Chapter 9
“ S o, what do people address you as where you’re from? Your Majesty? No, wait, that’s usually a king and queen thing, right? Princes and princesses, at least in the Western mortal monarchies, get served up with the ‘Your Highness’ stuff instead, if I remember. Or should I be calling you something else?”
Clara lowered the canteen of water from her mouth and did her best to hide her coughing fit behind the back of her hand. Goodness. They had only been walking for a little less than an hour, and already she’d been so churned up by his tales of the human lands and what lay ahead for them that she’d nearly spilled water on herself three times, almost rolled her ankle twice, and had been smacked in the forehead by a low branch she was convinced must have jumped out of nowhere.
The only small mercy granted was Bronze’s insistence that he walk in front of her. A bit silly since she was serving as his guide, but the energy it would have taken to argue was far better spent figuring out just what the hell she’d do once they arrived back at her home.
“Clara is fine when it is just us in conversation. Otherwise, most call me ‘lady.’”
Bronze hung back a bit and waited for her to ascend the small hill he’d already scaled so she wouldn’t have to shout. “My lady or Lady Ander? You explained how lycan females take their surnames from the mother’s line, but didn’t go into how you use it.”
“No, just ‘lady.’”
When Clara finally reached the top, she handed him back the canteen. He took it, but when he didn’t immediately stow it or continue walking, she stopped as well. He simply held the canteen, which was significantly lighter than when he’d offered it to her.
A tremulous sense of dread poked at her midsection. Had she drank too much? Were they to share one canteen each, or had she just imbibed far more than her fair portion, leaving him with very little water for the journey? Gosh, she hadn’t a clue. They hadn’t spoken of it. All that occurred earlier were a few small coughs on her part, which she’d covered with her mantle as best she could. By the time the fit had subsided and the dry dirt on their path had settled a bit, Bronze had already thrust the canteen beneath her nose, urging her to drink, so she did.
But, oh, he did not look happy. Dappled sunlight pierced through whatever openings in the tree cover it could find, casting Bronze’s features in slashes of highlighted brilliance, as well as revealing a sour look of consternation.
“Your people just call you ‘lady?’” he said dourly. “As in, ‘hey, lady’? Like they’re calling a dog or screaming at an irate shopper or something?”
The tone in his voice caught her off guard, and again, she worried she’d done something terribly wrong.
Perfect. Just perfect, Clara.
God, she was making such a muck of this already. If she couldn’t manage a simple conversation with the male, a task that had been quite easy since he’d done most of the talking, how on earth was she supposed to navigate their interactions when they got to her home?
“Does my title offend you somehow?” she offered hastily. “As I said, you may call me by my given name in private.”
The crude manner with which the angel shook his head sharply was a jarring upheaval of his otherwise delightful nature. Dismissive almost, and it unnerved her. He seemed to mutter something under his breath before addressing her more fully. “I’ll play along and do what you need.”
“Thank you.” Though she had no idea what she was thanking him for, exactly.
They walked in silence for a few moments, and the short respite was painstakingly needed. Clara brought her hands to the relic and fiddled with the fang’s tip while she sorted out the next phase of what she hoped would change the course of the rest of her and her people’s lives.
She thought back to the moment this entire odyssey of an idea had first occurred to her. The moment when her father’s actions had solidified into so much more than the base manipulations only he and other select males in the stronghold seemed to excel in.
The argument she’d witnessed had been between two rival farmers, both of whom maintained properties on the outskirts of her father’s lands. One was a dairy farmer, while the other operated an apple orchard, and both had solid footing in the human lands as well as the lycan territories, as dairy products and apples were among the top five commodities for the region regardless of species.
Traditionally, Clara had never been called on to hear civilian disputes, as the judgment from the king was all that mattered. However, she had already been speaking to her father about another subject. Once the king’s appointment to hear the farmers’ dispute arrived, he’d forgotten about her entirely, as was sometimes his way, and failed to dismiss her.
The doors to King Halpin’s receiving room remained open, despite the two males who had requested a private appointment with the king. Clara gripped the paper her father had signed after he’d flippantly tossed it her way. She’d managed to catch it before it soared into the fireplace behind them, thankfully. She didn’t want to examine the outcome if she’d been too slow.
Her frustration was quickly growing from a measured simmer to a full-blown boil, but when the two males stepped forward, her curiosity, both at not being immediately dismissed and why the doors had yet to be closed, intrigued her more than her anger distracted her.
The king jotted down some notes in a ledger but never looked up. “What is your complaint, Mr. McCready? I read something about fences being destroyed and losing some of your herd.”
The older dairy farmer ripped his flat cap from his balding head and crushed it nervously in his hands. “Yes, Your Majesty. You see, Mr. Blankenship has not been mending his orchard’s wooden fences, allowing the coyotes to get through to my farm and kill my dairy calves. Our families had an agreement some years back where we’d split the cost of fencing the perimeters where our properties joined. I’ve kept up with my half, but Mr. Blankenship has not held up his side of the bargain.”
