All Jokes Aside （Part 1）
Kieran POV
Four hours.
Four hours of listening to old men drone on about grain tithes, border skirmishes, and the structural integrity of the northern watchtowers. But mostly, four hours of them dancing around the one subject they were actually desperate to discuss.
I pushed open the heavy oak doors to the subpack’s private quarters, feeling the headache pulsing behind my eyes like a trapped bird.
“If Lord Hareth clears his throat and mentions ‘the stability of the lineage’ one more time,” I muttered, undoing the clasps of my ceremonial tunic, “I am going to rip his throat out. With my teeth. In human form.”
Silas chuckled, closing the door behind us and immediately heading for the drinks cabinet. “He means well, Kai.. He’s just... traditional. He thinks a King without a Queen is like a wolf with three legs.”
“I have four legs,” I grunted, tossing the heavy velvet tunic onto a chair. “And I don’t need a ‘Luna’ that the council picked to tell me how to run an army.”
“No,” Silas agreed, pouring two glasses of amber liquid. “But you might need one to stop you from murdering the council.”
I took the glass he offered and downed half of it in one burn.
It didn’t help. The Council was obsessed.
They looked at me and didn’t see their King; they saw a stud horse that wasn’t producing heirs.
They paraded eligible she-wolves from noble families in front of me like prize cattle.
‘Look at her hips, Your Majesty.’ ‘Look at her beautiful hair.’ It was degrading.
We walked further into the room. This was our sanctuary. The one place in the castle where I wasn’t ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘The Alpha King.’ I was just Kieran.
The rest of the pack was scattered around the massive room.
Torin was sharpening a massive battleaxe by the fire, the rhythmic shhhk-shhhk sound strangely soothing.
Elara was sprawled on a rug, surrounded by maps of the Forbidden Lands, a quill tucked behind her ear.
Mara was arm-wrestling Juno on the low table, her face a mask of bored concentration while Juno looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel.
Jax was fletching arrows in the corner, silent as usual.
And Kael... Kael was trying to balance a dagger on his nose.
“You look like hell,” Mara commented, glancing at me, then slamming Juno’s hand into the wood with a deafening crack. Juno howled in defeat, shaking his wrist.
“Worse,” I sighed, collapsing onto the oversized leather sofa. “Council meeting.”
“Let me guess,” Elara said, not looking up from her map. “They want you to mate.”
“They want me to breed,” I corrected, closing my eyes. “There’s a difference. Apparently, the Kingdom is going to crumble into dust if I don’t find a nice, obedient she-wolf to sit next to me and look pretty.”
“You could just pick one,” Torin rumbled, testing the edge of his axe with his thumb. “Get them off your back.”
“And spend the rest of my life with someone who fears me? Or worse, someone who only wants the crown?” I shook my head. “I’d rather fight a Draconian naked.”
Silas sat on the arm of the sofa, swirling his drink. “It’s getting worse, though. The rumors about the ‘rogue’ near the border have them spooked. They think we’re weak because the pack structure isn’t ‘complete’ at the top.”
I groaned, rubbing my face. “I am this close to just walking away. Seriously. Pack a bag, shift, and run into the woods. Let someone else deal with the grain tithes and the matchmaking.”
I gestured vaguely to the room. “One of you can have the crown. I don’t want it.”
“I’ll take it!”
Kael dropped the dagger, which narrowly missed his foot, scrambled up from his chair, and raised a hand like a schoolboy. “King Kael. Has a nice ring to it, right? First decree: Taco Tuesdays are mandatory. Second decree..!”
Before he could finish that sentence, seven voices rang out:
"Absolutely not."
The silence that followed the group’s collective veto hung in the air for exactly three seconds before Kael broke it, clutching his chest as if physically struck by an arrow.
“I am... appalled, I am hurt!” Kael gasped, his eyes wide with feigned hurt.
He looked from Silas to Mara, then to the twins, seeking a sympathetic face.
He found none. “Betrayal. Mutiny. In my own home. I offer to shoulder the heavy burden of the crown, to save our beloved Alpha from the tyranny of grain reports and an arranged mateship and this is the thanks I get? ‘Absolutely not’?”
