Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir

Chapter Six

Aeron was twisted around his own thoughts about what to do. He had only a couple of days to make a decision that would have immense ramifications no matter which way he decided to go. If he returned Samar, he would lose her forever, and according to her, she would be murdered for being a Kitsune. If he didn’t return her, then Grenvich would be thrown into war with an outside kingdom and the wolf packs that were loyal to their shifter king, the size of which he had no idea. He asked Rubius to send scouts to try to get some information about the other kingdom and surrounding packs. Then he took Samar alone into his own bedroom and demanded to know the truth about why the other pack was so desperate for her return that they were willing to wage an entire war to have her.

“Tell me what is going on,” he insisted once they were in the room alone together.

Aeron knew that Cassandra was not happy with him speaking to Samar alone instead of in the presence of all of them. It wasn’t that she was jealous—well, maybe a little bit—but that after the whole thing about Samar being a Kitsune being hidden from them, she wanted full transparency now. But Aeron knew that Samar was still too shy around the entire group to reveal whatever the true reason her pack was trying to kill her.

Even in the presence of just Aeron alone, Samar was hesitant to tell him.

“Please, Samar,” Aeron pleaded as his tone softened. He could see that she was afraid, but he was trying to help, and he needed to know what was really going on. “I’m trying to protect you.”

Samra inhaled deeply. Weariness dragged her shoulders down, and he hoped she was about to get the weight off her chest.

“When Kitsune are killed,” she said, “their tails can be used as powerful magical talismans for the alphas.”

“What?” Aeron said in horror.

“The alpha of my pack, who is also a king much like you are, wants to kill me so that he can have my tail to wear around his neck. It would make him extremely powerful and able to crush any that opposed him, even vastly outnumbered or overpowered. Kitsune power is held in the tails, and only when the Kitsune is dead is the power accessible to be used by another. As long as I am alive, he cannot take it. My mother protected me from him and his followers that tried to hunt me, and it ended up costing her life in the end.”

“I am so sorry, Samar,” Aeron said. He frowned. He was vehemently repulsed by the thought that an alpha would kill a member of his pack to exalt his own power, and equally repulsed and horrified that any shifter would kill someone that was the last remaining alive of their entire species. But the thing that was the most distressing of all was the thought of anyone harming Samar, the woman that he now found himself increasingly attached to.

“I will not hand you over,” he said adamantly. “So you have nothing to fear. You are safe here with me, and with my family.”

Samar’s eyes glistened, not with a shifter gleam, but with the glossing of tears.

“Why would you risk your entire kingdom for me?” she asked. “I am no one to you. I am neither family nor pack member, nor subject in your kingdom. I am merely a vagabond shifter who showed up at your doorstep in the middle of a downpour. And although I am grateful beyond words for your protection, I need to ask why it is that you would risk your life, and the lives of your family and followers, to save me.”

She waited for Aeron to answer her, but the longer that he stared into her eyes, the less he seemed capable of finding the words to say. Perhaps he couldn’t answer her because he did not yet even know the answer himself.

“I feel called to protect you,” he said finally. “I am drawn to you, and I don’t yet know why. But I know that I need to protect you, and therefore I will go to war with your alpha and king before I agree to hand you over.”

Samar reached out her hand and placed it against Aeron’s chest. He stood there in a frozen moment and relished in the feeling of her small and simple touch. He wanted to kiss her, and from the way that her body leaned ever so slightly toward him, and the way her lips barely parted just enough that he knew he could slide his tongue between them, he thought she wanted to kiss him too. But kissing Samar would lead to other things. That, he was sure of. And right now, the rest of his family was waiting anxiously for answers. So instead, he simply lifted his hand up to hold against hers and pressed her fingers gently against his heart. Then, reluctantly, he said that it was time to go talk to the others and tell them what she said.

“Don’t be nervous,” Aeron said to her gently. “My family will protect you as I will. You have nothing to worry about here.”

After he said it, he hoped that it was as true as he thought it to be.

When Samar explained to the others that her previous alpha wanted to kill her for her tail and went on to explain how the Kitsune talisman worked, they were all as horrified as Aeron had been. Each of them was in agreement not to send Samar back to where she had come from.

That night, after Samar retired to her room for bed and the others either left to go home or done the same, Cassandra decided to stay in the castle with Aeron for the night. They sat up in the bed together and talked.

“You know that I value your opinion above all others,” Aeron said to her.

“I know,” Cassandra smiled. “That’s why I stayed.”

She reached over to hold his hand as their arms rested atop the blanket.

“You know that I will always love you as my husband and friend,” she said. “You can’t get rid of me just because I fell in love with Rubius too.”

Aeron chuckled.

“As if I would ever want to be rid of you,” he said as he smiled sadly. “You know how much I still love you.”

Cassandra nodded slowly.

“Yes,” she said. “I know that too. But I also know that you deserve more love too, just as I have with Rubius. I am glad that you took an interest in Samar. She is special. I can tell that about her.”

“I don’t yet know what to think of it,” Aeron said in an honest confession. “But I know that I am drawn to her, and that I can’t let death befall her.”

“I stand by your decision to protect Samar,” Cassandra said. “We all do. And we will protect her just as we have protected Marquette and anyone else who has joined our family, or our pack, or our kingdom.”

“It is a big sacrifice that I ask of everyone,” he said as he looked out into the empty bedroom that was filled with the dim glow of night which poured in through the windows.

“Yes,” Cassandra agreed. “It is. But it is also a worthy one. Even if we all put our feelings about Samar aside, we cannot let her be killed. She is special, Aeron. She is the last of her kind, at least that we know of. And from what she described earlier, she is the only Kitsune ever created in the way that she was. She must be protected.”

“Even if it means war?” he said solemnly. “Grenvich has never been to war under my rule.”

“Eh, what is a war other than a big fight. You’ve been in plenty of big fights.”

“That’s different, he said. “That just affects me, not my entire family, or my whole pack, or the enormity of a human kingdom.”

“It’s no different,” Cassandra said as she softly shook her head from side to side. “Everyone that follows you does so for a reason. We follow you not because we are commanded to, but because you are worthy of being our alpha. The humans will follow you too because they consider you worthy to be their king. That makes everything which affects you, in essence, affect a part of them too. You cannot separate who you are from what you have become to others. Remember a long time ago when you said that we were in all of this together?”

Aeron nodded and smiled a little at the fact that his wife was using his own words against him.

“This is the time for that,” she said. “Even if it means a war. If it’s war that we are going to have, then we will all greet it together.”