I turn away from him, my vision blurring with building tears. My body tremors and as I walk away from him, I slant my head to face him.
“I’m not yours to mark, Crede,” I say, my voice stern. “I belong with Noble now. It’s best you remember, lest you want to end a decade of peace between our two realms.”
“Ah.” He nods, a despondent laugh reverberating from his chest. “Spoken like the new heir of the mighty wolves.”
The wind plays and weaves through my hair as it howls in my ear. The unassuming sound reminds me of my wolf. His eyes, a shade of gray like no other. Like the lingering ashes of a dwindling fire. The wind whirls around me, guiding me forward as I leave the man who will rule all of the realms behind without a second glance.
Chapter 13
Noble
“This is an outrage! Noble, you can’t be serious.”
“Hear, hear!” Others join Oren who’s standing across from where I am in the hall, no doubt thinking what he probably always does. If his father’s, father’s great-grandfather, had beaten our line once upon a time, he and I would be in opposite places. We are the same age, the same unmarried status, and the only thing that separates us is the blood-soaked snow where his great-great-great-grandfather lay slain by mine hundreds of years ago.
Neither of us had any stake in that. Yet, it is fresh in our minds every time we are in this room. And some day, hopefully not too soon, he will kneel to me at my throne. And I know just how miserable Oren will be in that moment. He craves my place.
But it is mine.
“I know this is unprecedented,” I try.
“Unprecedented!” Oren shouts, hands raised high. “Unprecedented would be marrying a commoner, Noble, oh prince of the wolves. This is a little more than that.”
The last is said with sarcasm. He pushes further every day.
“You’ve said your piece, Oren. And your place as our ward has served us well.” A small slap on the hand by using his current place as a ward as a reminder, commoner indeed, and I see him wilt. “And yes, unprecedented, but decided,” I say this with bite, my wolf growing inside of me, a thing they would sense in warning.
With care now, the following members of the wolf council begin their questions once again. “But what will she rule? She cannot know our ways. How can she run with the pack?”
Little do they know I rarely run with the pack myself.
Toliver nods his head in agreement and asks, “Isn’t it already hard enough to keep our boundaries as it is, and now with lions come to visit?”
“Visit?” Oren says, “She will live here! Some day as our queen.”
And brought back to that difficult point the entire assembly breaks out into arguments and angry shouts.
“Silence,” I say quietly, and no one pays me mind. I meet eyes with Emilie where she stands just ahead of everyone else, as her right.
She’s watching me, and I see a flicker of something in her eyes. She nods some sort of encouragement.
I frown and wonder, could it be that she is on my side? Perhaps she’s just glad not to be in Liana’s place herself.
She nods again and steps forward, urging me to do something.
“I said silence!” My voice rings through the hall.
I can’t help the inner flinch at the sound. I’ve never yelled at our members before, or anyone else in the great hall for that matter. The yelling is reserved for my father. I’ve never had reason to do more than listen, at times speak over simple things for the assembly, but now I sound…like him. Like the great black wolf.
As if summoned by my thoughts once again, he comes into the back of the hall with a twinkle in his eye, sneaking in unseen.
That he’s returned from the southern borders sets my mind at ease. We share a look of understanding. My father’s eyes speak clear enough saying, “Go ahead, boy. I’ve waited for this moment most of my life.”
Passing the torch to me has always been a dream of his.
Where I’m standing now, that’s where my father has scraped, and fought, and worked to place me. With me going rogue, he’d doubted that dream would ever come true. Never said as much, but I saw it in the worried set of his large shoulders. I, too, thought I’d never see the day.
Is it possible that this marriage will give me that opportunity? Help me to hide my curse that much longer?
Pride grows across the heavy features of the great black wolf, and I see the burden lift. His young wolf cub, a man now, would marry a lioness, a woman who would rule the realms if she was not forced to stand by my side, and is this how he saw it? I suppose he does not mind.
Me taking my place in any sort of way, to him, that’s enough.
“I will marry the lioness,” I say now into the quiet. “I will marry Liana. And she will be treated as one of us, as our queen in the future. She will rule here by my side, and the two of us will forge a thing not seen in a hundred years between our realms. There is doubt among you, but it has been this way before, and there were great times of prosperity when it had. We, as shifting people, have crossed a divide once in our past.”
“Othar,” Tolivar says with a begrudging nod.
“And Ulia,” Emilie adds, and the assembly makes a sound of growing positivity.
“Yes,” I say. “The great bears and tigers of long ago had done as Liana and I will do. They bridged a gap between our realms. And though that has fallen into nothing but history…we wolves…”
I pause because our motto is always what follows.
They call out to me, “Wolves remember the most.”
“The Wardens of Winter!” some call followed by our old motto, “Wards of the realms!”
I smile. “Agreed. We were once the protectors of all the realms. Who hears better than we? Who senses a threat or is able to alert the realms better than we?” I see a few wardens of the borders stand taller. This is their history. This is who they are. “None, but the pack, work together as well as we do. And we should be honored to show the lions once again what we can do. Lions have might. As do bears. But we wolves, we are the ones who have our strength in numbers. Always.”
Some look subdued at my statement. It brings a remembrance of what was lost. The tigers are gone. The bears might as well be. There are none left in the realm such as lion, such as wolf.
“Which brings me to my next point. It has always been taught as famine and plague and war broke out between the realms---a thing we call The Great Time of Darkness---but I tell you now there is another thing we face. I ask you to suspend your disbelief, for me, for your prince.” I look to my father who confirms it. He’s gone to the village and back to see for himself. He nods to me, eyes serious.
It takes my breath away.
So, it’s true.
I steady myself. “Prepare yourselves my wolf brothers and sisters, because I tell you grave news from our southern border. Wolves have been poached and killed.”
“See,” Oren yells. “The lions strike already!
“No, my brother,” I say without warmth. “This was hunters.”
Chapter 14
Noble