Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir

Chapter Four

It was almost winter, and both the humans and the shifters alike were starting to prepare for the festivities. The humans in the kingdom celebrated the start of the season with a big festival, complete with a feast, ice skating on the frozen lake, and a lantern lighting that ended up turning into a joyous night of drinking and dancing. The entire city would be decorated for the festival. The shifters also celebrated winter with a Yule ceremony that lasted for days. They, too, decorated the forest with garlands of pine and berries and candles nestled into dug holes in the ground away from the trees. There would be a feast of meats and mushrooms and nuts, and of course, the special sweet wine that Rubius’ pack was renowned for making each Yule season. There would be dancing, and revelry, and howling that echoed through the woods as the wolves took wild runs throughout the nights. Winter was Holly’s favorite season because it was rich with festivity and ripe with the sights, sounds, and smells of celebration.

She decided that the winter events would be the perfect thing for her to focus on as her first act of queenly involvement. She would help both the humans and the shifters with their feasts and decorations and add her personal touch to the joyful time of year. She would go out of her way to make sure that everyone had everything they needed to make it the most enjoyable winter season yet. Surely then, the humans would see that she was a kind and involved queen that wanted to treat the people in her kingdom as if they were her own family. That should help ease their fears of illegitimacy and abuse of the powers of the throne. Besides, Holly would enjoy every minute of preparation for her favorite season.

This time, she had a valid reason for actually going to the tavern. She went to put in an order of food and ale for the winter feasts. The tavern keeper was all but ecstatic to be asked to provide the food and ale for the festivities. He scribbled down every item that Holly requested onto a piece of parchment and assured her that he would have it all ready in time. He remarked about some hunting parties of men that had been going out into the woods almost every night as of late and bringing back deer for venison cuts and rabbit for stew. If she had been listening more closely, the thought of human hunting parties in the woods every night would have sent up a red flag. But it just so happened that the stranger was sitting in the same corner of the tavern again, and her eyes had just landed on his presence. This time—he saw her too.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the tavern-keeper as she politely and quickly stood up and removed herself from the conversation to walk over to the shifter. But as soon as he saw her trying to approach him, he got up and headed straight for the door, leaving a small pile of coins on the table to pay for his ale. Holly thought it was strange that the man would get up and leave so abruptly. There was still a half a glass of ale left. That seemed suspicious. She stood there for a moment, staring at the table that he had just been sitting at. The coins in the pile had the Grenvich seal on them, which meant that he wasn’t from somewhere else—he was from there.

She began to wonder if maybe she had been wrong about the man being a shifter, although she had never been wrong about that before, and she could definitely feel the shifter energy emanating from him. Holly walked back to the bar to where the tavern keeper was standing and still holding the piece of lead in his hand to complete Holly’s list.

“Who is that man?” she asked him.

“What man?” he asked as he looked around the tavern. He was confused because they had been right in the middle of making the list when Holly shifted focus.

“The one who sits by himself in the corner there,” she said as she pointed at the now-empty table.

“Oh, I don’t know who he is,” he answered. “He just started coming in here a couple of weeks ago; always orders a cold ale and sits in that same spot, not talking to anyone. I tried to talk to him once, felt bad for the guy because it didn’t look like he had any friends. But he wasn’t very social and all, so I gave up.”

“What did he say to you?” Holly asked with a pressing curiosity.

“Well, let me think,” he said as he rubbed his bristly beard with his thumb and index finger. “He told me that he liked my ale, and I asked if he’d had ale in other places before.”

“Had he?” Holly interrupted.

“Yes, he said he’d been around here and there, although I’m not sure what that even means, to be honest. Then he told me to leave him to his thoughts and his ale.”

“Really?” Holly asked. It seemed like a rude thing to do, to tell the tavern keeper to leave you alone to drink.

“Yep,” he laughed. “But I didn’t take any offense at that at all. Some people are just very blunt about things. If you ask me, it’s a much more honest and upstanding way to be,”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said as she mused over the fact that none of that was particularly helpful information. “I need to get back to the castle. You’ll have all that food and ale ready on time?”

The tavern keeper nodded and smiled as Holly dropped a pouch full of coins on top of the bar for him.

When she arrived back at the castle, Cassandra and Marquette were already knee-deep in decorating. Marquette was balancing her baby boy on one hip while helping Cassandra decorate with her other hand.

“Where’s Theo?” Holly asked her. “He should either be helping to decorate, or at the very least, holding onto his son while you put up decorations.”

“I’m here,” he called from the doorway. “Don’t start to hound on me before I’ve even gotten the chance to put down my weapons.”

Theo laid a sword down on the table and reached for his son, who Marquette gladly handed over.

“Why were you armed with that sword?” Holly asked. It was a battle sword, and one that Theo usually only carried when he expected to be meeting with a threat.

“Rubius and I were in the woods following some of the human hunting parties. They were harmless, just trying to hunt some game for their winter feasts. But lately, they’ve been getting rather close to some of the pack dens, so we needed to make sure that they didn’t have any sort of malicious intent or any indication that there could be something else in the forest, besides deer and rabbits, that they should be hunting.”

Cassandra’s hand still as she was hanging an evergreen, and she stopped to look at him.

“It’s all fine, Mother, I assure you. Rubius and I watched them for hours, and they weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary, nor anything too close to the packs. Fortunately, the game steers clear of the shifter dens, so the hunters have no reason to travel that deep into the woods.”

Theo looked down and smiled at his son in his arms and then pretended to fly him in the air like a bird as he walked out of the room.

“Do you think the human hunters will ever be something to worry about again?” Marquette asked.

It was clear to Holly why she was asking that particular question. All three women remembered a hunter had accidentally killed Marquette’s human mother as she was trying to protect Theo.

“I am very confident that Rubius and Theo will keep an eye on the situation,” Cassandra assured her. “And, you know me, I will want to have a look over the hunters’ activities in the forest myself within the coming days. Would you like to join me?”

Marquette nodded her head eagerly. If there was one thing that these women shared in common, it was that none of them wanted to sit back and let the men handle things. Holly, Cassandra, and Marquette were all as fiercely protective of their families as Rubius and Theo were.