The Kings Mate

My eyes feel like they’re glued together as I try to blink them open. It takes me a while to actually get them open but when I do they sting and I let them drop closed again. With them closed I feel more aware of what my body is doing and what I feel.

The pain in my ribs is tight, like my skins getting stretched, it’s dull, but I can still feel it. My ripped blood soaked shirt hasn’t been replaced in my unconsciousness, but my jeans have been changed into the shorts that I’ve been sleeping in. The only warmth of blankets that I have in the winter weather is the black faux fur blanket that unusually sits at the end of the bed.

There isn’t a breeze in the room but I still feel shivers pulsating through my spine. Just the black cropped bra is comfortably covering the top of my body, but the tight coarse bandage wrapped around me torso is annoying me.

It’s not too bad when I feel Ryder’s warm hand in mine and something tickles against it as well. He hasn’t left me and judging by the warm steady exhale of his breath against my hand I think that he’s fallen asleep and the tickle must be the light covering of stubble on his defined jaw line that I noticed before.

Shifting lightly I try to move to my side, uncomfortable from being on my back for so long. I feel stiffness over my ribs when I move and I whimper at the pain. The movement wakes Ryder up and he jolts with a tightening grip around my hand that hurts a little as he growls.

Growl. Wolf. I must remember those two.

His grip loosens on my hand and my eyes blink open again, fighting to stay on the beautiful hazel colour. His other comes down on my hip, lightly pushing me so I’m on my back again instead of facing towards him.

“Riley said to stay on your back.” He says as he sits back down in the chair next to the bed.

“Riley?” I question, my hand flexing in his.

His hand tightens on my hip and it doesn’t seem as if he’s going to remove it any time soon. “Riley is the doctor.”

The chair Ryder is in is one of the grey wing backed chairs at the end of the room. I’ve been slid closer to the right side of the bed instead of the centre. The thick white curtains have been pulled over the left side and end of the bed and also half way up the bottom of the right, stopping at Ryder’s chair, closing off the rest of the room, letting in only the soft orange glow of the fire.

It’s when Ryder’s moves his hand from my hip to my arm closest to him do I notice that the single tube that was in my arm has been replaced with a double connection and another one stuck into my skin a little lower down my forearm. The tubes clear but there’s a bright red liquid moving down it, the three tubes plus another disappearing behind the bed. The thing checking my heart rate is still there as well, beeping quickly behind us.

Ryder grabs my hand holding it back from when I try to grab at the new tubes and pull them out. I don’t want them all in my arms. Ryder isn’t going to hurt me but I want to get them out and his strength is holding me back.

Needle’s made me weak and I can’t fight those that want to hurt me off.

“Lottie.” Ryder’s voice is worried and his chest is rising and falling rapidly. He looks like he’s trying to prevent something.

I stop fighting his grip and he sighs, letting go of my hand and sliding the thing on my finger as he does, stopping the annoying noise. His eyes stay on mine the whole time, caressing the hand that he’s still holding. His free fingers run underneath my eyes wiping away the tears that I didn’t realise I had shed.

“I can’t take any of these out yet. Riley will be up soon to check on you, and then she can take them out for you.” He says massaging my arm, where all the intrusions are.

The words he says go in one ear and out the other. “You can change into a wolf.”

Ryder scoffs, shaking his head as he leans back away from me. “We’re werewolves. Half human, half wolf.”

The memory of having the black and white wolf in front of me was lost in the haze of the rushed medical assistance to my stomach. His wolf was beautiful. He’s beautiful. He doesn’t scare me like I know he should. My body’s telling me that this is right but I can’t exactly get my mind around it.

“Ho-how?” I stutter.

His tongue runs along the bottom of his teeth before he answers. “It’s genetic. I can’t really explain how it happens. We get our wolves at thirteen and it takes about a week for a normal wolf to shift for the first time and it’s painful but it kind of just happens. You asking me how, is like me asking you how you’re human. It’s just who I am. “

Shifting closer to him, I want to know more. I go to say something but he speaks instead. “You aren’t scared of me.”

