if he had spent too much time scowling, and the smile felt foreign on his face.

“Clever thing, isn’t she?” he chuckled. “I see that she had all of you fooled.”

“Not all of us,” Aeron snarled at him.

Cassandra looked at her husband in shock. Then she looked at Rubius.

“Did you know that she was a shifter too?” she asked him.

Rubius stumbled over his words, trying to answer her. He hadn’t been comfortable with the idea of keeping this secret from Cassandra to begin with, and now he knew that he was in a heap of trouble.

“King Aeron,” the shifter said again. “I can see that you have your own domestic issues to attend to now. So we will leave you with this. Our kingdom is ruled by a shifter alpha, too. And he has not only a very large human army, but also several packs under his lead. We can easily match the power of your kingdom and your pack members combined. We want Samar returned to us.”

“Is that a threat?” Theo asked on behalf of his father.

“It is a warning,” the shifter answered.

Aeron was beginning to become enraged at the bold audacity of these intruders in his castle.

“Samar is under my protection, in my capacity as both the alpha here and the King of Grenvich,” Aeron growled.

“Understood,” the shifter said with a nod. “However, we were sent here to give you an ultimatum in the event that you were unwilling to cooperate. Hand over Samar or our kingdom will have no choice but to issue a declaration of war on Grenvich and the surrounding forests. Since you appear to have your hands full with multiple matters right now, we will give you two days’ time to formulate a response. We’ll be back for an answer then. If we go to war, regardless of which side is victorious, the losses will be devastating. So for the sake of your people, I hope that when we return, you will be ready to hand over the woman.”

As the men left the castle, Rubius followed them out and watched until they had left the grounds.

“Please don’t hand me over,” Samar pleaded as soon as the shifters had left. She was trembling as if freezing. Even her voice shook. “They’ll kill me.”

The royal family looked on with shock and confusion, and Aeron knew that he needed to explain who Samar really was. After he finished his explanation, and Cassandra yelled at both her husband and Rubius for keeping it from her, Samar let up on the illusion that kept the others from sensing that she was a shifter. Suddenly, everyone could see and sense her for what she was, although a bit further explanation was required to explain that she was a Kitsune. Holly and Theo hadn’t even known what that meant until now. Now that everyone was brought up to speed and on the same page, they needed to figure out what to do.