by Haley Weir
Holly let out a frustrated sigh, which he thought was in response to what he had said, but turned out to be the fact that she had gotten herself wedged in her dress, unable to move her arm.
“Can you please help me?” she asked in exasperation. “This is embarrassing, but due to the bandages around my torso, I seem to have gotten stuck in my dress.”
Dex chuckled in amusement as he went to stand up and help her, but then when he got closer to her, the levity gave way to something much more enticing. He stood in front of her and gently tugged the dress over her shoulder until her arm was freed, letting his fingers linger on the top of her collarbone for a moment longer than was necessary. When the dress was on, she turned around and asked him to lace up the back. Dex looked at Holly’s bare back in the dress and slowly began to tie the laces. She could feel his labored breaths against her neck, and it sent a wave of yearning through her that she had never felt before. When he was done, Dex had trouble keeping his hands off her, and he stood behind her as she turned back around without stepping away or pulling his hand from the side of her dress. She thought for a moment that he might kiss her, and she wanted him to as she stood there and stared into his eyes. But a shuffle of people walking in the hallway seemed to make him realize what he was about to do, and he quickly took a step backward, letting his hand drop to his side. When the moment was broken, Holly went back to thinking about what she would do today.
“I cannot let this continue,” she said as she grabbed her dagger from the nightstand and tucked it into her bodice.
“What are you going to do?” Dex asked her. He was visibly flustered in more ways than one.
“I don’t know yet,” she answered as she stepped right up close to him again so that their feet were almost touching. “But it will be something.”
“Don’t do anything reckless,” he said, still breathing heavily due to her close proximity to him.
“Why not?” she taunted.
Holly wanted to see what Dex would do. She wanted to push him to see if she was nearly to the point of their bodies touching, and speaking words like “reckless” with a voice dripping with innuendo, if he would still be able to resist her.
His eyes darted between her eyes and mouth, and his jaw tightened as if he was trying to keep himself in line. She leaned closer toward him by the tiniest amount, but enough for him to tell that she was urging her body closer to his. But then, instead of grabbing her in his arms as she had been hoping for, he abruptly took a step back.
“Just don’t be reckless,” he said breathlessly before turning around and walking out the door.
Holly went to the doorway and put her hand on the frame as she leaned out of her bedroom to see where he was going. She watched as Dex walked down the corridor and straight out of the castle. Then she went to her window and saw him shift as soon as he hit the forest line and go running off into the woods. Hurrying away back into the forest seemed like it was either a huge measure of self-restraint or an exercise in the same sort of lesson that Rubius had warned her about—that he only cared about himself. Still, she had trouble fully embracing that idea, especially since he had stayed by her side. But the fact that she was now here, dressed, and alone in her room, made Holly definitely feel like it was time for her to make a decision for herself and do something reckless indeed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She was careful to leave the castle without being spotted. Rubius and Theo had already gone out somewhere, and Cassandra was busy in the kitchens talking to the servants about the winter feast, which was fast approaching, and telling them how to make sugared cranberries for the tops of the cakes. Holly was able to slip out of the castle relatively easily, and she wasted no time heading straight back into the town square.
There would be lots of people at the market. Everyone was buying food for the winter stockpiles, and they were looking for trinkets and oddities to exchange at the festival. When Holly got there, it was crowded and bustling with people enjoying the light snowfall as they looked around the market.
This was the perfect place, she thought to herself. It was full of pleasant townsfolk, lots of women and children, and some kindly looking merchants. She looked around to see if she could spot any of the hunting parties, and she didn’t see a single one. They were probably out in the woods, hunting for small game to salt and dry. She felt the blood rush through her veins and her heartbeat pound in her ear. It was risky and rash, and she knew that. But her mother had told her to follow her heart, and her heart was telling her something had to give. There had to be an inciting incident that led the humans to see and understand the presence of the shifters. Hiding and allowing fear to breed did no one any good. It was time for someone to force the hand.
Holly found a small raised pallet that had just been unloaded by a woman who was selling every kind of fresh flower and herb. It was near the center of the market, high enough that people could see over the crowd, and next to some friendly-looking merchants that smiled at her as she walked by. It was the perfect place. She sucked in a few deep breaths and tried to exhale her nerves before she stepped up onto the platform. She would shift, without announcement or fanfare—she would simply shift. Then she would sit docilely on the top of the pallet and watch the reactions of the humans as they were stunned and in awe. She expected some of them to be fearful at first, and all of them to be shocked. But she was hopeful that once they saw such creatures as shifters existed, and that they were peaceful and living right there among them, their misconceptions would be quickly dissolved. Then, when the humans were silently staring at the shifted queen, Holly would change back and explain to them the correct account of what shifters were like. She doubted that anyone would try to harm her right there in the middle of the open market in front of all the people and figured it was as good a plan as any.