His eyes search my face afterwards he seems genuinely scared of my reaction. “I trust you.”

The words that I thought would calm him now seem to set him on edge more and he opens his mouth to say something more before he shuts with a look down my body before they stop on the right side of my neck. His hand comes over to brush over the skin in the hollow of my neck where it meets my collar bone. He wets his lips as he leans in closer to me. I fight back a moan as I watch every single one of his movements.

“That’s not all.” He whispers shakily.

He never moves his eyes from my neck. “What else.”

Once again his mouth opens and closes again and he repeats it over and over again. He pulls his hand away from my neck with a final sigh running it through his hair and ruffling it up more than it already is. His other hand sliding back down my arm to lock itself back around mine like it was when I woke up.

“Are you in any pain?” he asks instead.

Taking a deep intake of breathe I try to relax over his drastic change of conversation. It hurts to do so but I’m annoyed by what he just did. Annoyed that he pulled his hand away. He seems to sense it.

“Lottie,” he stretches out trying to get me to make eye contact with him again. “Look at me.”

His hand is light on my jaw with his fingers locked into my hair but he still forces my eyes to his. “Why were you living in the street?”

“Ryder, that isn’t fair.” I cry.

For some reason I didn’t want him knowing anything about me living out there. If it told him that I would have to tell him why.

“No, it isn’t fair. It also isn’t fair that you know one of my biggest secrets now but you’re scared to tell me about yourself.” He sighs, his hand coming back up to my cheek wiping away the tears again.

“I can’t.” I whisper back to him, my breathing short.

Once again Ryder pulls his hand away from my face and I miss it from the second it disappears. It’s getting harder for me to breathe especially when Ryder pulls his other hand from mine and he starts to mess with something above my head.

Shaking takes over my body and I can’t stop it. I can’t lose him. The memory I’m trying to keep from him is one of the darkest the plagues my mind. I don’t want to see him have a bad reaction to it, just like he didn’t want to see my reaction to him being a wolf.

When his hands come back he has another tube, his fingers tickle my cheeks when he places it under my nose and hooking it behind my ears. It’s helping with my breathing now, but I can still feel it getting stuck in my throat.

There’s another tube now.

He can’t know about me.

“Better?” he asks trying to take my hand back in his.

I pull it away from him though with a small nod of my head dropping my arm over my waist. “I’m sorry Lottie. What I have to tell you is hard to explain and right now I don’t think you could handle it.”

He’s right. The hand that he was holding clenches over my hip, tense and stiff from Ryder holding it for god knows how long and that his touch is gone. Looking away from him to stare at the curtains covering the bed I hear him sink back into the chair, not leaving me.

“I was left in a stroller in Hyde park when I was a month old.” I whisper as a statement, half hoping that he didn’t hear me.

Tingles rush through my body as Ryder’s knuckles brush over the exposed skin of my hip. “Lottie, you don’t have to tell me. I want to know, just when you’re ready.”

Bitting my lip, I try to keep my arm where it is instead of going back to take his hand. Tears are still running down my cheeks and they taste salty on my lips, finally landing there because Ryder wasn’t stoping them.

Two things have been able to make me cry. My thoughts about me being homeless and what caused that to happen and anything emotional or hormonal Ryder causes me. I wish it would just stop.

Ryder’s fingers continue over the skin of my hip and up the small section of skin reviled to the bottom of the bandage. I haven’t spoken in the last twenty minutes, but the silence was comfortable and I could feel myself falling back to sleep.

The door opens but I don’t turn to look at who enters. Whoever it is doesn’t say anything but after a couple of seconds there is a growl. It’s Ryder’s growl. For some reasons I already have it embedded into my mind.

Tingles move down my arm now I Ryder gently takes it in his, waiting for me to pull it away from him again. I don’t and he just straightens it out my side and when he slips his hand back into mine and gives it a squeeze, I squeeze it back.