He hopped onto the sturdy oak table, scattering a few of Elara’s localized maps, ignoring her sharp growl of protest.
“Give me one good reason,” he demanded, pointing a finger at the ceiling. “One reason why King Kael isn’t the golden age this kingdom needs. I have charisma. I have stealth. I have great hair.”
“Do you want the list alphabetically or chronologically?” Elara asked dryly, not even looking up as she smoothed out one of the maps he’d wrinkled.
“Chronologically implies a history of failure,” Kael sniffed. “I prefer to call it a ‘learning curve.’”
“Let’s start with the skirmish at the Iron Pass then,” Mara said, leaning back in her chair and grinning like a shark. “You remember? The one where you tried to interrogate a prisoner?”
Kael waved a hand dismissively. “He talked, didn’t he?”
“He talked because you accidentally glued yourself to his leg with an alchemical glue that Juno had been experimenting with and couldn’t get off,” Mara retorted. “He laughed so hard he gave up the intel just to make you stop crying.”
“It was a tactical bond!” Kael argued. “I was establishing intimacy!”
“Item two,” Silas interjected, sliding a fresh drink across the table to me. I took it, feeling the tension in my shoulders loosen for the first time that day. This… this chaotic, unrefined banter, was the only thing keeping me sane. “The trade delegation with the Republic of Sol.”
Kael froze. “That was a cultural misunderstanding.”
“You sold the Human ambassador his own horse,” Jax said from the corner. His voice was quiet, deadpan, and absolutely lethal. He didn’t stop fletching his arrow. “You stole it, coloured it blue, and sold it back to him as a ‘Rare Cerulean Steed’ while he was eating lunch.”
“He was happy with the purchase!” Kael protested, looking to Juno for support. “Juno, back me up here. You know a good hustle when you see one.”
Juno, usually Kael’s partner in crime, held up his hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me, man. I blow things up. I don’t commit fraud against our primary source of black powder. That’s just bad business.”
“Traitor,” Kael hissed.
“And then,” Torin rumbled from his spot by the fire. He didn’t stop sharpening his axe, the rhythmic shhhk-shhhk only pausing for a brief second. “There was the incident with the beehive.”
The entire room groaned in unison. Even I winced at the memory.
“We agreed,” Kael said, his voice rising an octave, his face flushing a dangerous shade of red. “We agreed never to speak of the beehive. That was a dark time. I was exploring Apiary Warfare”
I could not help but laugh, the others quickly followed suit.
“I hate you guys sometimes,” Kael grumbled, dropping down into a squat on the table. “You stifle my genius.”
“We stifle your ability to start an international war by accident,” I said, leaning forward.
The exhaustion from the council meeting was gone, replaced by the warm, grounding presence of my pack.
“You’re a great spy, Kael. You’re the best infiltrator in the five nations. But if you were King, we’d be at war with the Draconians by Tuesday because you tried to steal a dragon egg to make a ‘really big omelet.’”
“It would be a delicious omelet,” Kael whispered, though he finally cracked a smile.
“Besides,” Juno piped up, grabbing a handful of nuts from a bowl and tossing one at Kael’s head. “If you were King, you couldn’t do the one thing you actually love.”
Kael caught the nut in mid-air with reflexes that belied his idiotic demeanor. “What’s that?”
“Annoying Kai,” Juno grinned. “You can’t annoy the King if you are the King. And you’d have to listen to Lord Hareth talk about crop rotation.”
Kael shuddered visibly. The horror of the realization dawned on his face. “Crop rotation. Lord Hareth… Oh gods. The grain tithes.” He looked at me with wide, terrified eyes. “I rescind my offer. I withdraw my candidacy. You can keep the crown. I’ll stick to theft and light treason.”
“Thought so,” I laughed, draining my glass.
“But seriously,” Kael added, hopping off the table and landing lightly next to Mara, stealing a piece of dried meat from her plate before she could slap his hand away.
“Don’t listen to the Council, boss. You don’t need a Luna to be strong. You’ve got us. We’re dysfunctional, violent, and occasionally sticky,” he gestured to himself, referencing the glue incident “but we’re the strongest unit in Valdora.”