“We need to understand how I was able to form a pack with Emrys. We need to understand how the blood-bond is affecting us and our powers. I need to figure out what else my father has been hiding from me,” Aerin explains. A short and totally achievable list. She almost snorts to herself at the thought.
“And how do you propose we achieve those lofty goals?” Malice asks, sarcasm in his tone.
Aerin casts him a glare through the mirror.
“Vyx, Quinn, and Khortland are working on some aspects, but as for us, we need to find another Alpha. There are more Alphas in the North. Ones that don’t hate us,” Aerin clarifies, “And ones that aren’t nearly as hostile towards Fae.”
“That’s a bad idea,” Emrys says immediately.
“I concur,” Malice adds.
Aerin slaps the curling iron down on the counter a bit too hard.
“I don’t really care,” she snaps. Then she takes a trembling breath, and both males lean towards her, each a moment away from rushing her. “Ineedto understand what all this means. I need to understandwhy.” Aerin’s voice wavers, much to her chagrin.
She turns to face them. “In all our research, everything says onlyWolvescan form a pack. Only someone with Wolf magic in their blood. I know neither of you is too dense to understand the implications of that.”
“You think you aren’t full-blooded Fae?” Malice asks, incredulous.
“I don’t know!” Aerin snaps at him. “It doesn’t make sense that my Fae magic challenged Elara’s Pack magic. But if I’m not my father’s daughter… if my mother somehow stepped out on him with a Wolf and passed me off as full-blooded Tolvare, do you know what that means?” Hope crests through her chest.
“It means you wouldn’t have to fight for your freedom,” Emrys says softly.
“Exactly.”
Aerin imagines a world where she isn’t a Tolvare, was never really a Tolvare to begin with. It makes her chest ache. And it would explain her father’s obsession with her. Maybe he knows she isn’t his daughter, or maybe he suspects something. Something that makes her different from her siblings.
“I hate to burst your bubble, Princess,” Malice says, “But you look just like him. You are a Tolvare; it’s written in your every feature.”
“Maybe he changed me somehow, to look like them, or my mother did. I don’t know.” Aerin grasps at straws as Malice pokes holes in her theory.
“Don’t you think your father would have revoked your claim to the throne as an infant, rather than find some magical way to change your appearanceforever,” Malice counters.
“I don’t know, Malice!” Aerin snaps for a second time. She pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath.
When Emrys lays a hand on her arm, Aerin flinches and realizes she’s trembling.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t put anything past my father. But I do know that confirming things with another Alpha will get us closer to the truth. Preferably an older Alpha. Any ideas?” She looks back and forth between the two of them.
Emrys shakes his head. “The Alpha of my first pack wouldn’t know anything, and even if he did, he wouldn’t help us.”
Malice sighs, tightening the fold of his arms, his muscles bulging.
“I may know someone. Let me put some feelers out, see if he is in the area.”
“Thank you,” Aerin says softly.
“Don’t thank me yet, Princess,” Malice says, before turning on his heel and leaving the room. The click of the door shutting behind him echoes.
Aerin starts shoving things down inside of her. Malice’s meltdown this morning. The hurt in Emrys’s eyes during the press conference. The way he has been in Fae form since she ordered him around like a show pony. Her father, the dissolved contract, the way Bruin’s betrayal still feels like a knife in her back despite missing him desperately. How some sick part of her misses her life before, when she was bound to a contract she hated but there was nothing todo.
Now it feels like she has a million things she needs to achieve, no clear way to achieve them, and too many creatures relying on her to do so.
Aerin shoves that down too.
As Aerin followsthe extensive group from the Royal Village later that night, she isn’t feeling much better. Malice still isn’tback from ‘putting out his feelers,’ and Emrys has barely spoken two words to her since this afternoon.
“You’re looking especially grumpy,” Vyx comments, coming up on one side of Aerin as they make their way towards whichever club Quinn decided on. Up ahead, Emrys walks with her, commenting occasionally as Quinn babbles. Farther ahead, Khortland, his older brother Yarrow who is third in line for the throne, and some of the other Zeneith noble children lead the way. Hale Royal Guards follow at their back.