Cold hands come down onto my arm and I flinch slightly. Four people have touched me since I have been here. Ryder has had the most contact with me and then it was Reynolds when he checked the cut, and then guy that pulled back from the fight, all of them had warm hands. So the cold hands that are on me now must be Doctor Riley’s.

“This might hurt a little sweetheart, but I understand you want them out.” She says in a soft voice.

The pain is a pulling pain but it makes me more nauseous then it hurting. Ryder squeezes my hand again, sensing what I feel and he even palms over the space between my shorts and bandage calming the feeling I have and because if it I don’t notice when she changes the other one into a single tube. She explains that it’s just a nutrient and that it will work faster to get my weight up, considering it went down again when I started feeling the pain of the blood poisoning. Now I only have the one tube in my skin, the one in my nose following all the others away from my body.

“Lottie, while I’m here, do you need to use the bathroom?” She asks softly her hand massaging my arm.

I shake my head still not looking towards her, my eyes closed as I bathe in the relaxing feeling of Ryder’s hand on my stomach. Riley sighs and excuses herself from the room.

“It’s past midnight. You’ve been asleep for nearly eleven hours, Lottie. You should use the bathroom.” Ryder tells me.

I’m already half asleep so I don’t even bother to reply, just letting out a sigh of content. A faint smile crosses my face when I sense that Ryder is shaking his head in frustration behind me. His hand continues to rest on my stomach, as I feel the bed shift next to me.

He’s lied his head back down on the bed letting out his own sigh of content. “I can carry you to the bathroom, Lottie. You are always my number one priority.”

Turning my head I finally look at Ryder. I was right his head is resting on the bed like he was when I woke up but this time he’s facing away from me. He’s tired, yet he’s still forcing himself to stay awake for me.

Slipping my hand out of his, I drop my arm over his shoulder sliding my hand up into his hair. He turns in my hold to look back at me his hand moving over as well to lock around my hip and pull me in further to him, watching me closely as he lift his head up to rest on my opposite hip.

His dark strands aren’t as soft as the fur of his wolf but I don’t think anything could be as soft as that. His touch still frightens me, for what it could mean to him and what it means to me. I know for sure that it comforts me and now I need it.

Taking a deep a breath I begin to explain that I don’t remember much and that I do so for a reason that I’m not ready to explain one small part of my life I am not ready to admit to him yet.

“I was a month old when I was abandoned in Hyde Park.” Is the first thing that spill from my lips.

Ryder’s hand continues to swirl circles over the skin of my hip as I watch him carefully to judge what is running through his mind. His face is blank though but his eyes are full of emotion shifting to a light black before he comes back to the normal hazel colour. There’s so many feeling bottled in the small space I can’t begin to decode any meaning behind them.

“I can’t remember what happened to it but something I always felt was home for me was this white fur blanket, with ‘Charlotte’ stitched in a pink velvet material, I had it up until I was two and a half.” My free hand plays with the blanket over my legs.

The fur and velvet where real of that blanket and not cheap, neither was the stroller nor clothes that I was wearing, which is what confused all the women at Carlett. According to them a family that had that type of money to spend and to spend it on a child didn’t have a plausible reason to leave me in a park in the middle of a night.

The awkwardness of the situation is why I have no interest in finding out who my parents are. Most of the girls in Carlett were there because they were removed from their homes by the police for an arrangement of abuse inflicted on them, other than that the parents were too young or just couldn’t afford to look after them. None of those seemed to add up for me. I want to know why I ended up in the position I was in but if knowing them was the only way I could find out, I would rather not.

Ryder waits patiently as I let the thoughts maul over in my head. He seems to be much more in tune with what I feel in dissecting my feelings. He gives me a small smile and a squeeze encouraging me to continue.

“There was a couple that looked after me for that time so I’m guessing that they still have it. I don’t remember them much but the woman worked at Carlett and had just had her own child so it worked out that she could care for me that way.” Pausing I take another deep breath and Ryder squeezes again. “But then she left and I guess they were unable to take me with them and it’s then that I was going in and out of foster homes until I was fourteen and I couldn’t handle it any more so I climbed out the window in the middle of the night to get away from it.”

