Dex's Kingdom (Royal Wolf Book 4)

by Haley Weir

  CHAPTER ONE

  After Aaron’s death, Holly grieved alongside Theo. To Holly, Aaron was every bit as much a father to her as Rubius was. But now, her mother, Cassandra, had the overwhelming job of running the kingdom in the interim until one of her two children took the throne. Cassandra could have continued to rule as queen, but she didn’t want to. Now it was time for her to be able to roam free in the forest alongside Rubius, without the pressures of being the sovereign and sole ruler of Grenvich. And, it was better to have either Theo or Holly assume the throne now while the kingdom was already in a period of transition.

  Holly could see Theo was torn. He didn’t want to be king, but he also didn’t want to disappoint his father, who he was sure was looking into this life from the next. Cassandra had already told him that it was okay for him to decline his claim to the throne. And Holly was ready to assume the role, or at least she thought she was.

  During the time that Theo wavered about whether or not to assume his royal duty, Holly began to waver too. She was naturally inclined to leadership, and she embraced the idea of being queen, but she still feared that someday someone would find out about her illegitimate claim to the throne. With Aeron now dead, he wouldn’t be able to claim that Holly was his daughter—a lie, but one that he could claim without question and still be believed. She also feared that she would not be able to live up to Aaron's visions for the kingdom of Grenvich. Unlike her brother, who wanted to shirk the duties entirely and focus solely on his role as pack alpha and on his family with Marquette and their baby boy, Holly felt the pressure of wanting to preserve the integrity of the throne and the honor of the royal family.

  So, while the two of them did some deep diving into their motivations, Cassandra kept things running smoothly as queen in the meantime.

  “I don’t understand why you continue to torment yourself about this decision,” Holly said to her brother over breakfast. “You have said that you don’t want to be king, and both our mother and your father, while on his deathbed, have told you that’s okay.”

  “I torment myself because I want to do what is right,” Theo answered her.

  “Right for who?” she asked.

  “Right for everyone—our family, the kingdom, the packs,” he answered.

  “And you?” Holly asked.

  “I matter less than the other things.”

  Cassandra walked in at just that moment.

  “That is not true,” she said as she came to sit down with them both at the table. “Your happiness matters every bit as much as the rest. An unhappy king cannot rule to the best of his ability.”

  “Father wasn’t always happy,” Theo said.

  “Your father was intrinsically happy,” Rubius said as he now came into the kitchen to join the others. He gave Cassandra a kiss on the cheek and held her hand in his as he sat beside her. “There may have been things that disturbed him, and things that troubled his mind, but Aeron was an innately happy king, and he died a happy man. That I can assure you of.”

  Cassandra turned her face to smile at him. Rubius was right, Aeron had died in peace and fulfillment, and he knew that he was leaving his legacy in good hands.

  “Give it thought,” Cassandra said to Theo. “But make haste. It is not good to leave the kingdom in flux for too long. Humans are strange creatures. Instead of seeking change and adventure, they seek the mundane security of knowing that things will stay the same. The longer that we take to instate whoever will be the permanent fixture on the throne, the more likely they are to become anxious and question it.”

  “What if they question me?” Holly asked.

  “Why would they question you?” Rubius asked his daughter. “You are the daughter to the king, and all of the people in this kingdom know and love you.”

  “But that’s the thing,” she said with slight trepidation. “I am not the daughter of a king.”

  “You are as far as everyone outside of this room believes,” her mother interjected. “And you are the daughter of a queen.”

  Cassandra sipped her coffee and looked at her daughter inquisitively.

  “Why are you now questioning the perception of your legitimacy?” she asked.

  Holly laughed, but it was a nervous one.

  “It is not just now,” she answered. “It has always been so. It just feels more real now that the possibility is mere moments away that I might actually be Queen of Grenvich.”

  Cassandra reached out her hand to her daughter.

  “If you are to be queen, then I can assure you that you will be the most capable, most compassionate, and most deserving queen that this kingdom has ever seen. Don’t ever think that isn’t true,” she said as she smiled at Holly.

  “I agree with your mother,” Rubius said. “Besides, I may not be a king of humans, but I am still an alpha of shifters, which means that you have the ferocity of my blood running through you as well. You are more than capable of doing this job.”

  Rubius looked between both Theo and Holly in turn.

  “You both are,” he said with an encouraging nod.

  With that reassurance in mind, Holly and her brother got up to go start their day. Holly acted mostly behind the scenes, working on some of the smaller tasks that she knew she could take care of without much fanfare, while Theo helped her mother. As much as she couldn’t shake the worry that if her secret ever got out, it would end the rule of the royal family, she also couldn’t shake the urge to think about all of the things she would do if she were queen.

  At the end of the day, Theo found Holly in the stables, tending to her favorite horse.

  “You do know that there are servants to do that, right?” her brother said.

  “I know,” Holly answered. “But I find it calming to be with the horses. I wonder if Aeron’s horse misses him.”

  Holly looked over toward the majestic black steed that was in a nearby stall.

