The Royal Shifters Complete Series Boxed Set

by Alice Wilde

  “I demand you return us to camp, not as Annalise, but as the queen you’ve promised to aid.”

  Li looks at me and blinks, trying to process what I’ve just said.

  “Did you not promise to help me take back my kingdom?”

  “Yes, but this contradicts—”

  “No. As queen, I have the right to make my own decisions. I will make mistakes, but I intend to learn from them. I will not be ordered about by anyone…not even you.”

  I know the words sting, but Li nods and turns, walking us back toward camp.

  I smell the fire even before we see it. My heart sinks in my chest the closer we get. I can’t hear anything besides the loud crackling of flames.

  “Put me down.”

  Li lowers me to the ground and I walk slowly toward the unearthly glow.

  “Prepare yourself,” Li says.

  But nothing could have prepared me for what I see. Stepping to the edge of the clearing, I look out over the blazing campsite. My stomach twists as my eyes are drawn to a small mound on the ground.

  “No,” I gasp, pushing through the foliage and running over to it.

  Falling to my knees beside the body lying on its stomach, I brush the dark hair aside to reveal the face. It’s Lena.

  Hot tears spill onto my cheeks as I stare at her in disbelief. My eyes fall to her neck and it’s only now that I see how she was killed. I turn and retch. Li places a hand on my shoulder, but I shake it off. Anger, sadness, and pain mix together in my gut as I lift my eyes to survey the hellish scene before me.

  Innocents. Their crime was kindness, and Damien murdered them for it…and Li let him do it!

  I jump to my feet, throwing myself at Li, pounding my fists into his chest. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t even try to stop me. My knees give out and Li catches me, pulling me into his arms as I weep.

  Leaves rustle behind us. Li spins around, pushing me behind him, the muscles in his back tense and ready for action. I peer around his side as a dark shape steps out into the clearing.

  Li relaxes and I let out a relieved, whimpering sigh. It’s Roan. I push myself from Li and run to him. Roan scoops me into a comforting hug, kissing my head softly.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “I’m here, lass.”

  “Wo cao,” Li curses in Chinese. “You can’t just sneak up on us like that. Not after something like this.”

  “You should know better than to be snuck up on,” Roan says, teasingly.

  “I don’t think this is the right time for jokes.”

  Roan tenses, shifting uncomfortably. He gently pulls me away from his body and crouches to look me in the eye. “You’re right. How are you coping?”

  “I…Wait, where’s Ero?”

  “I don’t know. I think he went after the attackers to lead them off in the opposite direction. Now, are you okay?”

  “They’re dead…They’re all dead because of me.”

  “No, they’re dead because of Damien.”

  “We should have helped them. We should have helped you. We shouldn’t have fled.”

  “Annalise,” Roan says, “this isn’t your fault. The best chance you had at saving them was to run. We had hoped that by splitting up, Damien and his men would be inclined to chase us, but we were wrong. Whether you had stayed or not, he was intent on harming these people.”

  “You knew we would run?” I say.

  “I certainly hoped Li wasn’t dumb enough to keep you so close to danger. Although perhaps he is, seeing how I’ve found the two of you right back here in the middle of a burning camp.”

  “That’s my fault,” I say with far more conviction than I had anticipated. “I thought we could help.”

  “I tried to stay her, but she insisted,” says Li.

  “Of course,” Roan says with a shake of his head. “We need to leave. Ero will catch up with us.”

  Li nods and then moves to pick me up.

  “We can’t just leave,” I say. “What about all of this? What about survivors?”

  “Survivors?” Roan says quietly. “Lass, take a good look around. Who could survive this?”

  I know he’s right, but something is tugging at the back of my mind.

  “We can’t stay to check,” Li says.

  “We have to!”

  Men’s angry voices can be heard from the other side of the camp.

  “They must be coming back, we have to go. Now!” Li says stepping to my side and taking me in his arms before I can protest.