Holly knew that her family would likely be furious, but that was something that she would deal with afterward. Once the secret was out, there would be no more reason to hide and no more reason to fear discovery.
When she had finally gotten up enough nerve to do it, Holly stepped up onto the low platform and turned to face the center of the market square. A few people, including the woman with the flowers, looked at her curiously and wondered what the new queen was doing standing up on a pallet to overlook the market. One woman even asked her if she was looking for something and needed help to find it. But Holly just shook her head and said, “No thank you,” as she stood there unwavering. When she was ready, she felt her yellowish eyes start to burn with transformation, and within a moment, she would be a wolf instead of a queen.
But instead of that moment arriving, a hand grabbed her ankle and yanked her down. As she lost her balance and fell off the platform, Holly’s shift was stopped before it had made it past her eyes. The hand that pulled her down now held her against a chest, and she looked up into Dex’s face as turned quickly around to walk out of the market with Holly in his arms. Even that was no short of a debacle. The townspeople already thought it was odd that the queen was standing on the platform as if she was getting ready to put on some sort of show. Then it appeared even more strange when the dark-haired man yanked the queen down and carried her off. A few of the market women called after the man, asking him who he was and where he was taking the queen. One of them even said that she would run to the castle and inform the royal family that the queen had been kidnapped. But a few of the elderly men in the market just laughed and started talking about how the man was probably the queen’s lover or a bodyguard that was taking his job much too seriously.
As Dex walked briskly toward the edge of the city with heavy and purposeful steps, Holly demanded that he put her down.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked him furiously. Now she would have to start all over again.
“Put me down!” she said.
“No,” Dex growled.
Holly wriggled and struggled in his arms to get free from his grip. When he tighte
ned his hold on her, she began to thrash her legs around and try to claw at his arms.
“What are you doing? Where are you taking me?” she asked with a wide-eyed fury.
“Well,” Dex huffed. “Despite wanting to get back to my den and forget about all of the problems here in the kingdom, and about you, I can’t seem to get you out of my mind. I lingered around in the kingdom because I feared you would do something impulsive and stupid. And I was right.”
“You have no idea what I was about to do,” she huffed at him, still dwelling on the fact that he had given her such an answer and that he had actually admitted to thinking about her.
“I know exactly what you were about to do,” he said with a troubled expression as he turned his head to look directly at her. “You were about to shift.”
She didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything to say in response. She looked around as he carried her into the forest.
“You can put me down now,” she said. “If you intend for us to go back to your den to talk, then we could get there a lot faster if you put me down and we both ran as wolves.”
Dex just kept on holding her and walking.
“Are you afraid that I’m going to run away?” she asked with a smirk. “It’s not like you couldn’t catch me if I tried to. I’ve seen you run—you’re very fast.”
Still, Dex said nothing until they finally reached the campsite in front of his den. There, he put Holly down on her feet and waited to see whether she would stay or try to run. When she sat down on the ground next to the empty fire, Dex stood in front of her with a stern look on his face.
“Before you give me some sort of lecture that I’m sure Rubius and Theo have set you up to do, can you please make a fire so that at least we are not freezing out here during the miserable argument that we are about to have.”
Dex turned and started the fire, making sure to keep an eye on her the entire time so that she didn’t run off. Holly had no intention of running, though.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“How could you possibly be so foolish?” Dex said when he finished stoking the fire and had come back to stand in front of Holly.
She looked up at him and saw that he had a more severe look on his face than she had seen before. It almost looked as if he had been worried.
“Why were you even there in the marketplace?” she asked him. “Were you following me?”
“I was keeping an eye on you because I had a feeling that you were going to do something rash.”
“Well, we don’t know how rash or foolish it would have been since you yanked me from the city before I was even able to do anything,” Holly said with a pout.
“You need to stop thinking just about yourself,” Dex said.
Holly was taken aback by his words.
“What in the world are you talking about?” she asked. “I hardly think that you of all people should be lecturing me on selflessness.”
“What is that supposed to me?” Dex grumbled.
“It means that you are a shifter without a pack, a loner, and someone who only cares about themselves and no one else.”
“Really? And how is it that you happen to know so much about shifters that choose not to be in a pack? Because you listen to my story, you think that you’re an expert?”
“I’ve spoken to other people as well,” Holly said as if that somehow made her opinion on the matter more valid. Her stubbornness was not going to relent quite yet. “And I know that being a recluse means that you don’t give a shit about what happens to anyone else.”
“Oh, I am a recluse now, am I?” he asked. “You know nothing. Why do you think I stayed in the kingdom today if I cared for no one other than myself? Why do you think that I was right there to pull you out of making the biggest mistake that you could have possibly made?”
They sat together without speaking for a drawn-out moment. She hated the fact that he seemed angry at her, but she wasn’t delighted herself that he had interrupted what she thought would be a defining moment in her rule. Finally, she couldn’t take the silence any longer.
