Her Royal Wolves

Chapter 2

“It is good to have you home,” Alpha Reine says, looking at Valentine and Silas and then finally

on the rest of us.

We don’t get the same warm greeting, but I do understand. She doesn’t know who we are anymore, as we have changed from children. And she doesn’t know much about Phim and Trey at

all. I imagine, as alpha female of this huge pack, she has had to make herself strong and become careful of who she trusts.

The carriage stops in front of us, and I stare up at the magnificent horses, admiring their soft coats

and long manes. Within the braids of each horse’s mane are silver upside-down mountain clips that

catch the sunlight.

“It is good to be home,” Silas replies, walking up to the horses. He pats the side of one of them.

“How is my horse?”

“Gwen is fine,” Alpha Soren tells him.

“We will ride out together tomorrow.”

Silas nods at him, a softness in his eyes for Alpha Soren. I remember being told Alpha Reine challenged his biological father for Silas, won, and brought him up.

I get the impression, or feeling,

something similar happened with Valentine. I want to ask about Valentine’s history, but I will wait

until he comes to me. No one should be pushed into revealing their past.

“Should we not wait for Ragnar and Henderson to come back down with the children?” I question.

“They will catch up,” Valentine tells me.

“There was an outbreak of a nasty sickness five years ago that took a lot of. our young,” Alpha Reine tells us, a note of sadness in her words. “Wolf children are very welcome to many parents here,

and they will be honoured and celebrated. My people are working hard to find them homes, and you

need not worry.”

“I will try not to,” I reply, looking at Alpha Reine. “And I’m so sorry for your losses.”

“We endure the fall,” she tells me, each word filled with power, “and rise in the ashes.”

She turns away from us, and I look up at the gigantic oak carriage that towers up into the sky, the oak shaped into leaves and petals that join together to hold a red stained glass sphere.

The door of the carriage has the Fall Mountain Pack symbol carved in the middle, and it opens outward before a man jumps out. Wearing all black, with a red cloak falling from his shoulders and a red symbol on his chest, he bows his head of black hair. Two swords are strapped to his back, and four daggers are strapped to his arms.

“Any royal guard wears this uniform,” Valentine tells me, loud enough for Phim, Adira and Trey to hear. “There is a ranking for guards, starting with grunts, and the top level is one of the Selected

Royal Guards. To become one takes intense training.”

The guard keeps his head bowed as he pulls down a little tiny row of steps that lead into the carriage before stepping to the side.

Alpha Reine walks on first. “Thank you, Krause. Take us back to the castle.”

“Yes, alpha,” Krause responds. Alpha Soren climbs on next, and Silas gestures for me to follow.

He holds onto my hand as he guides me up the steps, and I sit on the empty side. The walls are dark, with an electric light above us on the ceiling, and the seats are made of dark red fabric. There is

space for at least ten people to sit in here, maybe fewer if they are the size of my alphas.

Silas comes and sits right next to me, opposite Alpha Soren and Reine. Valentine gets on next and

sits beside Silas, followed by Adira and Phim and finally Trey. Trey takes the seat next to Alpha Reine and Soren, immediately chatting away as the door closes and the carriage takes off.

I peel the red curtains back to look out the window, watching the houses go past until we come to a clearing of grass, and beyond is one of the two rivers that flow through the city. We cross over a

large white stone bridge, and I look down to see three swans in the river, gracefully swimming along.

I look back to see Silas and Valentine deep in conversation, both of them tenser than before.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

The carriage goes quiet, everyone listening in as Silas answers me. “Our bond with the pack has

gone silent.”

“What does that mean?” Phim questions. “I can feel the bond, but I can’t tap into it.”

“It’s like it’s gone silent, disappeared,” Trey agrees.

“It’s the magic of the city,” Soren claims, interrupting. “It can do that, on occasion. I heard of issues with the pack bond when my father’s rite was started. The land doesn’t know who the alphas

are going to be, and it makes the rules.”

“The land is alive with god magic,” Alpha Reine agrees. “We should all be cautious of its strength while The Rite of Wolves is commencing.”

“There’s only one pack after all. Making another one and then coming here must have messed with the magic,” Silas agrees.

“I hope it was worth leaving your people for so long,” Alpha Soren comments, his eyes looking my way. They left to find me, and it has no doubt cost them something they aren’t saying. The city

seems at peace, the people safe, and that can’t be said for anyone outside these walls. I get the impression he is talking about me, about whether I’m worth the years they spent looking

for me.

Silas and Valentine turn my way. Their combined gaze makes my heart beat fast. “Some people are worth all the stars in the sky, all the packs in the world, and every beat of our hearts.”

I suck in a breath, holding back the emotions pouring throughout my body. These alphas so effortlessly take my heart and soul with a couple of words. With a look.

I love them passionately and whole-heartedly, and whatever the future is going to throw at us, we can handle it.

The silence becomes uncomfortable after a while, and I choose to look out of the window, watching the city pass by, enjoying the normality of this place. Wolves fill the streets, both shifted and

not, pausing to enjoy the leaves falling from the trees or a quiet talk with a friend.

Some are eating on

benches, others are running or doing stretches. The shifted wolves are walking between them or lying

on the grass in the shade, young wolves playing at their feet. The young wolves are tiny, and they must

shift for the first time so young here. I can’t wait to run through this city in my wolf form.

The scents and sights will be unforgettable.