  “Sorry, lass. Even if someone did survive, it won’t be for long now,” Roan says as he picks the blanket Li must have dropped earlier off the ground.

  And with that, we turn and once again flee into the woods.

  I don’t know how long we’ve been running. My eyes are heavy, but I just can’t sleep.

  “This will do.”

  I find myself lowered to the ground and onto a blanket. Li and Roan drop down beside me, exhausted.

  “We must have run fifty miles,” Roan groans.

  “I doubt we made it that far,” Li says. “At least we can finally rest.”

  “For now.”

  “How will Ero find us?” I say.

  “You’d be surprised how easy it is for us to follow your scent,” says Roan.

  “Gods, Roan, it’s not my fault I haven’t been able to bathe.”

  “That’s not quite what I meant, lass,” Roan says with a smile before closing his eyes to sleep. “Dinna fash about Ero. He’ll find us once he thinks it’s safe. He’ll probably spend the better part of the night trying to confuse Damien’s men and destroy any traces we’ve left. Don’t forget, he’s in his beast form. He’s far faster and more adept at handling things than we are right now.”

  I pause, thinking. “So, why didn’t either of you change forms today?”

  Li is silent for a moment. “I can’t speak for Roan, but I didn’t think it would do much good to lose the clothes I’ve been given or be unable to easily speak to you. Now, we really need to get some rest.”

  “Command me, more like,” I mumble. “You go ahead. I don’t think I can sleep…not yet.”

  Li turns over onto his side and closes his eyes. “Don’t hate me, Annalise.”

  The comment takes me by surprise. I don’t respond. Yes, I may feel resentment toward him, but I know I don’t hate him. Not really.

  I don’t think I could hate any of them.

  Li and Roan have only been asleep for about an hour, as far as I can guess. Ero still hasn’t returned, and the sky is starting to grow pale with the coming dawn. I haven’t been able to sleep, the images from earlier cycling through my head like an open-eyed nightmare. I’m not ready to know what my dreams will show me.

  I let out an unexpected sob, clamping my hand over my mouth a moment too late.

  Li rolls toward me, opening his eyes sleepily. Roan mumbles something and then bolts upright.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Sorry, it’s just me,” I say.

  “It’s not your fault. Time will heal the wound.” Roan yawns, rubbing my back.

  “The sky is already light,” Li groans, pressing his fingers to his temples. “We need to get going before we draw unnecessary attention.” He rises to his feet, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders. “I’ll need you to carry her, Roan. I’m too stiff. I’m afraid I’ll drop her if I try.”

  Roan stands and stretches.

  “How far do you think we might be from a town?” I ask. “I can walk.”

  Roan shrugs his shoulders and looks toward Li.

  “If I had to guess, we shouldn’t be too far from Le Havre, perhaps a day’s journey or so,” Li says. “At least, if Louis was correct in his estimates.”

  “How can we be that close?” I say. “We were only moving for a couple of hours last night, if that.”

  Roan laughs. “We may not be using our beast forms, but we move pretty fast when we’re not waiting on your tiny steps, lass. I’m surpri
sed you haven’t noticed.”

  Now that I think about it, he’s right. Of course, I knew they moved faster than the average man, but I hadn’t thought too much about it before, probably because my feet hurt so much. We shouldn’t have been that close to Paris when we met Louis, at least not logically.

  I wonder if I hadn’t insisted on walking if we’d be in Scotland by now. Would the troupe still be alive if I hadn’t been so prideful?

  I look down at my hands, tears welling up once again.

  “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

  “We need to go,” Li says.

  Roan slides an arm beneath my knees and the other behind my back and picks me up.

  “Lay your head against me,” Roan whispers. “It might help.”

  “How will that help?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard that sometimes hearing a heartbeat can be calming,” Roan says.

  I wipe the tears from my eyes and lay my head against his chest. The warmth of his body and the steady beat of his heart is soothing. It may not mend my heart, but it does calm me enough to make me want to sleep. It’ll do for a temporary solution.

