Her Royal Wolf: A Rejected Mates Romance (Fall Mountain Shifters Book 3) Page 3

  “Let me guess, this is Peitho?” I question.

  Adira turns to me and smiles. “Peitho was the only other female in the worlds Hades loved. They were lovers, did you know that?”

  My stomach drops like a stone, a sickness rising in my throat as a growl snaps out of me. I feel my wolf pushing me to shift, and it takes every bit of strength I have to not let her.

  “And then Persephone, the love of his life, came along,” Phim adds in, making me feel a little better.

  Adira smiles, a seductive smile. “The rite will decide who is their true love.”

  “Do you really think winning the rite will ever make them love you?”

  She tilts her head to the side, her eyes flashing with blue power for just a second. “I can be...persuasive.”

  “Is everything okay?” one of our tour guides questions from the bottom step.

  “Yes,” Adira answers and walks away as my hand shakes, my body itching to punch her.

  “She isn’t worth it, and she is not their lover,” Phim reminds me. “Rise above it.”

  “I intend to try,” I bite out. “But she really pisses me off.”

  We carry on after them, down another forty steps until we come to a corridor that is filled with books, rows and rows of bookshelves towering up to high ceilings that are at least twenty feet tall. There are books of all shapes and sizes in every nook and cranny, the old book smell filling the space and making me feel at home already. Hanging chandeliers float down from the ceiling, tops of them unseen in the cosy darkness.

  “Wow, it’s dusty in here,” Adira says, sniffing. “Books should be burnt outside to make space in here.”

  I ignore her ranting, disgusted by it, and I’m quickly fascinated by all the books, the amount of knowledge that must be held in these corridors.

  “Excuse me,” I say to our guides. “I never caught your names.”

  “My name is Erin,” the taller one says. “And this is Helle.”

  “Nice to meet you, I’m Mai,” I tell her. “How many corridors of bookcases are there?”

  Her eyes widen in excitement. “We had them recently counted, well, the ones we can find. The rooms in this place tend to disappear now and then,” she explains.

  “The rooms disappear?” Phim seriously questions. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Oh, no one has ever gone missing. The house has its own magic and protects itself. The rooms usually clean themselves as well,” she explains.

  “I’d really like to stay somewhere else,” Adira pipes in, and everyone ignores her.

  “Anyway, it has four thousand bookshelves—that we counted—and it doesn’t include what is in the five libraries,” Erin explains.

  “I think I’m in love with this house,” I sigh.

  “Do they have any books on sparring?” Phim questions. “Perhaps some new techniques.”

  “I’m sure there is a section!” Erin says with a grin. “The library keeper will help you. I can show you the way whenever you like, but perhaps we should get to your rooms first.”

  We carry on down the book-shelved corridors for a long while, passing a few windows that overlook the waterfall.

  “Do you think they have books on riddles?” I ponder out loud.

  “We can ask together,” Phim suggests, and I nod with a smile. “For Valentine, I’m guessing?”

  “Yes! I want to find a riddle or make up one with ideas,” I say. “Something that will make him pause and struggle to get the answer. The riddles he gives me get harder each time.”

  “He has an old riddle book under his bed,” Phim tells me. “I asked him about it once, and he told me to piss off before getting drunk. Maybe you’d have more luck now.”

  We go down two more staircases before coming to a corridor that is painted white, with beautiful alcove ceilings and paintings of dragons all the way across the middle of the ceiling. The dragons are water dragons, dancing between symbols and flowers. It really is beautiful.

  Erin answers my question before I’ve even asked. Even Adira is staring upward, not a bad word from her mouth. “Who painted these, we are unsure. These are original paintings, like many of the paintings throughout the castle. Aren’t they something else?”

  “Are there other painted ceilings around the castle?” Adira asks.

  “Yes. The throne room is personally my favourite,” she replies.

  “I can’t wait to see that,” I answer as we come to a row of doors at the end of a corridor. Erin goes to say something when a black wolf runs down the corridor and walks up to her, dropping a letter from its mouth into Erin’s hands.

  “It’s for you,” Erin says, handing me the slightly wet note. The wolf runs off, and I place the letter at my side, knowing I’m not opening it in front of Adira.

  “This is your room, Adira,” Erin says, her companion silent still. I hardly even remember her name. “If you need anything at all, there’s a phone in your room, simply just pick it up to speak to us.”

  “Brilliant. I want food, clothing and a warm bath,” she demands, opening the door. “Immediately.”

  She slams the door before Erin can reply, and I sigh.

  “I’m sorry about her,” Phim tells Erin. “She is a bitch.”

  Erin chuckles before covering her mouth, her cheeks burning red. She heads slightly down the corridor, past one door. “Your two rooms are next to each other. I thought you might like that.”

