Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir

Chapter Fifteen

When Aeron returned to the castle, Cassandra knew there was no way around it; she had to tell him what happened to Samar. He was already in an agitated mood since he had found no inkling of hope toward a cure, but when he found out that she had sacrificed herself in order to save them all, Aeron flew into a fit of rage.

Cassandra tried to explain to him that there was no way to have saved her and that Samar was dying anyway. She told him that Samar wanted Aeron to focus on defeating the upcoming threat and protecting his family and his people. She urged him to see that Samar knew he couldn’t do that if she was still hanging on to life because he would be too distracted and that she loved him and had grown to love their entire family. Samar needed him to successfully stop the war and live on for her.

But Aeron was beyond furious. He was enraged that they hadn’t tried to stop Samar, and even more outraged that none of them had come to get him before she died so that he could at least say goodbye. That was what hurt Cassandra the most, and she knew that it would. She felt guilty about that too, even though Samar had told her not to.

“You should have told me what she was planning to do!” Aeron howled at Cassandra. He swept his hand over the table and knocked all of the glassware to the ground in a shattering crash.

“Calm down, Aeron,” Rubius said as he pulled Cassandra closer to him so that she didn’t get hurt by her husband’s tantrum.

“Calm down?” Aeron growled at him. “Don’t tell me what to do, Rubius.”

Cassandra was on the verge of tears, not because of Aeron’s temper, or because she was scared of what he would do, but because she hurt for him. She knew how much pain he was going through; she could see it flaring in his wild eyes. Aeron turned to Rubius with a rage-filled expression.

“Go tell the packs to prepare for the second war,” he said.

“Prepare how?” Rubius asked him. “We don’t even know when the second war is going to be.”

“It will be at sunrise. We will attack their kingdom head-on.”

“That’s a crazy idea and a reckless plan,” Rubius warned. “Just because you now have a death wish and are lashing out with rash plans for a hasty battle does not mean that I will go tell the packs to follow you blindly into it.”

“Rubius,” Cassandra said as she tried to get him to back down and not escalate the conflict with her husband.

Theo heard the commotion and came into the argument as well.

“I’m with Rubius on this one. I’m sorry, Father, but it’s not a good strategy, and you know it.”

Aeron glared at them with a look of dominant fury.

“I am your alpha and your king,” he snarled. “You will obey me whether you want to or not. Now go tell the packs to prepare for war in the morning. Now.”

Both Rubius and Theo knew that Aeron was leading them toward destruction. They might have been able to refuse him as king and suffer the consequences, but they had no choice but to follow his directives as alpha. Even if they had wanted to disobey him, they couldn’t. The alpha bond within the pack was strong enough to force their compliance, even unwillingly so.

Rubius and Theo left to go to the forest together to try and rally the other shifters, even though they knew it was the wrong thing to do and were opposed to doing it. When Cassandra and Aeron were alone in the room together, she tried to talk to him again, but he simply put his hand up in the air in front of her face to silence her.

“First, I had to deal with the pain of losing you to Rubius,” he said without looking at her. Bitterness soaked his voice. “Now, I have to deal with the pain of knowing that you stood by and did nothing while the second woman that I loved took her own life. You will never know how that betrayal feels.”

He turned his head to look at her, his eyes heavy with tears.

“Sometimes I wish you did,” he said.

Then he walked out of the room, leaving Cassandra to marinate in his harsh words alone.

* * *

Later in the evening, Cassandra went to their bedroom, where she found Aeron sitting in an overstuffed chair beside the window and looking out at the night sky. He had a glass of a pungent alcoholic drink half-filled in his hand, which Cassandra could catch the scent of from the doorway.

“Samar loved to look at the stars,” he said when he saw Cassandra’s reflection through the glass window.”

Cassandra walked in and sat in a chair at the other end of the window. For a short while, they sat in silence. Then, Aeron tossed the rest of the contents of his glass into his mouth and swallowed hard as if it had burned. He sighed and turned the glass around in his hand as he stared vacantly at it.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. “You know that I didn’t mean what I said. I would never want you to feel the suffering and pain that I have gone through. I have only ever wanted you to be happy, Cassandra. You must know that.”

“I do,” she said, and his love and kindness toward her made her want to cry even more. “I am not upset with you. I am simply hurting for you. I wish that I could take away all of the pain of loss that you have suffered, including the pain that I have caused you myself.”

More silent moments passed as they sat and looked out at the night sky.

“She was pure magic,” Cassandra said after a while.

“Yes,” Aeron nodded as he reached for an amber-colored decanter and poured himself another full glass. “She was.”

“Aeron,” she said. “There was another reason why Samar did what she did.”

“What do you mean?” he asked as he looked over at his wife.

“She wanted you to have something, something that she could only give you if she died in the manner that she did.”

Cassandra reached beneath the full folds of her skirt, where she had clipped Samar’s precious gift to keep it safe. When her hand came back out from beneath her skirt, along with it came Samar’s tail, which she handed to Aeron.

“Samar said that her tail was a powerful talisman, one that held all of the magic of her life. She wanted me to give it to you and to tell you to keep it on you in battle. She said that it will help you win the war.”

Aeron couldn’t have cared less about the war right now. He looked fondly at the beautiful tail, and tears filled his eyes as he touched it and took it from Cassandra’s hand. It was so soft and so beautiful, and he held it to his cheek and closed his eyes as the tears fell down his cheek and dropped from the bottom of his jaw onto his lap.

“This,” he said quietly as if he almost couldn’t bear to say the words, “is the last thing that I have of her.”

“I’m so sorry,” Cassandra said as she tried to choke back her own cries.

She took a minute to compose herself and to remember her promise to Samar.

“Aeron, you must win the war. You must do it for Samar and for your family and your kingdom. She gave her life for you, and now she is giving it to you again. Don’t let her death be in vain. Focus. Focus and pull yourself together, and tomorrow when the packs come to the castle and the humans gather around and await your command, lead them. Lead them like the ruler that both Samar and I know you to be.”

Aeron pressed his eyes closed and held the tail to his face for a moment longer. But then, when he opened his eyes again, he looked different. He looked refocused. And although he still looked angry, it looked like the kind of anger that could be harness and used to defeat his enemy instead of defeating himself.

“Thank you,” he said to Cassandra. “I am no longer angry with you, and I understand why you did what you did. Thank you for being there with her in her last moment, and thank you for coming to me now to give me this, even after I acted like a child.”

Cassandra got up and gave Aeron a gentle kiss on the cheek before leaving. Tonight, they would all need to rest, because tomorrow, there would be war—again.