  “I’ll bet it does,” she mused.

  “You’re avoiding dealing with your thoughts,” Theo said to her.

  “So are you,” she teased with a small grin.

  “Perhaps,” he said as he sat down on a bale of hay. “But I did give it all a lot of thought today, and I’ve come up with an answer to the questions that I’ve been asking myself.”

  “Oh?” she said as she came to sit down atop the hay with him. “And you have a decision?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I think it’s the right one.”

  He looked up at his sister.

  “Between the two of us, you have always been the one better suited to rule the kingdom. We both know that.”

  “It’s a lot to give up,” she said, looking at him.

  “I don’t see it that way. I see it as giving me more time and focus on being alpha, which is something that I enjoy and am good at. I want to make my father proud, no matter where he is. And I think that the best way for me to do that is to be a great alpha for the packs that followed him in his life. We are both his children, Holly, whether biologically or not. And as such, I think it’s only right that we each take up one end of his legacy—I will rule the packs, and you will rule the kingdom.”

  Holly nodded her head. She knew that this was what Aeron would have wanted, for them both to be happy, and for his kingdom and his packs to be well ruled by his children. They both sat in the stillness and quiet of the stable for a few moments, letting the realization sink in that their lives were changing, and their responsibilities were growing. But this felt like the right thing to do, for both of them.

  “The heart-to-heart helped,” Holly smiled at her brother.

  “Well, don’t get too used to it,” Theo said. “You know I
don’t like getting gushy too much.”

  Holly laughed as she threw her arm around her brother’s shoulder and gave him a hug.

  “So it’s decided then, right? We can go back inside now and tell mother and Rubius?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Holly nodded as they both stood up. “It’s decided. I will go ahead and take the crown.”

  They walked back to the castle to tell Cassandra and Rubius that tomorrow would bring the beginning of a new rule.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The ceremony that formalized the transfer of the throne was strictly ornamental and for the sole purpose of optics. There was nothing actually necessary to do for Holly to become queen, aside from Cassandra to step aside and let her daughter take the seat. But the traditional ceremony was a rite of passage for any new ruler, and it signaled a change in power to the humans of the kingdom. It was yet another thing that humans were strange about—the need to have some sort of visual representation that things were being changed.

  So, they held a formal and regal ceremony just outside the castle's gates, which everyone in the kingdom was invited to attend. The event drew mostly humans to it, although there were a handful of shifters in attendance just out of mere curiosity to see what the ceremony entailed. Some of the shifters found it amusing to see what trivial things the humans held in such reverence, such as empty traditions that seemed to waste time more than anything else. Still, the ceremony was lovely, and the entire royal family was dressed in extravagant finery as they stood before the massive crowd. Rubius stood off to the side—watching. He was always carefully keeping an eye on his family, and now that Aeron was no longer among them, he felt his job as sole protector was even more important. Since Cassandra was a widow, and since she would not be ruling as queen after today, there was no reason to hide the fact that she and Rubius were together any longer. They could finally be free to love openly, which was perhaps the greatest reason Cassandra wanted to give up the throne.

  Holly looked out over the crowd and felt the nerves claw at her insides. It wasn’t the size of the amassed people that worried her, or the formality of the ceremony that she was partaking in. It was the unstable undercurrent in the crowd. She glanced over at her father and could tell that he felt it too. There was a current of discontentment, maybe even resentment, that seemed to be growing amongst the humans like a swelling belly ache. Holly finished the ceremony, which included the acceptance of the Queen’s staff and then taking a seat in the throne—again, for optics. But while his daughter was trying to remain focused on her part to play, Rubius honed his focus on the growing pockets of discord amongst the crowd. The ceremony was being met with resistance by some in the kingdom who wanted Cassandra to remain in power, or who wanted Theo to be king. There were some small sects of townsfolk who didn’t take keenly to having the rambunctious and younger princess stake a claim on the rule of Grenvich. They saw no legitimate reason why the queen would be stepping aside for her daughter, or why the king’s oldest child—a son—would not be the one to assume the throne.

  As the unrest began to get vocal, and some of the townsfolk began to voice chants of disapproval, Holly panicked. Cassandra put a hand on Holly’s wrist to calm her, knowing that not only would Rubius and Theo squelch any sort of harmful uprising, but that it was also important for her daughter to retain the appearance of being calm and in control.

  But Holly, with her already nagging fears and insecurities about this, couldn’t quell her urge to get out from beneath the staring eyes of the increasingly agitated crowd of humans. As soon as Rubius began to walk toward a group of men that looked like a hunting party and Theo stepped down to join Rubius at his side, Holly took the moment to bail on her own ceremony.

