by Kris Black
It took a while, but when she finally calmed, she refused to let him go. He only held her more tightly.
“I thought you would never come back,” he whispered. “I thought I would never see you again.”
She shook her head and clutched his shirt tighter. “I wanted to come back. I promised you I would. I counted every minute of every day until I could see you again.”
“I… I felt you arrive last night,” he whispered as though they were in a temple. “I knew something was wrong, that you were in danger and that I could do nothing about it. That I can’t leave these godforsaken lands.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
She had been through a lot. But she had learned a lot.
Leaning back, she looked up at him - her eyes dry as though full of sand. “Christian. I know how to break the curse.”
His eyes widened and Alina his chest quickened under her hand, fisting his shirt.
Christian had only allowed Alina to tell him the barest details on how to break the curse before he decided she was too exhausted to continue. She had lost her place and struggled to keep her eyes open.
“You need more rest. Sleep, I’ll be here when you wake.”
“But there is so much I need to tell you.”
“You can tell me in a few hours. I’ll be right here. We will never separate again. I promise.”
Though she fought it, she fell asleep to the soft rhythm of his breathing.
Alina awoke with a start, her heart racing and angry tears forming. She sat up as soon as she woke, looking everywhere for a threat - looking for an iron knife and a dark form advancing on her. Try as she might to school her breathing, it didn’t stop Christian from stirring beside her. He hadn’t left; he was still there.
“You don’t need to hold it in,” he said bleary-eyed as the sun’s rays began to peek over the trees. She must have slept the day away. “S’okay.”
She took a few deep breaths, swallowing the air like water. She was okay. She was home, in her room, with her mate. Nothing would happen to her. She was safe. Safe. Safe.
“No.” She said aloud, mostly to herself. She had to get a handle on the situation. “I need to know about the castle. I’ve thought of nothing else since I left. How is Charles?”
“He did great,” Christian reached out and trailed a finger up and down her arm in intricate patterns. They wrapped her other arm in a bandage from elbow to the wrist where the iron knife had got her. “He survived the change. Last I checked he was in his quarters.”
Alina couldn’t stop a small smile. Good news, she needed to focus on the good. Not on what happened in Lormount, not about the heat of iron being stabbed into her body, or Felix’s glassy, dead eyes looking at her in accusation.
“I’m so glad he listened to me and made it to you. Thank you for taking care of him.”
Christian smiled back sadly, threading his fingers through her hair, combing out some tangles.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“He told me what happened when he arrived,” Christian said. “Who had taken you, why you hadn’t returned and that you made him swear to come. It enraged me.”
Alina just listened as he stopped, collecting his thoughts.
“I destroyed almost an entire wing of the castle in my anger. I am afraid that your brother had a rather jarring first impression of me.”
“I knew you would be angry,” Alina whispered.
“Anger doesn’t even scratch the surface,” he deadpanned and turned to the ceiling, covering his eyes with his hand in fury. “I should have never let you leave. I knew the moment that the king found you I would never see you again. But I had at least thought he would protect you. And yet, you returned to me last night looking like you were a moment from death - frozen solid, doused in blood, bruising over your body and stab wounds.”
Alina paused, frowning toward her mate. “How did you know that the king would come looking for me?” She demanded. “That he would protect me?”
His face tensed. Alina sat up and looked down at him. “Christian?”
He again said nothing, his jaw tensing.
“You knew?” She threw out the accusation and Christian just sighed. Sensing the ruined mood, he sat up and got out of bed. “You knew that I was Belmont’s daughter, and you didn’t tell me!”
Alina jumped out of the bed as well and regretted it immediately. She swayed on her feet and grabbed one post for balance before circling around to come face to face with him, blocking his path. Christian ran a frustrated hand through his dark hair, causing it to stand on end. He growled at her in warning, something that would make a normal person back up in fright, but Alina stepped forward.
“How could you not tell me?” She was furious. And also hurt that he had said nothing. Her injured leg began throbbing, and she shifted most of her weight to the other one.
“I didn’t know until you were about to leave!” He countered. “Sure, I knew you were part-fae from the moment we met-”
“Wait, what?”
“But it wasn’t until I saw King Belmont flash in the enchanted mirror that I really put the pieces together and figured out who you were.”
Alina was so furious she couldn’t form words. She lifted her hand up in the air, tensed and ready for she didn’t know what. To hit him? Push him? Strangle him? It certainly wasn’t the first time she had fantasized about any of that. Instead, she let out an angry huff and let her palms rest in the air.
Christian opened his mouth to say something, but Alina’s glare cut him off.
“I don’t want to hear words coming out of your mouth,” she snapped as she closed her eyes and tried to process what he had just told her.
Christian had known she was half-fae. He had figured out that she was Belmont and Breena’s daughter before sending her off to help Charles. Was he hiding anything else from her?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She said after moments of tense silence. “I had a right to know.”
“I wasn’t entirely sure about you being fae; I haven’t encountered one in many, many years,” Christian said. “I thought I may have been mistaken.”