Something seems to click behind Ryder’s eyes. “So that’s why you were living on the streets and I’m guessing what forced you there is what you’re not ready to tell me and why you were scared of me looking at your stomach. Which by the way you seem very relaxed about now.” He smiles at me changing the subject slightly.

My free hand that was wrapped in the blanket moves to run over his arm. He shifts his eyes up to watch me and that’s when I see that he’s holding something back now.

“Why are you so warm?” I ask joining my eyes with him as I watch my hand.

Now that the questions are directed at him, I find it easier to read his expressions. His lip comes up a little at the corner before he drops his mouth open slightly and his tongue runs along the tips of the top row of his teeth. I’ve seen him does this a couple of times since we’ve been here and he only does when he’s deep in thought and he doesn’t always reply straight away.

Gladly this time he doesn’t wait and he answers right away for me. “It’s one of the pros of being a werewolf.”

It’s weird to hear him address himself like that but the knowledge is beginning to grow on me.

“So there are cons?” I continue suddenly fascinated with the subject.

He sighs and gives me a breathy laugh. “Yes there are pros and cons to everything. Gladly with this there are more pros, like the tolerance to stay awake at this time of the morning.”

“Sorry.” I whisper feeling a little uncomfortable now. He isn’t angry with me though.

He smiles shaking his head. “It’s all right. I would want to know as well.”

The look on his face tells me that he’s going to continue but he seems hesitant as if he thinks through ever word that he’s going to say to me but all I really want from him is to be one hundred percent honest with me.

“Our emotions are heightened along with everything else.” He begins as he shifts to rest his chin on my hip bone. I’m a little uncomfortable with where his head is but he seems more preoccupied on his hand still moving against my hip. “We get angry easily, we get angry enough and we shift. It’s why the other day I had to get away from you. To know that you were that scared of something pissed me off so much I was on the verge of shifting right there in front of you and possibly hurting you.”

Six words struck me in that sentence and I felt a jolt of pain in my chest. ’Had to get away from you’. It took all I had bottled up inside me to listen to the rest of the sentence without crying again. He didn’t want to hurt me though and I visibly relax.

“It’s not only our emotions that are heightened. Speed, strength, agility and all our senses are heightened as well.” He slows towards the end of his sentence and I expect him to tell me more but he just stops, his breath fanning lightly over the skin above the hem of my jeans.

“What about love?” I question lightly my hand still on his arm. “Reynolds explained to me that you only ever truly are with one person. Is that why, because you have all these heightened emotions for each other?”

Ryder meets my eyes and he freezes. His tongue comes back out over his teeth and I can hear his heartbeat pick up lightly. I realise how weak my ears may actually be to his and think that his heartbeat has picked up rather rapidly.

“I know what Reynolds told you. He never told you the technical term but we have mates.” Mates, I’m confused but I let him continue. “It’s two halves of a whole meeting as one, soul mates. It’s our wolves that recognize each other, it’s an instant connection, and a mate bond is formed. Our wolves are part of us and without them or our mate we don’t have a will to live.”

There’s tightness in my throat that I gulp down. “You haven’t found your mate have you?”

There’s something weird about how he describes this relationship. It doesn’t sound as if they feel something other than the bond he describes, a connection between the two people. Even with the impression that they are emotionally dethatched form one another I still want him to say that I’m his mate, ending the confusion I feel.

He hasn’t answered yet. His hand is even making questioning movements against my hip. “No.” he whispers.

Once again I feel a jolt in my chest and it’s like my heart stopped. Ryder’s hand tightens around my hip and I try to ignore the warm feeling and the intensified shocks of is touch because they mean nothing to him.

Ryder swallows something down, his Adam’s apple moving prominently as he does. “I also know that you asked Reynolds if I had been with someone before.”

