And mine for failing as a betrothed to find her.
Emilie should have been the one, now that I see her. She’s stronger. But she’s a pack leader, it’s obvious by the way the other two stay just behind. She’d have fought her own parents to avoid being forced to marry. And they might have lost.
This piques my interest further.
“They want to remain here at court,” my mother says again, as if trying to get me to read between the lines. “Noble, they want to live here, with us…”
And suddenly, I realize…
“You want to marry me? You can’t be serious!”
Chapter 8
Noble
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
The queen and I are alone.
“Mother, I’ve abided you most the day. Don’t make my temper shorter than it already is with your nagging.” I rub my temples. We’ve been at this for hours.
My mother knows she can wear a wolf down if she keeps on long enough. Nipping at our heels, as it were. It’s almost a stronger tactic than calling for trial by fire.
Right now…I’d face the fire.
“You’d hardly have to do much of anything, Noble.”
“Hardly?” I sit back in bed, my energy waning. I’m still not fully up to my usual self. “In what realm do you think it would be wise to risk another poor soul in the betrothal matching? What in all the realms are you thinking? How many more must die to prove to you that I’m rogue? That I’m no good for that life, mother. That lion---a LION, almost killed me while I ran, because I left the pack, the entire realm, for Summer. I wanted to be free of this place so badly, that the other version of myself risked death to get away! And now this. Emilie must be desperate, she must have great need. I won’t exploit that. If she’s here begging for us to take her on, instead of giving her family the money, they are in trouble, Mother.”
The wolf queen wrings her hands. I remind myself that my mother’s temperament is unsuited to shouting. She’s not even a strong she-wolf for a leader. The most basic of girls in our realm could take on the great black wolf’s wife. Soft and sweet, and I have no idea why my father chose a woman like her to lead our realm, or why she sat on that block of ice so long ago waiting for him after thirty days. All I know is, that when she looks at my father, not as she is now, but as her other self, he’s rarely ever not by her side while running.
“Speaking of the black wolf,” I say in exasperation when my father storms into the room.
He’s holding a parchment. His face is thunderous. If he were in wolf form, his hackles would be raised. “Woman,” he growls. “What is the meaning of this?”
Anyone else would be cowering about now. But my mother only glances at the parchment and shrugs.
He slaps the paper downward. “Not this! This!” he roars motioning to the room, my mother, then me.
The two of us stare at him in confusion. My father may be strong, but eloquence is not his forte.
He looks at the ceiling as if there is an answer in heaven. “There are three she-wolves under my roof waiting for you to pair one of them up with our son. Another villager, too. I didn’t like the last pairing, but you said it would enrich our line, that they give and raise children better, and that a royal would only make more trouble, but this…after the last time?”
“But…”
“It won’t happen,” he says. “Besides, there’s another larger issue at hand now.” My father gives her the missive. “Noble won’t be marrying the village wolf. Or any wolf for that matter.”
“What is this?” My mother scans the paper.
“It’s an offer.”
“Of what?” she chirps in frustration.
“Marriage.”
“To whom?” I ask, fearing the answer.
My father’s dark eyes narrow on me. “To your lion.”
Chapter 9
Noble
The days after my father’s missive are confusing to say the least. But time will tell us what we truly are dealing with, and how large a scale, after I go from zero offers of marriage, to two different possible betrothals in an instant.
I know there is more to Emilie’s offer to marry than what meets the eye. Why risk her life after I’d killed her sister? And why would anyone marry the person responsible for the death of their family member?
We three, my father, mother, and I, stand with Emilie and her two sisters, Grace and Laura, to discuss the predicament, once again.
In addition to the proposal of marriage, the Lions are suddenly claiming outlandish things. They are saying that hunters had appeared near the edge of both of our borders. Near Emilie’s village.
After some pressure put on by the Great Black Wolf, my father and our king, Emilie says, “What you have heard is true. The realm of man has encroached upon our village and poached many wolves as well.”
The silence is a gaping hole of disbelief.
My father’s less surprised than us both.
Emilie had been afraid to admit it. And rightly so. The court would laugh them out of the kingdom. She is, as I’d guessed, the leader of the village’s pack. She’s doing this for their protection.
I admire her for it.
But who would believe them?
“These hunters don’t want little foxes or bunnies. They want big game,” my father says, reading from the missive. “If we don’t come together as one, we could be at war with the human realm, and we have no idea what that would mean,” my father adds. “However, I’ve refused to come to any agreement with the lion king until they provide us with Noble’s attacker.” He eyes me shrewdly. “But they are in the same predicament as we are with the lioness who cut up Noble being their daughter.”
I suck in a breath, as does my mother, and Emilie.
“Daughter?” I say. “You mean she’s a lion royal?”
It makes sense. The girl I saw bathing, she couldn’t be a commoner. She’d even stood regally when she’d thought no one was watching.
“But the queen lion, the girl’s mother holds her ground,” my father says.
“As would I!” my mother exclaims.
He shakes his finger at my mother. “I knew you would, so it was between the lion king and I, that we should talk terms of a treaty. Women would just muck it up further. For both the attack on Noble and the unified front against the realm of man, we discussed at great length what should be done.”
I remain silent. Without knowing what he’ll say, the subconscious already seems to guess.
My father stands proudly as he does when giving an unbending decree. “Noble should marry the lion.”
I gape at the black wolf, the sudden matchmaker? My mother nearly faints.
My father hurries on to say, “But you wouldn’t have to do the betrothal custom, Noble. I’ve already told the king we wouldn’t put her at risk in such a way, since you wouldn’t find a mate like this …naturally, anyway. There will be a completely new custom made, because theirs is equally deadly.”