I cracked my neck, readying for the struggle. At least it would warm me up in this icy rain.
“Got yourself some pretty sticks, I see.” He swatted at one of my arms, smacking the back of my hand hard. It stung enough I stepped back, taking in a quick sniff of wet, earthy air.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” I jolted forward, swinging my arm in a full arc to slam one of my batons against his temple. The satisfying crack and his subsequent stumble felt incredible. It'd been weeks since I’d actually sparred with someone, but a street fight would definitely do the trick to oil up my skills.
Before he could recover, I kicked his thigh with the heel of my boot, right where the muscle would spasm and give, bringing the giant man crashing to the ground. I miscalculated a spin kick toward his face by a millisecond and joined him on the ground as he grabbed my ankle and pulled me off my feet.
My breath rushed from my lungs as I slammed against the concrete. The smell of rancid garbage, weeks-old leftovers and whatever else strewn across the alleyway filled my nostrils as stars sprayed across my vision. Staring up into the darkened, cloudy night sky, I considered calling my wolf forward. I hated shifting to fight a human, and this man was nothing more than a mere mortal, but he had almost over two hundred pounds plus a few feet on me. Even with his clumsy, oversized body, he was faster than I’d given him credit for. He’d bested me with nothing more than a mere snatch of my legs. If things didn’t turn in my favor, I wouldn’t have any other choice.
“Shit,” I muttered. I shut my mouth and eyes as the pouring rain assaulted my face. I coughed and sputtered, blinking to try and stay focused on my assailant.
His darkened eyes—colorless in the washed-out night—narrowed, followed by a sinister grin.
“That’s right. Stay down, bitch. Just the way I like my women.”
I lifted my leg with a snapping jerk, kneeing him in the balls and bringing his body, now crouched over me, falling into a massive heap, pinning me down.
He exhaled a rumbling complaint that shook my chest as I struggled to breathe under his weight. The behemoth wasn’t rolling off me anytime soon, for the pain and subsequent collapse had angered him even more. If I didn’t get out of this precarious wedge, I’d be more than just breathless.
I resorted to smacking his face with my fists in rapid succession.
“Get the hell off me!”
“You bitch! You’ll pay for that!” His acrid breath filled my nostrils, adding to my discomfort.
Thwack!
A loud crack resonated near my face right before the jerk went slack. Great. A freak ice storm hail ball must’ve hit him right in the head or something. Now there’d be no way I could roll him off me before I’d pass out from lack of oxygen.
Death by suffocation via squashing. What a way to go.
I wondered what the people who found us would say. Both dead in the alleyway come morning light, one by hail, one by suffocation. I could see the headline now: Former Princess Dead from Suffocation, Buried Under Giant Assailant Killed by Freak Storm. She shall be missed, yada, yada, yada. Yeah… I don’t think so.
“Give me a break!” I yelled as loudly as I could, but my chest was burning with a thousand tiny prickling spasms with each shortened breath. I pounded on the guy, shoved and bucked to no avail.
The next second, a rush of freezing air encircled me as the weight of the man fell away to the side. Another man in a drenched hooded jacket now stood over the body of the would-be rapist creep. I took the opportunity to crawl away and use the nearby building wall to lean against as I caught my breath. My batons were somewhere in the wreck of the alleyway, but I couldn’t even concentrate enough to try and find them. Almost suffocating was no walk in the park.
“You all right?” The new guy didn’t approach but waited to see how I would react. How nice of him. He was probably waiting for me to catch my breath to ask me for something obscene. Like that was going to happen. I’d die before any man could do anything to me, and I’d make sure he’d pay for it dearly.
“I’m all right.” I barely managed to speak above a whisper before another cycle of violent coughing arrested my efforts.
“You don’t look all right. Royalty shouldn’t roam the city unescorted, especially during violent downpours.”