“I don’t understand,” she said as she turned to look at him. “Why were you there? Why are you talking to Rubius and Theo about matters of the kingdom? And why do you even care whether or not the humans become aware of the existence of shifters? It’s not like you’re in a pack and you have to stay here. You can leave and go wherever you want.”
Dex sighed deeply and turned his entire body to face her. Usually, it seemed like he tried hard not to look at her or to get too close to her, but this time, it seemed as though he really wanted to make sure that she was listening to him.
“Holly,” he said in a solidly calm tone of voice. “Do you know what would happen if the humans discovered that wolf shifters exist?”
“Not exactly,” she answered, admitting that there was a bit of nebulous uncertainty to it. “But I imagine that they would at first be apprehensive, and then we could all get started on the work of trying to understand each other and coexist.”
“That is a very hopeful and, I’m sorry to say, naïve perspective,” Dex said. “What if things went wrong? What is the worst possible scenario that you could imagine happening if the humans received the knowledge of shifters existing and reacted to it poorly?”
Holly thought for a moment, and she was rather horrified with the thoughts that she came up with. It wasn’t that she hadn’t considered the outcomes before—she had. It was just that she thought the likelihood of success was greater than the likelihood of things going sideways. Still, she answered his question honestly.
“I suppose that the worst possible outcome would be that the humans reacted with fear and maybe even hatred. There could be a war between the species that would result in mass casualties on both sides.”
“Is that all?” he asked.
“Isn’t that bad enough?” Holly scoffed. “I don’t really see the reason for asking me that, though. I can’t go into situations as a queen with the expectation that they will fail. I have to hope for better and for change.”
“I’m not telling you that you should expect the worst outcome,” Dex said. “I’m telling you that you should consider all outcomes. And you have not. You still haven’t thought about the worst that could happen, and as a queen—you should have.”
Holly didn’t understand what he was talking about. She had thought about the worst outcome. War between humans and shifters was the worst thing that could happen.
“You have already forgotten my story that I told you,” Dex said. He almost looked sad. “You forgot why I chose to leave my pack behind to begin with.”
“No, I haven’t,” she said as she shook her head. “But I don’t see what that has to do with this.”
“The worst thing that could happen if the shifters are exposed to humans,” Dex said, “is that the shifters become enslaved after they are hunted down. I know that you think you are too powerful and too brave for that to happen, and that shifters are too strong and skilled to be defeated by a bunch of humans. But the humans have weapons and numbers that we do not. It is not at all outside the realm of possibility that the humans would be able to defeat the packs. And if that were to happen, a war and an abundance of death would not be the worst thing that could befall the shifters. I know a little bit about humans. I have watched them quite a bit and sat in the taverns and listened to them talk when their inhibitions have been washed away by alcohol. They are a cruel and inhumane species.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Holly protested. “Granted, there are a few smaller groups of humans that are fairly low on the humanity chain, but overall, the people of Grenvich mean no harm to any living thing. I walk among them. I talk with the women and play with the children. I even drink ale with some of the weaponsmiths. They do not inherently wish bad to befall others.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Dex said as he shook his head. “But since neither of us knows for sure, I supposed it comes
down to chance. Are you willing to chance it? Are you willing to chance the lives of your family and the packs by exposing yourself and the existence of wolf shifters? If you are wrong and I am right, there is, at the very least a chance that we could all suffer a future of enslavement. You cannot disagree with the fact that it is a possibility.”
Dex was right. She couldn’t deny that it was at least possible that he was right. It was possible that the humans would react with hate and persecution, and that they would consider themselves a superior species. It was possible that if that happened, the humans could overcome the shifters. And it was also possible that they could enslave the shifters. The thought of her mother and brother and father being slaves to humans suddenly flashed across Holly’s mind. She immediately realized that she was wrong in thinking that it was up to her whether or not to reveal a secret that had been kept sacred for countless years in order to protect their existence.
“What was I thinking?” she said as tears filled her eyes. She shook her head and then buried her face in her hands. “When did I become so blind?”
“You are not blind,” Dex chuckled as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Sometimes it just takes the help of someone else to see the things that we cannot.”
Holly looked up at him, feeling foolish.
“There must be another way to handle the situation in the kingdom besides exposing us,” she said. “I don’t want to give up on the end result, just on the foolish way that I was going about trying to achieve it.”
Dex nodded and then removed his arm awkwardly from her shoulder. He went back to looking at the fire for a few minutes and then got up to go and get some ale. When he came back with two full mugs and handed one to Holly, she remembered the other question that he hadn’t yet answered.
“Why do you care?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dex seemed more disarmed than usual now. He had just talked some sense into Holly and was getting ready to toss back a cold ale by the warm fire before escorting her back home to the castle. There was nothing that should have been making him uneasy, and yet Holly’s question made him unable to hold his eyes steady as they darted from the flames to Holly to the trees.