“Your bargain was with my father, old man, not with me.” The satisfied smirk on the younger farmer’s face echoed the arrogance in his stance, his bony shoulders pushed back with a bravado his lanky frame could otherwise never fully muster.
“You are his pup,” the older farmer shouted, pointing a gnarled finger in the young man’s direction. “Why take on your father’s legacy after he died if you’re just going to see it ruined? You have a responsibility to your pack, to your ? —”
When her father’s fist hit the desk, Clara shrank back farther against the tapestry on the wall. Still, he didn’t look at them and continued to scribble his notes, effecting a bored tone. “Tell me something, Mr. McCready. Can an apple harm a cow?”
The old male’s jowls wobbled as he shook his head in confusion. “Um, no, Your Majesty.”
“And do your cows harm Mr. Blankenship’s apples?” The king turned a page. More scribbling.
“No. I don’t feed my livestock apples. It bloats them up terribly, especially the Jersey cows.”
“Do coyotes eat apples?”
The old farmer’s face fell. “I couldn’t say, Your Majesty. I suppose they could.”
The young male chimed in. “I’ve secured all my trees in the orchard with tighter, more restrictive stone fences. Whatever Mr. McCready is referring to is obsolete for my uses. Any bargain he struck with my father was verbal only. I have no need for his fences.”
“We had an agreement,” the old farmer whined, the shock of where the conversation was heading dragging down his features further. “The cost was too high for both of us,” he said, his faraway eyes slipping into the past. “The acreage alone meant ? —”
“Fix your own fences and don’t waste my time again.”
The two farmers were immediately dismissed, but before Clara could sneak out of the room as well, her heart heavier than the stones brushing along her palm that she held out for support, she caught her father’s final words to his chief of arms.
“Double your lycans next time. Blankenship provided me with his shipping receipts as proof of my earlier request of his farm and, as such, has officially cut business ties with the humans. He serves only us now. Our message to McCready was not strong enough, however. When he delivers his next dairy shipment to the human lands, have your males take out half his herd the following night. That should readjust loyalties quite nicely.”
A blurry palm waved across Clara’s vision, blending the helplessness of her memories with that of her present. She blinked and looked up.
“Hey, she’s back! Good. I got worried for a second. Thought I’d lost you. Again .” Bronze dropped his hand and smiled delicately at her, though it was clearly more for her reassurance than his own.
Had she just been . . . daydreaming? Where in the mother’s name was her wolf? She’d been overcome by more distractions in the past week than in her entire life. So much for her keen lycan senses.
Clara reached inward and immediately relaxed when the familiar canine whine rose up through her mind. Weaker, though. Much, much weaker.
How long had it been since she’d shifted? A few days, at least. No wonder her she-wolf was getting quieter. Clara had not let her roam in some time. Wonderful. A new guilt to add to her ever-growing pile.
“I was just, um, thinking about preparing you for when we return to my home.”
“Please, enlighten me. I’ve been gabbing for ages, and I’m quite sick of hearing my own voice.”
She gasped when he cupped her elbow through her cloak and helped her over a large tree root, then released her as if he’d done little more than brush off road dust.
“Besides, there’s only so much I can say about cars, video games, and social media. Tell me more about what I’ll be walking into, at least. These games . . . what can I expect?”
You can expect to win them all and marry me, so I might have at least one male I can convince to speak on behalf of my people and overrule my father.
And there it was. Her remaining worries rang loud and clear through her consciousness, except even in her thoughts, she wasn’t entirely truthful. One only had to spend five minutes in Bronze’s presence to know the male couldn’t be convinced of anything he wasn’t inclined to agree upon first.
No, her ploy wasn’t about convincing him of anything but manipulating him into letting her rule the way her people deserved. The way she could rule them if her father was finally forced to stand down.
“Well, there are usually three tasks, one to represent the three different credos of our monarchy,” she offered, keeping her eyes firmly on the path before her and not on the male at her side, who’d resumed his stride to match hers. As he drew nearer, a trickle of sweat teased her hairline at the base of her neck, despite the late-spring’s cool breeze.
“And what would those be?”
Clara took a deep breath and recited the words that were as dear to her as her own name. “With power, we run. With strength, we capture. With the moon’s senses, we detect and safeguard.”
If Bronze held any opinions on what she’d revealed, he kept his own counsel on the subject. “I take it you’re not going to tell me what those particular games entail?”
“I would if I could, but they are created by the king. Each trial pays tribute to a different credo. How they are constructed and what is involved is unknown to all except the monarch.”
“Have these games ever been rigged?”
She paused and looked up at him. “Rigged?”
“Fixed. Predetermined.”
“No. Not that I know of, at least, though the last games happened before my time. But when I was researching the histories in the annex, there was no mention of anything dishonest ever occurring.”