I scoffed at his rough voice and made the mistake of taking my eyes off the guy as I kept trying to inhale without pain. When I looked back up, I found nothing. I darted my eyes across the alley, but the culprit intruding on my destitute mood was now nowhere to be seen.
“Who are you?” I called out into the storm, my chest slowly recovering from the assault. A rumble of thunder swallowed my thin voice before I could finish my question. Still, squeezing my eyelids closer together to avoid the stinging rain, I kept searching for the stranger.
A rush of air pushed at me as a figure dropped in from above, landing quietly into a nearby puddle of water. Crouching, he slowly straightened and peered at me from underneath his hooded jacket. The man was not much taller than I was, but with his broad shoulders and meaty frame, he could easily take me down without much effort.
Unless I shifted. Then he’d have a beast to reckon with.
In a quickened flash, the stranger closed the distance between us until our noses were millimeters from touching.
I gasped.
“Princesses don’t belong lost in the rain… in the darkness.”
“I’m not… royalty. Not anymore.” I let out a long breath, feeling a wave of sadness contrast with the warm ripple he’d evoked within me. His face was barely visible under the dim streetlamps. The enticing angles I could make out led to a pair of dark, stormy sea-blue eyes presenting an infinite abyss as they reflected the scant light. His irises emitted a dull glow from within, making their own eerie auras. I held my breath, stunned.
“I don’t know what you mean, Princess. Once royalty, always royalty.”
He pulled his hood back to allow me to see his face as he lowered his head and eyes to the ground in a show of submission and courtesy. He had dark black hair cropped close to his scalp on the sides and longer on top. His light olive complexion gleamed with raindrops that sat on the short stubble lining his chin and cheeks.
I relaxed, realizing he was a guard. I didn’t know if he was ArcKnight, but he didn’t appear to want to attack me. He could be MarkTier pack for all I knew, but his gestures were those of a subservient royal guard. I was less than deserving of this cordial treatment. I was less than zero now. Apparently, he didn’t yet know about my banishment.
“You haven’t heard, have you?”
Confusion spilled across his features. “I’m sorry, m’lady. I do not know what you mean. I’m a perimeter guard. I rarely enter the MarkTier palace grounds.”
So he was MarkTier. His eyes glided up to my face. If he knew now what I meant, he didn’t say it. Maybe he wanted me to say it. He was just like a good royal guard dog. No questioning anything the royals did. At least he’d had no orders to extinguish the banished ArcKnight princess. What a relief.
But who had told him to help me? My confusion felt like a rock in my stomach. Great.
I frowned, pressing my lips tight. I hated this. To say it out loud made the cut deeper than it already was. I was glad my new tears disappeared into the droplets of rain sliding down my cheeks. If I were still a royal, I would reprimand him for embarrassing me. But I wasn’t. And I’d never be one again.
“I’ve been banished,” I whispered, but I knew he heard me. I spun on my feet and walked away, the words still bitter on my tongue. I didn’t want to see the look of pity he’d give me now that I’d told him the reason for my unusual appearance beyond the gates of my palace. I had nowhere to go. No money, nothing. I’d been put out with the clothes on my back and one bag of possessions. My walk of shame through the kingdom and out the gates into the middle of the night was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Even so, I was determined to make it, no matter what.
A hand clasped over my shoulder, a
nd I whirled around, a guttural rumble emitting from my throat from the morph I was holding back. It wasn’t wise of him to startle a shifter. I knew my eyes would startle anyone not of my world, but my unusual, yellowed eyes and the fangs growing from my jaw as I let the shift change my features should have been enough to scare anyone to bits. Not him. He let his arm drop to his side as he watched me fight the morph.
There was no fear in his stormy blue eyes. In fact, there were no emotions betraying his feelings at all. Just like a good soldier. His lack of response stifled the fire increasing in my veins and readying me to fight. Deflated, I let go of my wolf magic and let my human side slip back on.
Exhaling deep breaths into the night air, I closed my eyes and tilted my head back.
“Leave me alone.” Tears kept coming, and I wanted to drown in them.