  “Alright, let’s go.”

  Eight

  Ero

  An agonizing pain tears through my soul and my eyes roll back in my head. This has to be a nightmare. The last time I felt anything like this was when we were back within Damien’s grasp. My eyelids slowly open, my vision going in and out of focus as I try to comprehend exactly what’s going on.

  Looking down, I see the vague outline of a woman beneath me. It’s Annalise. My vision goes dark and then snaps back into focus. She’s being crushed—by me. My giant snow leopard paws are pushing down on her chest and I can’t stop.

  I watch as her life begins to drain from her face, unable to do anything to help.

  “See what you’ve done to her? See what you’re doing to her?” a voice says in my head.

  Damien.

  A body slams into me with a force strong enough to knock anyone less out cold. It’s Roan. I roll onto my feet, ready to fight, but the darkness in my soul and the voice in my head have left.

  Li grabs Annalise as Roan and I turn to find and face our predator. I follow the sounds of their voices, but otherwise, there’s no way to track them. Their footsteps are silent, as though hidden by magic, and the scent of their skin is hidden by the oily perfume of a flower. I’m almost convinced it’s all been a trick of the mind when I find two men quietly snickering over the body of a troupe member.

  It takes me less than a minute to kill them both, their instantaneous deaths only making me angrier. The desire to spill Damien’s blood, and that of his men, grows ever stronger.

  I slink through the trees with a speed and stealth unlike any I’ve had before, and one by one I find and slash the troupe’s slaughterers. Damien is nowhere to be found, no matter how hard I try to retrace where the men seem to have come from. Another trick of the mind to make us realize we’ll never be safe or out of his reach as long as he’s still alive.

  Rage fires up in me at the thought of him trying to use me to torture Annalise. To crush the life out of her. I growl and take off, running as fast as I can through the forest, letting the beast overtake me.

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been wandering the forest when I resurface from my beast heart. The sky begins to grow paler. I need to return to Annalise and the others before I’m lost to myself and this beast in me forever.

  The lingering scent of iron is powerful, and it doesn’t take long for me to trace it. At least in my right mind, it is easier to make it back to the camp than I had anticipated. I follow along the perimeter of the camp until I catch Annalise’s fragrance. It’s strong where we slept but grows fainter in the direction Li carried her off. Just as I’m about to run after her, I turn and lift my head into the air. Her scent is more recent a few paces off.

  Walking over, I notice a body lying on the ground. It’s Lena. And Annalise’s fragrance is heavy around her. They must have come back. I’m sure the girl talked Li into it, but I’m annoyed that he let her. She shouldn’t have seen this. In any case, they ran off in a slightly different direction. I can smell Annalise, Li, and Roan all moving along the same course—as well as one other.

  Someone is tracking them. Someone with same strong, flowery scent as the men before. I growl and take off through the forest, keeping my nose tuned to the aroma. It doesn’t take me long to catch up with him. As slow as he moves in comparison to us, I’m surprised he hasn’t given up the chase.

  He hears me stalking him a moment too late, and I leap onto him, forcing him to the ground on his back. He looks up at me, his eyes wide with shock and anger. I put each of my two front paws on his chest, slowly shifting my weight in an attempt to crush him, just as Damien had tried to make me do to Annalise. But at the last moment, I bite his throat instead, killing him instantly.

  I shift almost instantly and fall to the ground in shock at what I almost did and what I’ve just done. Blood is still dripping from my chin and I scream. Not for killing the man, but for nearly torturing him, making him pay for my own anger and the actions of another man. For being anything like my murderous father.

  No, I won’t let that happen. I’ll fight it, or learn to fight it. I shake my head and wipe my face with my hands. Standing, I stare at the body for a long moment, then I take his clothes for myself, once again setting off in search of my three companions.

  Nine

  Annalise

  I’m thankful Ero caught up with us before we made it to Le Havre. He hasn’t said much since he found us. No longer in his leopard form, he managed to find some clothes along the way. Ero didn’t say from where, but I could guess from the blood spattered across them. At the very least, we have one less man hunting us down.

