The Noble Throne: A Royal Shifter Fantasy Romance (Game of Realms Series Book 1)

by Logan Keys

  Heat emanates from my body as I flush at the hunger behind his gaze. The reminder of the intimacy we’ve shared makes me feel powerful in this moment. Wanted and desirable.

  I first felt the butterfly of my attraction to Crede when I was sixteen years old. It danced inside of me, somersaulting in my belly until I was certain I’d be sick. There was a small flicker between us and every time our gazes met, I felt the power of our mutual affection for each other grow.

  Years passed and while the power grew, attraction dwindled. It wasn’t him or me. It just was. He was and still is a beautiful lion. A magnificent creature.

  My destiny.

  “Liana,” Lia interrupts, her eyes dancing across the thick garden, “your mother.” She drops her chin and sinks into a deep bow when my mother reaches us.

  “Mother,” I say, also bowing with my head tipped ever so slightly.

  A long slender finger glides under my chin and she lifts my head. Silently, I observe everything she doesn’t say. Sadness, anticipation, and pride twist her features, and I take it in trying to figure out the meaning behind each expression. While she ignores Lia’s presence, she smiles warmly at Crede.

  “Liana.” My name falls from her full lips with a tenderness she reserves only for me. “Let us speak in private.”

  Crede and Lia melt into the background as I walk beside my mother, her leading while I still maintain my stand alongside her. While independence isn’t something others in our pride value, it’s something I hold dear. And something both my parents understand. Maybe even appreciate.

  I may be part of our pride, but I’m an individual. Strong, resilient, capable.

  Together we cross the garden, dry leaves cracking as we step on them. Water trickles through the crystal pond, the sound replenishing its surroundings. Summer smiles back at me with the warm vibrancy of the overhead sun. When we reach the foyer, we take a seat at the small table set in front of the vines scaling the tall walls of our castle. Immediately, house servants bring us two glasses of wine and a plate of cheese. Swirling the cool liquid beneath my nose, I take in its sultry scent and let my eyes droop closed.

  “I have spoken with your father,” my mom says, and I open my eyes in time to watch her avert her attention away from me.

  My mother lifts the glass to her lips and takes a small drink. Her movements are purposeful, confident. When she puts the wine back on the table, she rests her hands over her lap, folding them with a simple interlacing of her fingers.

  “Your father and I have tried everything to resolve the problems your attack on the prince wolf have brought our realm. There is no other solution, Liana.”

  “Yes, Mother.” I bow my head as I imagine my life beside Crede. I’ll be his beloved, always his beloved. But I’ll also have to share him with my sisters, and it is that alone that drives me mad.

  “We’ve agreed marriage is the only way.”

  My heart races forward to a fate I’ve known about since I was a cub, while it trips over the same nuisances of our customs that will likely bother me until I meet my death.

  I tip my head up and catch my mother’s gaze. “I understand.”

  “Good.” She takes my hand in hers. “I’m proud of you, dear one. Your father and I thought you’d be more difficult.”

  I smile, the sides of my lips wobble at the attempt. “I’ve always known I’d marry Crede, my lady. While I thought I still had some time, it will be my honor to have a lion such as Crede as my husband.”

  The hands that held mine, loosen and drop while my mother’s face contorts. “Oh, Liana.” She places a shaky hand to her lips before she composes herself once again. “Liana, you are not marrying Crede.”

  My brows draw in confusion and I cough to clear my tightening throat. “Mother, you can’t mean…”

  “It has been decided,” she cuts me off. “You must be wedded into the realm of Winter.”

  “Mother,” I protest.

  Sharp hazel eyes pierce through me and again, I bow my head. My teeth grind against each other in the hopes of keeping further grievances in check.

  “Speak, Liana, but speak with confidence, not with fear. Tell me, dear one, what troubles you about your marriage to Noble.”

  Holding my chin up, I gaze into her kind eyes and speak with clarity. “He is rogue, Mother. A rogue wolf in a realm I do not belong in. This is my home. Crede is who I am destined to marry.”

  “Crede will do well in marrying your sisters.”

  “It is I he favors.”

  “He will learn to favor another.”

  I turn my head downcast, not as a sign of respect of her demands, but because the weight of what she and my father are asking is too much.

  “What of love? Crede and I love each other. Should I not be permitted to marry for love?”

  “Sometimes fate smiles on us and we marry someone we already love, or someone we grow to love. But peace, Liana, is what we marry for. Lions and wolves will be united for all of eternity. Your cubs will be heir to Winter. We shall have lions in another realm, which will make our pride even stronger. That is what your obedience will grant us.”

  “You’re sacrificing me for the greater good of our pride? Is that what you’re telling me? Because if it is, if it’s better for the pride, then I shall do this without complaint. My loyalty is always with our pride and if I am better served in a different realm, then I will leave without so much as a mutter. But if this is because I attacked a rogue wolf, a wolf who was spying on me, I cannot go. I will not go.” Straightening my shoulders, I face my mother with the confidence I was born into. “My place is with Crede as his queen, but if my lady and my king wish me to marry a wolf for our pride, speak it and it shall be done.”