“M’lady, I cannot leave you here alone. It’s not safe.”
I whipped my eyes open and glared at him. “I told you I was banished. You can stop with the formalities and get. I don’t have time to waste on a pathetic royal guard. Especially a MarkTier. I'm okay on my own.”
“If you come with me, I know a safe place where you can get out of the rain and get warm.”
I laughed. It came out more hysterical than I intended, but I was not in a mood to keep it together any longer. The fact that he offered me any shelter at all, most likely his home, was gracious, yet the knowledge that it was most likely on ArcKnight territory made the offer even more bittersweet. I was banished not only from the royal ArcKnight palace but from lingering on any of the pack’s territories, which included a substantial chunk of the city.
I was truly alone now.
“You’d be punished for harboring a non-citizen… a traitor like me. I can’t. You know I can’t.”
He held out his hand. It glistened with water, for he was soaked to the bone, just like me. The cold rain didn’t affect him at all. I was the one shivering and on the verge of hypothermia, and yet he waited patiently.
“It’s beyond the ArcKnight border. I promise.” His eyes gleamed in the momentary moonlight sneaking past the storm clouds above. They were breathtaking and unusual. I’d never seen another shifter with eyes like his.
It may be beyond the ArcKnight stronghold, but they weren’t the only pack ruling the city.
“But the MarkTiers….”
“They have no jurisdiction there either.”
Staring at him in disbelief, I let my eyes linger on his for an eternal moment. His offer brought more questions to my mind than anything else. Even so, there was something there that held me in a trance and beckoned me to follow. Taken in by that hypnotizing cobalt sea, I reached out, accepted his hand and let him lead me through the murky city paths I’d never trodden, deeper into the unknown.
This place was now my new home, and it was nothing but strange and frightening.
But what choice did I have?
Chapter Three
Gil
I focused on the garden outside my window. Fidgeting with the hard platinum metal bracelet that marked me as Alpha of the ArcKnight pack, I couldn’t help but to scowl. The road was always painted gold for the prince of the pack. Anything I wished would be brought to me at a moment’s notice, anything at all.
The one thing I wanted was the most impossible to obtain. My father died today after being attacked by an unknown assailant, and I wanted that person, creature or thing to hang for it.
It was my only wish.
Not this circus going on around me as I lamented, staring across the expansive gardens my mother maintained. She was out there now, pruning, digging up the dirt, planting and nurturing her precious brood of flowers, fruit trees, and other horticultural specialties I knew nothing about. I’d never taken to her green thumb, but as I watched her systematically work her gloved hands through the rows of tulips, petunias and other flowers she alone kept alive, I wished I could obtain her level of peace.
I had no such luxury.
Her husband was dead before his time, and she was calmer than a calm before a storm. I loved and hated this characteristic of hers, but that was my mother. Adelaide had no head for war or peace, but her mere presence calmed everyone who had the pleasure of meeting her in person. It was an ability that mystified me, and sometimes I could see the same trait in my partner, Rafaela. My parents had chosen her to be my betrothed when I was born, though I highly suspected my mother had more to do with it than my father. Rafaela was a perfect mate for me, but I knew that fate had nothing to do with it. Adelaide had everything to do with the choice.
“It’s time.” Right on cue, my beautiful bride-to-be’s voice interrupted my reverie. I didn’t look away but continued to stare, lost in the repetitive movements of my mother’s hands.
“My mother?”
Rafaela approached the window and breathed out, looking tired. “I’ll take care of it.”
She swerved around, her long, dark brown hair swinging into my sight as she left to retrieve my mother. The soft breeze replacing her left a trailing scent of honeysuckle and spring air. Closing my eyes, I let it swirl around me. Rafaela was… intoxicating. That was the word. No one compared to her, and I didn’t know how my parents had found her so many years ago. Her parents were not ArcKnights. They were from another pack, far from here on the other side of the world. They’d been summoned for the pairing since they had a newborn daughter of the right age and wished to forge an alliance with our pack. They’d relocated and had happily sealed our futures with a blood oath, swearing our families’ bond forevermore.