Bricks, there’s a ton of them sitting heavily on my chest preventing me from breathing. His hands retreat from my body and he sits up abruptly. I notice that he’s going for the oxygen again and I pull at both of his hands to stop him. It hurts but I want to know the truth.

“Lottie, you’re not breathing properly. There’s a pressure against your lungs and we have to watch it.” His voice is nervous and his eyes look between me and the oxygen cannula on one of the posters of the bed.

Shaking my head I pull him back down close to me and he allows me too. “Tell me.”

His hands are locked in mine as he sits back down in the chair. His fingers twitch before they wrap back around mine. “Please.” he begs. “Put the oxygen back on and I’ll tell you.”

“I’m fine.” He shakes his head but he doesn’t fight me.

My body’s tense much like his as I wait for his answer. “Three.”

The weight from my chest moves up my throat and I think I’m going to vomit. “Let me explain.” He rushes. “Women have been chasing me my entire life, hoping that they were mine. On my 18th birthday I felt my wolf clawing at my insides and all he wanted was to find yo-her.”

His jaw tightens and he closes his eyes. Something sharp presses against the edge of my hands. When I look down I see that there are claws where his fingernails should be. I gasp at the sudden shock and he quickly flattens his hand out to stop them from puncturing my skin but he doesn’t pull them from my grip.

“Sorry.” He starts again. “I couldn’t handle the feeling anymore. On every heir to the throne’s 18th birthday if they haven’t found their mate, there’s a mating ball. All unmated shewolves for my case from across the world were invited. When I realised that she wasn’t there I snapped. My wolf wanted release and I just took a girl that was draping herself all over me that night to prevent me from going on a slaughtering spree. It was weird. I knew she wasn’t my mate and the entire time I was disgusted with what I was doing. She was faceless the whole time. All I carried about was having her beneath me and that’s what I was seeing, but I had no idea what she looked like.”

“It only happened once with her. The two other girls were not only faceless but nameless and the idea that all that I did with them repulses me. But they were more consistent, the desire my wolf felt to find our mate growing the longer we couldn’t find her. He hated me for putting her in such future heartbreak.” His voice is soft and hurt as he flicks his eyes up to meet mine.

“On my 21st birthday was when I stopped, my wolf finally realising that only she could satisfy our need. I was coroneted as King early, I was little older than 19 at the time and as much as my dad didn’t want to pass me the throne I was stronger than him, he lost my challenge. I could have realised then and I wouldn’t have drawn those girls along thinking that they were going to be my queen.”

His eyes glass over as he finishes. “If it hadn’t all gone to their head and committed treason because of it, they would still be alive.”

“Treason?” I question with a tremor to my lip.

He tightens his hold around my hands, holding them into him so I don’t pull away. I couldn’t do that even I wanted to. His touch is keeping down the little contents of my stomach that I have.

“Something you should never do is question the authority or power of someone high ranked but something you really should never do is the same thing about someone’s mate.” He begins calmly but as he continues I can hear the anger rising in his voice.

When I notice it I doubt that it’s only there wolves that feel the mate bond. He already cares deeply for this girl and he hasn’t even met her. It hurts even more to know he doesn’t feel it for me. “The both of them thought that she didn’t deserve to be where they were. They threatened my men to kill my mate the second I took my eyes off her once that I had found her.”

His eyes are brimming with tears. “We’re a very animalistic breed.” He scowls.

Ryder allows me to pull my hands back out of his. He drops it more than he allows me to release it, as he slouches back into his chair. I shift my hands back to push myself up into a sitting position. Judging from the pain that shots my ribcage I know I shouldn’t be moving. A cry of pain leaves my mouth and Ryder moves again to push me back down lightly but I slap his hands away.

He’s been getting in and out that chair ever since I woke up. When I hit at his hands he just smiles a little as he takes my hands pulling them out from beneath me to pull me up instead and the way he does makes me bend through my hips instead of my waist.

Ryder tries to pull away from me again but I grab his shirt to stop him. He thinks that he’s finally scared me off. He’s waiting for it but he isn’t there yet. He’s nowhere near it and he never will be. He seems shocked that I’ve grabbed him.