  My mother leans into me, pressing a warm kiss on my temple and I feel her shudder when she places a palm to my cheek. “It is what the king and I demand of you, Liana. It is your duty to marry Noble and be the first queen of our kind in Winter.

  “Yes, Mother. May I speak freely?” I drop my head in a deep bow, letting her know I am as always loyal to her and my father.

  She nods, a slight dip of her head.

  My bottom lip trembles but as I’ve been taught, I hold my gaze steady, my head held high. “I feel as if my world is crumbling beneath me, and you, my own mom, aren’t going to be there when it all shatters.”

  Chapter 7

  Noble

  I’m able to walk again. But it’s a near thing, and my father warns me to stay away from court. He doesn’t want the pack to see me as weak as I am. His ways are old, but our realm has progressed. None so much would touch a hair on my head with me in human form.

  My mother’s propped me up in a chair by the fire. She’s nervous, and it has nothing to do with my sickness. I’m suspicious, but too tired to care about the realm's politics at the moment.

  The wolf queen’s voice is extra high pitched when she says, “Now, Noble, I think you’d like to thank the wolves that saved you. Wouldn’t you? Knowing how close you were to death, you’d want to see and meet them, yes? The ones who called for us at the gate.”

  “Certainly,” I say, squinting at her anxious expression.

  “Bring them in, Tomas,” she says to our servant.

  “This is Emilie,” my mother introduces, quietly.

  “Emilie,” I say, to the woman who’s entered with two others. She’s young, dark headed, the same eyes as before. I know her instantly as the one who’d found me at the gate. The blue-eyed wolf. I try to rise.

  She curtsies. “Don’t trouble yourself, my lord.”

  I stay seated. “Noble, please,” I say. “I can’t thank you enough. I---we owe you a great debt of gratitude. Your call for help may have saved my life.”

  She rises from the curtsy, her sharp features not quite pretty, but elegant. Emilie graciously nods her head. “We would do it again, your grace.”

  “Noble,” I say again, gently.

  “Noble.” She tries for a smile, but it’s tight and unple
asant. “But we’ve come on other matters. My two sisters and me. We had a fourth but… Katarina…”

  The name sends ice to my blood. Shame flows through me.

  My mother subtly moves into my frame of vision. “The sisters have come for refuge. Their village is our farthest one. The customs…different than our own. Katarina’s death means we owe their family. Instead of a fortune, these three have asked to live in the palace.”

  “What?” I can’t hold back the horror in my voice. To see them every day. To be reminded of my mistake without cease. “Why the palace? Why now?”

  Emilie boldly meets my gaze. For all her ‘my lords’ and ‘your graces’ she’s a pack leader through and through. The villages run separately from court. Court is the only place that I’ve ever run. This girl has just told me what I’ve wanted to know. Do they still fight for top tier, or do they decide it based on blood? By the way her eyes shine, and the pure wolf lineage that’s apparent, it’s both.

  Katarina had been sweet. She’d been naïve. She’d been sold for the money that her family had wanted, given life and limb to the old customs, and it was truly on their heads for allowing her to take the risk.

  And mine for failing as a betrothed to find her.

  Emilie should have been the one, now that I see her. She’s stronger. But she’s a pack leader, it’s obvious by the way the other two stay just behind. She’d have fought her own parents to avoid being forced to marry. And they might have lost.

  This piques my interest further.

  “They want to remain here at court,” my mother says again, as if trying to get me to read between the lines. “Noble, they want to live here, with us…”

  And suddenly, I realize…

  “You want to marry me? You can’t be serious!”

  Chapter 8

  Noble

  I pinch the bridge of my nose.

  The queen and I are alone.

  “Mother, I’ve abided you most the day. Don’t make my temper shorter than it already is with your nagging.” I rub my temples. We’ve been at this for hours.

  My mother knows she can wear a wolf down if she keeps on long enough. Nipping at our heels, as it were. It’s almost a stronger tactic than calling for trial by fire.

  Right now…I’d face the fire.

  “You’d hardly have to do much of anything, Noble.”

  “Hardly?” I sit back in bed, my energy waning. I’m still not fully up to my usual self. “In what realm do you think it would be wise to risk another poor soul in the betrothal matching? What in all the realms are you thinking? How many more must die to prove to you that I’m rogue? That I’m no good for that life, mother. That lion---a LION, almost killed me while I ran, because I left the pack, the entire realm, for Summer. I wanted to be free of this place so badly, that the other version of myself risked death to get away! And now this. Emilie must be desperate, she must have great need. I won’t exploit that. If she’s here begging for us to take her on, instead of giving her family the money, they are in trouble, Mother.”

  The wolf queen wrings her hands. I remind myself that my mother’s temperament is unsuited to shouting. She’s not even a strong she-wolf for a leader. The most basic of girls in our realm could take on the great black wolf’s wife. Soft and sweet, and I have no idea why my father chose a woman like her to lead our realm, or why she sat on that block of ice so long ago waiting for him after thirty days. All I know is, that when she looks at my father, not as she is now, but as her other self, he’s rarely ever not by her side while running.

  “Speaking of the black wolf,” I say in exasperation when my father storms into the room.