  We were much closer to Le Havre than we thought last night. It only took a few hours for us to reach the outskirts of the port town. I managed to fall into a dreamless sleep, the beat of Roan’s heart calm and reassuring, even for the speed at which he had been running.

  “I hope we’ll be able to find someone willing to take us to Scotland here,” says Roan.

  “We’ll have to worry about that when the time comes,” says Li. “First, we need to make it to the port unscathed.”

  “Do you think Damien will have men waiting here for us?”

  “I’m not sure. I doubt he knows exactly where we’re headed, but it’s always good to be cautious.”

  “So, how are we going to pay for the voyage?” Ero asks bluntly.

  We all look at each other in shock. Paying for passage hadn’t even crossed my mind. I’ve never had to pay for anything before, but of course, that’s how the world works outside of the castle.

  “We’ll have to figure that out along the way,” Li says. “Perhaps we can barter.”

  “What do we have to barter?” scoffs Roan.

  “Find me a female captain and I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out,” says Ero.

  I know I shouldn’t be bothered by it, but Ero’s words make my stomach turn with jealousy. Of the three of them, he seems the least bothered by me. Aside from an occasional remark or when it’s his turn to carry me, Ero tends to ignore me. I’ve heard he has quite a reputation with women, or at least he used to, so perhaps it’s because he can’t touch me that he keeps his distance. I don’t want to be anyone’s plaything, but it stings nonetheless to think of him being with someone else.

  “You’re an idiot,” Li says, shaking his head in disapproval.

  “At least I’m willing to sacrifice myself for the good of all.”

  “Sacrifice,” Roan scoffs. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s how you see it.”

  “I don’t see you offering,” says Ero.

  “I have nothing to offer another woman.”

  “You have nothing to offer any woman.”

  Roan steps defensively toward Ero, but Li positions himself between them.

  “Get ahold of yourselves. T
here’s absolutely no reason for this. We’re here to help Annalise take down Damien, that’s all.”

  Roan and Ero continue to stare at each other with daggers in their eyes a moment longer before they each turn away.

  “What’s your problem anyway?” asks Roan.

  “My problem?” Ero echoes, his words dripping with scorn. “My problem is you. The moment neither of us is watching, you decide to make a move on Annalise. As if things aren’t already complicated enough without you leading her on.”

  “How am I leading her on?” Roan growls.

  “You can’t have her! None of us can,” Ero almost roars. “What’s the point of us doing any of this if you’re going to slip up and ruin things?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  It’s finally dawning on me. Ero must have seen Roan kiss me. No wonder he’s been so cold toward us.

  “It was just a kiss,” I say.

  “What is going on?” asks Li. “Roan, I thought I made it clear that no one was to be intimate with Annalise.”

  “Wait, so you’re allowed to kiss her, but I’m not?”

  “That was a lapse in judgment on my part.” Li immediately glances over at me. “I don’t mean I didn’t want to, I just mean…Well, I shouldn’t have. None of us should.”

  “Gods, you three are whining worse than a baby,” I say, immediately regretting my choice of words as I am reminded of Emilie and the troupe. “What’s done is done. Ero, if you’re so jealous, steal a kiss yourself. Otherwise, we need to get going.”

  Ero looks at me in shock but doesn’t say anything.

  “Annalise is right. We need to hurry before things get any worse than they already have,” says Li. “Follow me.”

  I half expect one of them to move to carry me, but as Li steps out of the tree line and toward the town, Roan and Ero step into place behind him and I have to hurry to catch up. None of them says a word as we make our way into the town.

  I half expect someone to jump out and grab us, but besides a few wide-eyed looks, no one seems to pay any mind to us. We don’t stay on the main road long, and Roan slows to allow me to pass him as we slip down an alley and continue on through smaller streets. I cover my nose and mouth, the stench of refuse heavy in the air.