The wolves here wear a mixture of human-like clothing—dresses and jeans, leggings and T-shirts

—surprising me. In the Fenrir Court, the angels dress like humans in the eighteen hundreds, and we were the odd ones out. We drive around a corner, and I look up at a large, broken pillar that towers

into the sky. The pillar is made of white stone, beautifully carved, and I imagine it was one of the original parts of the mountain that fell.

“Is that part of the original mountain?” I question, pointing at it.

“Yes, and there are parts like that all over the city. The city, by the way, is called the Ruina City, and it is divided into eight plazas. Each plaza has a name, and it is defined by the pillars which mark

the borders of areas. We just left the Infernum Plaza, and we are now in the Calah Plaza,” Alpha Reine explains to me.

“I look forward to learning more about Ruina City,” I answer.

Alpha Reine nods, looking out. “I felt your presence, all six of you, when you stepped in here. The land shook with power, unlike anything I’ve seen. You were all born to walk this city, to be in this pack.”

“I know I was,” Adira comments with a proud smile.

Alpha Reine watches her for a moment, and I can’t read her expression before she turns back to looking out the window.

“This land is steeped with magic from Hades and from other gods who

walked on this place right before our time, and after a while, the land speaks to you. It helps you.”

“Do you think the land is happy to have us here?” Silas questions. I’m a little surprised he doesn’t call her his mother, but I don’t comment on it.

She frowns, turning to Alpha Soren. “Yes and no. The rite...well, it has made the land alive once

more with thick, dangerous and wild magic. We should all be very careful until you take our place as alphas.”

“Our connection to Hades has grown,” Silas warns.

Something like fear flashes in Alpha Reine’s eyes before she rests back. “I look forward to our long conversations on what has happened this last year that I haven’t heard from you.”

“How did you contact each other before?” Trey asks.

“Fox and his oddly silent brothers regularly brought people here from my sons, along with letters.

We have received over two hundred wolves, all young or female,” Alpha Soren answers him. I wonder if they have a problem with the birth rate of female wolves compared to males here.

Trey starts asking a million more questions, mostly about food, and I softly smile at Silas, who smirks at me as I turn away to look out of the window, watching the city once again as we pass by it.

The small houses slowly turn into bigger ones with large grasslands between them. We pass another pillar, marking a new district that is full of newer townhouses, rows of them with what I think are shops on the lower levels.

Several of the townhouses have glass windows with dresses on display, or

jewellery and many other things we pass by too quickly for me to really see. The streets are filled with so many people, some pausing to look at the carriage and whisper to their friends. I catch

several eyes in the crowds, and I smile at them, wishing I was out of the carriage so I could talk to them, find out the secrets of my new home.

After several miles of townhouses, we come up to large gates shaped like wolves running together, made out of gold metal. The gates meet in the middle with a large upside-down mountain

symbol in silver, and in front of that are several men in guard uniform, their red cloaks making them stand out. In a row, they bow their heads before pulling the gates open, the creaking noise filling the

silence.

“Welcome to the Hades Plaza and home to Darkland Castle. Our home is yours for now,” Alpha Soren exclaims. I don’t miss the for now part of his invite. I push the worry in my throat down as we

ride past the gates, and I get a good look at the Hades Plaza.

For miles, it’s just woodland and fields filled with flowers of every colour, towering oak trees and bushes filled with berries. I scent everything, even from within the carriage, the way this part of

the land is truly alive. It’s breathtaking to take in as we head down the winding stone-laid path until we eventually go past a few rows of small grey stone townhouses with walled gardens around them and three long stables at the end, filled with horses.

The carriage veers to the left, and I see where we are heading: a large clock tower standing tall in the middle of a short-walled courtyard, with ivy and

red roses climbing over the stone and up the tower.

The clock isn’t moving, and it doesn’t have any hands, just a wolf’s face in silver on white within the circle of the clock, and markings where the

hours are. Above the clock face is a red bell hanging high.

Where is the Darkland Castle? I can’t see any castle or building other than the clock tower, but I doubt that is what Alpha Reine means.

When we pull into a courtyard, I do notice on either side of the clock tower, there is a crater with water falling in from either side, the ends of the river. The sounds of the waterfalls hit my ears when

the carriage door is pulled open.

I climb out of the carriage after Alpha Reine and walk away from them all, to the clock tower and the small brick wall marking the edge. The gap is gigantic, spreading for a few miles, and the

waterfalls are huge on either side. I look down and see the castle built into the ground, into the gap, and it has been designed in the shape of a wolf with three heads.

“Did you know Hades and Persephone had a wolf who couldn’t shift?” Valentine comments from my side. Everyone else is looking down at the castle with me, but Silas and Valentine are watching

me closely. Like they want to take in my every reaction.

I shake my head, and he continues, “The wolf couldn’t shift because he was cursed for loving someone he shouldn’t, and the curse made him morph into a wolf with three heads.

The world cast him away. No one would help or talk with him due to his ugliness, until Persephone and Hades met

him. They took him in, told him the world might have seen him as one thing, but that did not mean he was what they said. They named him Cerberus, but no one ever knew his real name. He walked these lands, protecting Hades and Persephone from any danger in repayment for the kindness.”

I look at the castle, the one they must have designed to look like Cerberus. Yes, he isn’t the prettiest wolf to look at, but he is still spectacular.

“Sometimes, when you look that way, I want nothing more than to know what’s in your mind. What

you are thinking and feeling,” Valentine whispers to me, searching my eyes as he leans in, the closeness of him making my breath hitch. “You’re a riddle to me, Serena. A riddle.”

“I actually thought you were the riddle, Val,” I whisper back, searching his eyes, feeling that familiar and wanted tug between us.