“Until?” Alina prompted.
“Until the forest.”
“The forest?”
“I knew someone had bitten you the night you tried to run away. I smelled the blood the moment I stepped into the clearing. And yet, the next day you were completely healed.” He paused. “We all watched you closely for any effects of the bite. You showed none. I thought perhaps I had been mistaken. That was until a whole section of forest sprung up overnight. Only faerie magic can do that. Do you remember what you did that night?”
Alina remembered the night that the forest seemed to grow in density under one full moon. She had been out on her balcony, watching everyone in the castle transforming. She had laid down on her freezing balcony and cried herself to sleep.
“I cried.”
“Do you know what it’s rumored faerie tears to do?”
Alina thought back to the faerie lore book Christian had given her, and the ones she had combed through at her father’s castle. Magical healing powers, communication with small animals, gifted at growing and tending many plants and fauna. Able to grow whole gardens and forests with only a few buckets of water.
Water. Tears?
“Their tears make things grow,” she said stunned.
Christian nodded.
“That’s how I truly knew. You were the only one on this whole estate who could have achieved such a feat - whether or not you realize it.”
Alina had been so irritated when Christian had stopped investigating the cause of the mysterious forest. She had wanted answers. He could have told her she was part-fae. “That’s why you stopped searching the forest. You knew I did it.”
He nodded again.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“I was trying to figure out if you knew what you were,” he countered. “Then, if I remember, you pelted me with snow,
and it slipped my mind.”
“And it continued to slip your mind every night after that?” She countered.
Christian huffed out an aggravated sigh and stepped closer to her. “We were just reunited, and this is what you want to do? Argue? You’re not even steady on your feet yet.”
“Of course, I don’t want to argue!” Alina yelled. “I want to know why you didn’t tell me!”
“Because I didn’t want you to leave me!” He finally roared back.
There was a stunned silence that followed, filled only with the crackling whisper of the fireplace. Christian stepped away from her and turned away, looking toward the window. The night profiled his face in shadows and lights and made him almost too beautiful for Alina to process. How could someone be so gorgeous?
“You are my mate. I knew what the mating bond pull was, but I didn’t want to burden you with what it was until I was sure of your feelings for me. You had only started warming up to me,” he sighed. “I knew you were a faerie. I didn’t tell you because I knew a little of the curse, I remembered bits and pieces and I knew that it tied me to King Belmont’s half-fae daughter and I didn’t want her to be you. I didn’t want to know what that meant. So, I kept it from you. I told myself it was only until I was sure, absolutely sure, you were in love with me. Then, I would tell you. Because if I had before then, I knew you, Alina. I knew that you would use the information and try to escape. To access your latent powers.”
Alina thought back to the time, the time when Christian had been a beast, then a mild acquaintance and friend. Would she have attempted to flee had she known her true lineage?
She couldn’t say for certain.
Closing the distance between them, she put her hand into his own large, calloused one. He turned to look at her sadly; the light framing his face like an angel.
She pressed her head to his chest. “No more secrets?”
“No more secrets.”
Christian wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly to him like he had the night before. Like he was afraid that if he loosened his grasp for even an instant that she would slip through his fingers like water.
Chapter Twenty
Homecoming
Elizabeth all but tackled Alina when she saw her.
Christian had finally agreed to leave her be after Alina put her foot down. He had tried to get Alina to join him in his study while he worked, but the last thing she wanted to do was sit there, bored, getting in his way while he tried to get things done.
Her leg wasn’t healed enough that she felt she could walk around unaided for a long period, but she could move between the furniture of her bedroom. She had briefly considered asking one of the pack to take her to the forest, to borrow energy from the trees to heal. Then, she remembered the faerie grove; the branches moving of their own accord; the roots ripping up from the ground and she hesitated. Perhaps, this was a wound she could heal from the normal, human way. Besides, she didn’t want to flaunt to the whole castle of faerie-hating wolves that she was one of them. Well, not yet at least.
Elizabeth had found her sprawled out on the couch reading the book she had left on her nightstand before racing to Charles’ rescue. She held it against the arm of the couch, so her injured arm didn’t become too strained.
Alina found that books kept her mind from wandering, from venturing into places she refused to go. To keep her mind from wandering to snow and blood. And warm hands on cold skin. Iron and flesh.
Besides books, just being here in the castle helped calm her. It was so peculiar. Her father - no, Edward - had lost their fortune while she was so young, she barely remembered the manor they had lived in before. The farmhouse had always seemed like more of a prison than a home and the place that her family lived now she had spent only a week in. She had never truly felt she had a home anywhere.
But this must be what it felt like. The serene sense of safety and love and care. The smells alone were enough to relax her. Here, she felt at ease and at peace.
This is home.
“William just told me you are back!” Elizabeth exclaimed as she pulled Alina into a tight hug, squeezing her like a mother bear and her cub. “When he returned with your brother but not you, I could have given him a thrashing!”