  Cassandra tried to call after her, but Holly was too quick and too determined to stop. Instead of chasing after her daughter, Cassandra remained calm and collected to temper the mood of the kingdom. She stepped down among the crowd to greet some people and talk about her excitement for her daughter’s rule. Much of the kingdom loved Cassandra and was therefore warmly accepting of what she had to say and shared in her support of her daughter. The small sects of townsfolk that were causing the trouble met with the quick wrath of Rubius and Theo, who threatened to take up their guards and have them thrown into the dungeons if they dared to speak against Holly again. It wasn’t that they were heavy-handed in their dominance over the humans, but they needed to make sure to keep the peace, and these groups of hunting parties were exactly the kind of people that would try to cause unnecessary trouble for humans and shifters alike. But even though it was easy for Rubius and Theo to immediately put an end to the trouble, Holly had already disappeared from the event entirely.

  After Holly had gone back to her room and pulled her uncomfortable formal dress off as quickly as possible, she threw on casual clothes and a hooded cape to cover up her unmistakable reddish hair. Then she snuck out a side door of the castle and made her way down into the city where she found herself sitting at the tavern, drowning her grief over the loss of Aaron and silencing her worries about her now officially recognized rule with a large mug of ale.

  Holly had always been headstrong and independent. She saw no point in trying to act the part of the docile princess. So although most princesses wouldn’t be hiding out in the tavern as their way to find comfort and solace, it was exactly what Holly needed. The tavern keeper was no stranger to the princess’s propensity for a good mug of ale. And even though he knew it was her, he never said a word about it to anyone.

  While Holly was sitting there and keeping to herself, she spotted a man in the tavern corner doing the same. She could sense that he was a shifter. But she was sure that she had never seen him before, which was unusual since the royal family knew all of the shifters in the woods, even the ones who had come from other packs to join them. She watched the man for a few minutes in silence. He was strikingly handsome, with dark hair and wildly blue eyes. Something about him seemed to draw her attention and hold it.

  “Would you like another?” the tavern keeper asked when he noticed Holly’s empty mug. His voice interrupted her thoughts, and she turned quickly to look at him.

  “No, thank you,” she said. “This one did the trick.”

  “It’s on the house,” he smiled.

  When she went to turn her head back toward the strange and handsome shifter, he was already gone. She looked around the room, hoping to spot him, but he was nowhere in sight. Holly got up and left the tavern, still looking for the strange shifter on her walk back to the castle. But she made it all the way back to the front steps with no sign of him. She didn’t much feel like going back inside yet; in fact, what she really wanted to do was take a run in her shifted form. But she knew that she owed her family an explanation as to why she had ditched her ceremony and that delaying it would only make them worry. Besides, the hearty mug of ale had managed to take a bit of the edge off her temperament. She pulled her cloak tighter around her, not due to the cold, but more so the fact that it made her feel more secure.

  When she got inside, she found Theo and her parents sitting in the throne room with ale of their own. She stood at the doorway and was getting ready to launch into her apology, but before she had gotten past the words I’m sorry, Cassandra put her hand up to her.

  “No need,” she said. “We all understand what happened. Come join us for an ale.”

  “I’ve already had one at the tavern,” Holly said.

  Rubius laughed.

  “I figured that’s where you would end up. Well then, join us for another,” he said.

  Holly smiled, and when she sat down at the table, her brother put his arm around her shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” he smiled. “Rubius and I backed the naysayers down. You’ve got this.”

  Rubius handed her a full mug, and instead of feeling the need to explain herself further, Holly enjoyed a round of good cheer with her family before the first day of her rule would arrive in the morning. />
  CHAPTER THREE

  The next day, Cassandra began to show Holly the intricacies of running the kingdom. She already knew most things that happened both inside of the castle and out—after all, she had grown up with her parents as king and queen. But there was a different sort of attention to be paid now that she would be the one at the head of the helm. She listened and watched and tried to make mental notes of the things that her mother was telling and showing to her. But much of it bored her as it had her mother.

  “You are every bit my child,” Cassandra teased. “When I first had to come to the castle with your father and assume this role as queen, I dreaded it as much as the look on your face shows me that you do.”

  “I don’t dread it,” Holly protested, and I am the one who wanted to take the throne. It’s just that some of it is so boring.”

  Cassandra laughed. “Yes, some of it definitely is, and confining too. But you will find, as I did, that much of it is also rewarding beyond measure.”

  Holly nodded, and they continued to see to various royal tasks for the rest of the morning. When the mundane duties were done, Holly quickly escaped to train with Theo in the courtyard. Fight training was one thing that Holly enjoyed tremendously, especially when she got to practice with her brother and show off her impressive fighting skills. Theo was a good fighter too, but Holly could still match him, and it made her feel good knowing that she was a force to be reckoned with.

  “How is the new pack coming along?” she asked when they took a rest between matches.

  “Good,” Theo answered. “And I am enjoying being an alpha. I can see why Father loved it so much. There is a sense of raw and pure allegiance that is like no other among the shifters. I hope to be able to be half as good an alpha as my father was.”

  Holly smiled teasingly at him.

  “Well, first, you need to be half as good a fighter,” she joked as she landed a shot while he was distracted.

  “That was brutally unfair,” Theo laughed.

  “I meant to ask you,” she said, trying not to draw too much attention to her intrigue, “are there any new shifters that have joined the packs recently?”