  He’s holding a parchment. His face is thunderous. If he were in wolf form, his hackles would be raised. “Woman,” he growls. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Anyone else would be cowering about now. But my mother only glances at the parchment and shrugs.

  He slaps the paper downward. “Not this! This!” he roars motioning to the room, my mother, then me.

  The two of us stare at him in confusion. My father may be strong, but eloquence is not his forte.

  He looks at the ceiling as if there is an answer in heaven. “There are three she-wolves under my roof waiting for you to pair one of them up with our son. Another villager, too. I didn’t like the last pairing, but you said it would enrich our line, that they give and raise children better, and that a royal would only make more trouble, but this…after the last time?”

  “But…”

  “It won’t happen,” he says. “Besides, there’s another larger issue at hand now.” My father gives her the missive. “Noble won’t be marrying the village wolf. Or any wolf for that matter.”

  “What is this?” My mother scans the paper.

  “It’s an offer.”

  “Of what?” she chirps in frustration.

  “Marriage.”

  “To whom?” I ask, fearing the answer.

  My father’s dark eyes narrow on me. “To your lion.”

  Chapter 9

  Noble

  The days after my father’s missive are confusing to say the least. But time will tell us what we truly are dealing with, and how large a scale, after I go from zero offers of marriage, to two different possible betrothals in an instant.

  I know there is more to Emilie’s offer to marry than what meets the eye. Why risk her life after I’d killed her sister? And why would anyone marry the person responsible for the death of their family member?

  We three, my father, mother, and I, stand with Emilie and her two sisters, Grace and Laura, to discuss the predicament, once again.

  In addition to the proposal of marriage, the Lions are suddenly claiming outlandish things. They are saying that hunters had appeared near the edge of both of our borders. Near Emilie’s village.

  After some pressure put on by the Great Black Wolf, my father and our king, Emilie says, “What you have heard is true. The realm of man has encroached upon our village and poached many wolves as well.”

  The silence is a gaping hole of disbelief.

  My father’s less surprised than us both.

  Emilie had been afraid to admit it. And rightly so. The court would laugh them out of the kingdom. She is, as I’d guessed, the leader of the village’s pack. She’s doing this for their protection.

  I admire her for it.

  But who would believe them?

  “These hunters don’t want little foxes or bunnies. They want big game,” my father says, reading from the missive. “If we don’t come together as one, we could be at war with the human realm, and we have no idea what that would mean,” my father adds. “However, I’ve refused to come to any agreement with the lion king until they provide us with Noble’s attacker.” He eyes me shrewdly. “But they are in the same predicament as we are with the lioness who cut up Noble being their daughter.”

  I suck in a breath, as does my mother, and Emilie.

  “Daughter?” I say. “You mean she’s a lion royal?”

  It makes sense. The girl I saw bathing, she couldn’t be a commoner. She’d even stood regally when she’d thought no one was watching.

  “But the queen lion, the girl’s mother holds her ground,” my father says.

  “As would I!” my mother exclaims.

  He shakes his finger at my mother. “I knew you would, so it was between the lion king and I, that we should talk terms of a treaty. Women would just muck it up further. For both the attack on Noble and the unified front against the realm of man, we discussed at great length what should be done.”

  I remain silent. Without knowing what he’ll say, the subconscious already seems to guess.

  My father stands proudly as he does when giving an unbending decree. “Noble should marry the lion.”

  I gape at the black wolf, the sudden matchmaker? My mother nearly faints.

  My father hurries on to say, “But you wouldn’t have to do the betrothal custom, Noble. I’ve already told the king we wouldn’t pu
t her at risk in such a way, since you wouldn’t find a mate like this …naturally, anyway. There will be a completely new custom made, because theirs is equally deadly.”

  And the pack wouldn’t have to hear from the new queen herself that I’m a rogue. What would a lion know or care about my running? She wouldn’t be with us. She couldn’t tell the tale. My father must have considered this. No one would know about our failing lineage.

  “What is it?” I ask, curious. “The Lion custom.”

  “You’d have to face their king.”

  “Oh...”

  Emilie shifts, and I just now remember she’s in the room. Her anger is palpable. The incredulous look on her face is clear. She’s about to lose her chance of helping her village. Of giving her sisters a place to live. “But you can’t just---I mean the wolves won’t even---this is preposterous!”

  The room is silent. My mother’s still trying to catch her breath.

  “Emilie,” I say, decided. “You and your sisters can stay here as long as you need.”

  My mother closes her eyes in relief.

  I sigh. “I’ll do it,” I say to my father. “I’ll marry the lion.”

  Chapter 10

  Liana

  Customs be damned. I won’t permit my father to disgrace the wolf I nearly killed. If he is to be my husband, then I can’t permit my pride to see him for his weaknesses.

  My father, a prideful king, will surely expose them all and I will be nothing more than the princess to a prince who doesn’t deserve the title. Worse than Lia or Calla, for at least their husband is bold and capable in battle.

  My heart aches for everything I’ve lost, everything I took for granted. The love I almost had. The high rank I’d been promised since cubhood. Now, my name and reputation will be tainted because of the wolf whose cowardice I despise.