Now, at the age of twenty-two, we were normally free to get married when we wanted to. The only exception to that was if the ruling Alpha died or was in any way disabled, we were to be married within three days to take the head position in the family.
We had two days to set up a wedding.
I knew Rafaela had it all under control and was probably a tangle of nerves, as was I, but it was too soon. We had just become adults, and with marriage, a whole other set of problems came with it.
I wasn’t looking forward to it, no matter how much it was my destiny.
Pulling my eyes from the glass, I turned to grab my jacket. It was time to get this show on the road. I loathed funerals, especially when it involved a family member. Who didn’t? I was now tasked with finding my father’s killer, and I was pretty sure the one person who could help me had just been banished into the city and was probably dead by now.
I shouldn’t have banished her so quickly. It was a rash decision to send Lily away so soon. I was distraught and didn’t even wait for Rafaela to come when I had Lily shoved out the gates.
Most lone wolves didn’t survive a night out in the ghettos of the city, beyond the borders of the Arcknight stronghold. Nope. I was positive Lilliana, my fiancé’s sister, was good as gone. I was kicking myself for being so naïve as to let the elders handle her fate and for me delivering it too swiftly. It never occurred to me until afterward that she could have some answers about the circumstances surrounding his death. Now… that was a dead end. Finding her in the tangle of derelict houses and destitute streets was almost a near impossible feat in a city the size of Temple; it could rival New York City. Besides, there was a rival pack nearby who would certainly be eager to sink their teeth into her.
The MarkTiers shared the city with us, but they held the south side of town whereas we held the north. The in between, east and west were the neutral lands, formally called Temple City, but were not governed by either pack. No one crossed the other’s territory, but the in between? Anything goes.
“Ready?” Rafaela asked, returning from retrieving my mother.
I nodded. “Yes. You?”
She sighed and gave me a somber smile. “As I’ll ever be.”
“Tell me something, love?”
“Yes?” She perked up and waited as I gathered the words I wanted to say. If it didn’t come out right, I could offend her. That was something I didn’t want to do.
“Do
you think Lilliana might know who did this to my father?”
Rafaela’s once bright face tightened when I mentioned her sister. She did love her younger sibling, but their relationship was probably based more on duty, not love. I never did pay any attention to it. Though Rafaela rarely showed her sister more than a slight cold shoulder, Lilliana would never speak wrongly of her older sister. The two were thick as thieves in private; it was the royal public life that had worn down—but not quite broken—their connection.
“I don’t know.” Rafaela lifted her chin as she subjected me to her cold, dissecting glare. “And if she did, she’d have told me.”
“She always told you everything, right?” I toned down a challenging glare. Treading carefully here was a must.
“That I know of… yes.” Rafaela let her eyes fall away and studied the ground. I knew she was holding something back. The sisters had been distant as of late, and I wondered if Rafaela realized just how big the divide had become. It would grow even worse once she became my wife.
Pack before family. Always. But what defined those lines?
I reached for her and grasped her hand in mine, giving it a firm squeeze. Sooner or later, she’d tell me what had happened between them. I was her mate. There could be no more secrets.
“Shall we go?”
Chapter Four
Lilliana
The rain pounded the windows with a furious violence. I imagined hundreds of frightened children and pets cowering under the covers tonight. Sometimes I wished I was young again; free of mistakes and wrong turns, fresh and brand new without history or future marring my existence. The things that could never be undone dug into my skin, forming invisible scars that no one could see except me.
The royal guard set his backpack down and shed off his soaked jacket before hanging it on one of the hooks lining the wall near the door. I dropped my own to the floor on top of my pack. I was soaked to the bone so it didn’t really matter to me. I’d have to wash all my clothes anyway. Most of my stuff was probably ruined.