I try to force my mouth open to speak but it’s stuck. Ryder’s eyes locking on me forces it out. “You love her already. You’re protecting her.”

Ryder raises his hands up to wrap around mine. His touch is warm. Pleasure shoots through my spine when he drops his head down to kiss my knuckles.

He laughs when I speak next. “I have to pee.”

When I wake up in the morning Ryder’s gone and the rooms been rearranged back to normal. The suns streaming into the room and all the curtains around the bed have been pushed back to allow it. The top sheet has been pulled up over me but all the others are still folded over my waist.

The single tube is still in my arm but all the other pieces of medical equipment are removed from the room. Ellie walks into the room off the balcony and she helps me to sit up when she’s close enough. She’s simply dressed in a pair of ripped white wash jeans and a loose white shirt. Her black hair braided down the left side of her neck.

Ryder further explained that a male wolf marks there mate with a bite to their neck, just above there collarbone. He also told me that those with a high rank like him, Maxon and all the guards that are on the both of us plus the alpha, beta and third in commands of all packs all mark on the left side of the neck. All other wolves mark on the right, to show rank and power.

When I lift my hand to push her plait out of the way, she watches me carefully with a knowing smile on her face. There sitting on her neck right where I expected it to be is a clear bite mark, four teeth looking slightly larger than the others. It’s somewhat lighter than her natural skin colour, enough to be visible to all those who look for it but still dark enough for those he don’t know what it is to pass it off as a birthmark or scar.

My fingers reach out to touch it she pulls away shaking her head. “It’s sensitive.” Is all she says as she smiles at me.

Thousands of questions flutter through my mind. Who? Did it hurt? The two questions that overlap all the others, instead I go for something different.

“Why is it sensitive?” Once the words are out I bite my lip. I blurted it out.

Ellie just smiles at me. She’s grown close and comfortable around me over the past week and I’m happy to have a new relationship here. The more I have the better. I feel safe here and I don’t want to leave the serenity. I don’t want to leave Ryder.

“It’s how the claim works. When any female touches it I feel uncomfortable and when any male touches it I feel like I’m going to vomit.” Her face portrays the emotions of the words she says.

“Did it hurt?” I continue.

She nods. “Yes. It doesn’t last for long but once the pain goes away, whenever Maxon touches it the feelings that over take you are very strong.”

Maxon is her mate?

Ellie laughs. “Yes he is.” I didn’t realise I had asked the question out loud. “He’s very tense especially since you came. Ryder disappears to see you and when he does Maxon has to deal with all Ryder’s duties and he stresses out about it. But other than that he’s very comfortable and relaxed especially when I’m with him to do so.” She sighs.

Despite that first day I could see what she meant about Maxon being tense. Yet the only thing that catches me from the sentence that Ryder disappears from what he’s supposed to be doing to be with me.

Ellie leaves me to think about Ryder as she takes the bandage around my waist off. I flinch as she pulls a gauze pad off that is now soaked in blood. Looking down at the cut I see that I have more stiches in and the colouring has died down but it’s still there along with a large amount of blood. She rubs something cold over it before she replaces it all back and slips a lose shirt over my head.

“Come on there’s breakfast outside.” She says her hands moving to my arm. “I’ll take the tube out but Riley’s asked to keep the needle in.”

As she helps me up from the bed I notice the strength she has in such a small body. She pulls me up straight with an arm locked around my waist as she leads me outside to a small table where there is an abundance of fruits spread in plates across the small area.

“How are you feeling anyway? That drip was giving you nutrients and healing the cut faster.” She sounds curious.

My fingers come up over where the needle is still in my skin. It stings a little when I touch it. It stung when Ellie touched it. Not when Ryder touched it though.

“Where’s Ryder?” I ask instead of answering the question.