Alina wrapped her arms around her friend and returned the hug two-fold. She had missed Elizabeth as fiercely as she had Christian. “I’m sorry. I missed you too.”
“Tell me what happened,” Elizabeth said, drawing back.
“It’s so incredible, I am afraid you won’t believe it.”
Elizabeth gave her a look that said exactly what she thought of that statement. “I turn into a wolf every full moon. It will take a lot to make me a disbeliever of anything. I’ll order food from the kitchen.”
“Could we go to your rooms?” Alina asked. “These four walls are driving me insane.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Elizabeth glanced down at Alina’s leg. Although her skirts covered the injury, Elizabeth must have found out. Or maybe she could smell the blood.
“I’m sure with your help it will be all right.”
Alina allowed Elizabeth to hold her arm, helping her through the familiar halls. She smiled as she passed members of the pack she knew. Each one inclined their head in a bow as she passed. Recognition, she realized, as the Mate of the Alpha. She wished she could be happier, that her smile wasn’t fake and dead.
William was not in the room when the women arrived, giving Alina a sense of relief. She wasn’t sure if she could face him yet. He had been so sincere when last they had spoken; she was afraid that by not returning she had broken any trust from him he had gained.
“William and I are finally mated,” Elizabeth said, beaming once she shut the door behind them. “It happened just before you left. I didn’t have time to tell you.”
Alina knew this. William had told her as much as she was leaving. However, she didn’t want to ruin her friend’s excitement. “I am so happy for you!” She said sincerely and pulled Elizabeth into another hug. “I’m glad he finally came to his senses.”
“Now tell me about you. I want to hear all the details,” Elizabeth said, and they plopped down on the sofa, hands clasped.
Alina frowned. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to share about what happened - or how much she could share. Though there were moments of sincere hope and adoration, there were also moments of sheer terror and despair. Alina settled on a short, easy version of the truth. She told Elizabeth of Ella, Brigit and Sarah, and her father and her mother. Of a faerie who had saved her life who she now had a name for - Finley.
“But none of that is why you left. Or how you are bruised and battered, returning to us as an icicle.” Elizabeth didn’t accuse, merely stated.
Alina shook her head, looking away. Elizabeth reached out and took her hand, but still, Alina couldn’t face her friend. “You can tell me whenever you’re ready. If you’re ever ready.”
Alina didn’t know what to say, so she just lay her head down by Elizabeth’s lap. Elizabeth stroked her hair. Alina basked in the quiet solitude and comfort she felt with her friend. She felt like maybe she would never have calm like that again - except only in spurts and wistful moments.
“Does he know?” Elizabeth worked a small knot out of Alina’s hair with deft fingers. “What happened, I mean.”
“Christian? No.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“I don’t know,” Alina sighed sadly. “It will kill him to know he wasn’t there. That he couldn’t help me. That he can’t do anything about it. I don’t want to dwell on any of it, I just want to move on.”
“Better you tell him before it comes out some other way,” Elizabeth warned. “He’ll ask why you came back like that. He’ll push.”
“I know.”
They laid there in a serene calm. It had almost lulled Alina to sleep when Elizabeth spoke up again. “So, a tried-and-true princess, huh?”
“Apparently.”
“Wait,” Elizabeth sat up, causing Alina to shift and sit up. “You said that your mother was Queen Breena, a faerie princess?”
“Yes?”
“Gods above, Alina, do you know what that means?”
“Uh, that my aunt is a crazy evil faerie?” She pictured Maeve, standing above her, eyes full of loathing and hands drenched in blood. The glint of a knife. The dull thud of Felix’s heart hitting the ground. Her breath hitched.
“No! Well, yes. But that’s not what I meant.” Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled, not commenting if she noticed the change in Alina. “Alina, you’re a faerie princess!”
Alina’s head fell into her hands and she groaned out. She tried not to laugh. Elizabeth had a way to lighten her, to pull her from herself.
“What?” Elizabeth asked.
“I wish people would stop trying to put crowns on my head.”
“Do faeries use crowns, or flowers and antlers?” Elizabeth joked and Alina pushed her gently in jest.
It was then that someone unlatched the door and let themselves in. Alina and Elizabeth sat straighter and William marched through the door on a mission to get to his study.
“Good afternoon, Will,” Elizabeth greeted. Alina looked in horror at Elizabeth. Will? He was no more a Will than Christian was a Christ.
“Good afternoon, Dove.”
“Dove? Well, we were never ones for pet names, but I suppose it shall have to do William,” Alina teased.
He started, having only just noticed she was there. “L-lady Alina,” he stammered and then half-bowed. “Good afternoon.”
“I believe it’s Princess Alina now,” Elizabeth laughed.
William looked on stunned, like a deer staring down the end of a pistol “Just Alina is still fine, William. Or Lady Alina if you must.”
“I’m glad to see you back unharmed, Lady Alina,” William said, recovering himself. “I was… it worried me when only your brother returned.”
“I am alive and in one piece.”
“Thank the gods for that. Although from what I hear, you were barely alive or in one piece.” William bowed before entering his study.