Bronze softened his gaze and offered her a simple smile. Her heart sank and nearly dropped clear through to the soles of her boots. She knew that look all too well. It was the look of an adult breaking hard news to a fanciful child.
“History’s usually written by the winners, Clara. I can’t imagine that’s different from one culture to another. If things did go south or there was ever any tampering evident, I doubt your historians would have been allowed to paint the truth of the picture, even if they were inclined to do so, especially in a monarchy.”
She flinched, and the veracity of his words pricked like freezing rain on heated skin. Hot shame flooded her cheeks, and she shrank deeper into her hood. Of course he would think her na?ve. Not only had she foolishly landed herself in the exact wrong company she was searching for but now the very male who stood a chance at helping her maneuver this ridiculous deception saw her as no more than a silly female. One he needed to coddle like a child to help her understand the hard truths of the world.
Because her truths hadn’t been hard enough, apparently.
Stupid, Clara. So utterly stupid you are.
“Yes, I realize that,” she said softly, hoping to keep the stinging pain out of her voice. “Still, I must believe it would be highly unlikely for that to occur. It is in the king’s best interest?—”
“Here, warm this up for me.”
He dropped a small circular object, heavy for its size, into the center of her palm. Before she could question him further, he dropped to his knee to retie his bootlace. Left with no other alternative, she examined what he’d given her.
A compass. Yes, that’s what it was. She’d heard that some of the human traders used them when navigating the White Mountains. Lycans had no use for them, of course, what with their acute senses and deep connection to the moon, but she was not so ignorant as to not know what one was. A guide of sorts, if she recalled correctly. The minuscule N, S, E, and W stood out in emerald green against a backdrop of black, while tiny white dashes punctuated what she assumed were different degrees of measurement between the letters.
Wait, what had he just said? Warm it up? How on earth was she supposed to do that? Was it something to do with its functionality? Well, she certainly didn’t want to give him any more cause to think she was dull-witted. She was aware of the object’s general uses, after all.
At a loss for clarity but determined to prove competency, she covered the compass with her palms, rubbed her hands briskly, began blowing warm breath into the small opening she made, then held it out to him, quite satisfied with her work.
Bronze didn’t look up, however, and instead started plucking the laces from his other book, retightening those to match.
Damn. Had she not warmed it up enough? She snatched it back quickly before he could notice and resumed stroking the thing.
“Why don’t we not talk about what’s in the king’s best interest,” Bronze said, addressing her earlier comments, “because if that was even remotely high on your priority list, you wouldn’t have almost died looking for someone to champion you in a marriage competition, which, by the way, we haven’t yet ironed out all the particulars of.”
Seriously, did this male have the longest bootlaces on the continent? Clara’s skin was nearly being rubbed raw at that point.
“Yes, there is much more we need to discuss,” she conceded. “But that’s not likely to happen while your nose is to the ground and I’m expending all my energy warming up this thing. Surely this is sufficiently heated by now. I trust it’ll work properly. When can I let go of it?”
Bronze shot to his feet in a burst of energy common among pups and patrol guards, grabbed the compass from her, and tossed it into the bottom of his pack with no care whatsoever. “It doesn’t need to be warmed up to work. I just couldn’t have you shitting all over your confidence when you’ve got a handsome angel like me to marry. Figured it was best to keep your hands busy before that little fact dawned on you and you got it in your head to wrap those pretty fingers around my throat. And,” he added, adjusting the pack higher on his shoulders, “before we make it back to dear old dad’s, I think we better talk about the endgame here.”
Clara blinked, her palm still frozen in midair, and blinked again. In the span of a swift breeze through the trees, she’d been simultaneously tricked, understood, comforted, and, most peculiar of all, dismissed for not having the foresight to commit bodily harm to the male who . . . had rescued her? If she wasn’t barreling toward the biggest fight of her life once she returned home, she wasn’t entirely certain she could make it another step without drawing blood.
Of all the strangest, most frustrating, obnoxious ?—
“No one has ever spoken to me that way,” she said icily.
“Yeah, I got that, and let me tell you I’m quite honored to be the first.”
Clara shook her head. “You’re unbelievable. Where I come from males don’t joke in such a manner, and females certainly?—”
“Don’t laugh quite as much as they should. I can tell. Now, we’ve got another hour or so, and I need to know one very important thing before we get there.”
“And what is that?” she said, snapping her fists to her hips.
Oh, her wolf was fuming. As weak as the poor thing was, it wouldn’t take much for her to shift and have her other half bound down on him with the force of a forest-leveling hurricane. Hell, Clara might even let her wolf get a few good bites in before she lessened—not halted—the assault.
Might lessen .
She was about to tell him as much when he stepped closer, chasing away whatever brave chilly spring breezes had dared to linger in his wake.
“What I need to know, princess, and what you’ve conveniently left out of your tale so far, is what comes after the wedding vows. I know my own reasons for why I’m agreeing to marry a beautiful woman and escort her back to her piece-of-shit father who made her run away in the first place. Now it’s time to tell me yours.”