Ellie tenses and looks to the door. She’s sat across from me at the table but the suite is open and I can hear Reynolds and Charlie playing some game on the television in the other room. I remember when I told them that I was bored they offered to keep my company. Ryder wasn’t happy about it but the both of them where bold when they said they could watch me easier if they were inside the suite instead of standing outside the door. He relaxed when I said it was fine and that I was more comfortable to have them closer.

“He had to leave.” She says placing a lot of the fruit on the plate in front of her. “He said he would be back as soon as he could but Maxon looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. I’m surprised you didn’t hear the argument that they had when he came up here.”

She’s still piling food on to her plate. She just shrugs at me with a smile when she realises that I’m watching, trying to get my mind off Ryder. “Shewolves eat a lot, which you should be doing to.”

My eyebrows cock and she just shrugs again and starts to place food on my plate nudging it in closer to me. Sighing I pick up the fork and drop a strawberry into my mouth. She lets out a small chuckle of content and starts to eat herself.

“Who else is mated?” I ask her.

Ryder told me little details about mates before he froze up and just stopped talking after that I just fell asleep.

“Out of whom you’ve meet, Theo, Charlie and Riley. Theo’s mate is Lena she works in the kitchen absolutely loves it down there. And then you have Haley, Charlie’s mate she mostly just hangs around outside, Charlie hates it but he wants her to be happy. Lastly you have Jake, Riley’s mate. He works down in the hospital with Riley but he’s helps the rest of the pack instead of the people in the castle, that’s Riley’s job.” She explains.

“Pack?”

Ryder mentioned it briefly but I didn’t take much notice of it. I was too consumed in the feeling of his touch.

She looks as if she’s just choked on her food. “Ahh, yes, I wasn’t supposed to mention that to you yet.” She bits her lip but still continues. “Ryder is not only the King of Jordena itself and all werewolves but he is the alpha of a pack, a community you could say that live under an Alpha.”

“There are two thousand packs spread across the world, consisting from 500 to over a 1000 in them. Ryder’s pack, the royal pack, is more of an army made up of the strongest and longest lines of wolves and alpha’s and beta’s that want to do something more with our race. We protect the royals and we prevent wars from breaking out when we can. It’s also only us that reside down in Cardel the royal town. It’s a tourist destination for those who want to see where the most handsome prince lives, not a real estate hot spot, but it’s a town that’s made up full with wolves that are living there dreams in the spare time that they aren’t fighting to protect our species.”

That’s a lot of words and a lot to take in in general. She apologises for unloading all the information on me and begs me to eat now and that I’m beginning to look a little pale.

Slipping another cube of strawberry in to my mouth I think about what she said. Her telling me all this is not the same as Ryder telling me all this. With Ryder telling me I felt relaxed but with her I feel overwhelmed.

What gets me that most is how many wolves there are supposedly spread across the world. It’s enough to freak me out on how close I could have been to one before. It scares me actually. I am not scared of Ryder or anyone else though.

Growls erupt down below us seconds later and it’s accompanied by the broken piercing alarm that alerts the castle to an attack. Arms wrap around my shoulders and legs in the same second and in the next I’m being placed on my feet near the lounge. Ellie’s back next to me as well helping to support me as the metal barriers come down over the doors and windows, locking us in and everyone else out.

“The attackers are wolves?” I ask breathless as I’m lowered down on to the lounge.

“The rebels have broken the sire bond to Ryder. Even the rouges can’t do that.” She whispers. “They want to kill Ryder so they can take reign, to stop him from producing an heir and continuing his line.”

Ellie lowers me down onto the lounge. “They can’t hurt Ryder.”

All three of them stare at me questionably but only Charlie answers me. “Hurt Ryder?” he scoffs. “Ryder’s one of the strongest wolves to ever lived and if anybody tries to threaten his mate, his heir is really going to piss him off.”

Ellie gasps in shock before she’s standing over the top of me and holding my hair back out of the way as the tightness I’ve had in my throat since I found out that I wasn’t Ryder’s mate ends up on the timber floor consisting of the little breakfast I had in my stomach.