  “Thank you, Erin,” I say, opening the dark oak door. She bows her head and walks away, leaving Phim to follow me into the room.

  The room is impressive and huge in comparison to the train bed I’ve slept on for weeks. A large king-sized bed takes up most of the room, and three windows look over the waterfall in the pit, letting light into the dim and cosy bedroom. There is a wardrobe in a similar sleigh shape as the bed, and an open door to a small shower room.

  “I hope my bedroom is this nice, or I’m swapping,” Phim comments, sitting on the bed. I sit next to her and open the letter.

  Come alone to my private rooms before the celebration meal this evening.

  We must talk,

  Alpha Reine.

  Phim reads the letter over my shoulder, and we look at each other. “Be careful.”

  “I will,” I answer. “How do you feel being here?”

  “Like something is wrong. Really wrong,” Phim tells me, standing up. “The alphas won’t let anything bad happen to us, and they think this is their home. I just can’t shake the feeling...like...”

  “Like something bad is going to happen?” I ask. “I mean, I did just enter The Rite of Wolves to fight for them and to be alpha female.”

  “The alphas won’t—”

  I stand up. “They gave up this city, left it, to find me. I will fight for them and prove my worth. Not only to them, but to the city and, most importantly, to myself. Respected leaders aren’t given everything and hidden from the world. They are the ones who stand up for what they love and protect everything good. I think this pack, Fall Mountain Pack, is good. The people are.”

  “I hope so,” she replies. “And watch your back in there. I can’t watch it for you without entering myself, and obviously I won’t do that.”

  “I know,” I softly tell her.

  She sighs and steps back. “Get some rest. You look tired and stressed. I’m napping for five thousand years, if you need me.”

  “Bye, sister,” I say, the word foreign on my lips even now. She looks back at me as she walks away, a small smile on her face before she leaves me alone. I sit down on the bed and lie back, looking up at the red bird painted across the ceiling.

  I’m still a bird in a cage. This time, I’m fighting my way to the top and the freedom it promises.

  I won’t be controlled and used by anyone ever again.

  Unknown

  In the deep darkness of the room, I hear a voice, something like an echo, that snakes into my chest and cuts me deep inside. The first of many cuts, the voice seems to promi
se and vow. I can’t remember much anymore, but one image of a woman is unforgettable. She is beauty, and light, and I love her. I can picture her now, even as the creature nearby tries to erase her from me. Her blonde hair like silk, her bow lips, and bright green eyes like the vibrant forests of my home.

  Mairin. My Mai.

  For her, I will keep on fighting until the very end, because she will come for me. She will know that king isn’t me. That I’m here, stuck here, and she will see.

  I won’t be left here for long…

  “Give her back to me,” a woman screams, once, twice and one more time, but the final plea is nothing short of a cry. “My daughter does not belong in hell. She is not yours!”

  I open my eyes and gasp in shock at the sight below me. I’m floating above a burning hollow in the ground, a hollow filled with red and black darkness shifter energy. Dark magic. It curls around the feet of a tall man in a cloak, his face hidden from sight, as though the shadows and darkness are his friends.

  The woman stands right outside the gap, a yellow light shining all over her body. I have no idea who the silver-haired woman is, but there is a pull towards her.

  “Persephone is my wife, my mate, and my lover. Her place is at my side, as it has always been and as it shall always be. In this life and the next,” the man smoothly replies, his voice like sugar and seduction. Luring you to him.

  Hades.

  “She is my daughter!” the woman screams.

  “Demeter, all birds leave the nest. You, the goddess of nature, should know this lesson better than most,” Hades responds.

  “And I am home, mother,” a soft-spoken female voice echoes from the darkness right before a figure walks up and out of the hollow, lowering her cloak hood. Persephone, the goddess my soul is connected to, stands at Hades’s side. Beautiful. That is the only way to describe her. Persephone softly glows green with blackness at the edges. Her silver hair falls low, braided at the sides with three red roses.

  “You are lost,” Demeter whispers in horror. “He has turned your mind with his darkness and—”

  “I love him,” Persephone interrupts. “He is mine, and I am his. I chose to stay. I chose to eat the food of the underworld and live here. I won’t leave, and I want you to accept what is.”

  Demeter’s eyes are full of unshed tears as she looks to Hades, her body shaking with fury. “Watch as your precious souls weep at the destruction I am going to cause until you let my daughter go. I will destroy the earth.”

  “Do what you must, mother,” Persephone replies, turning to Hades.

  “The humans,” Hades whispers to her.

  “Are not our problem. We will guide their souls, and the blood will be on her head, not ours,” Persephone responds. Demeter screams and yellow energy blasts out of the earth, crumbling the ground around them, and the last thing I see is green light as it burns through me.

  I open my eyes, sucking in a deep breath to calm myself down, feeling light flickering into my eyes. It was just a dream.

  Ouch.

  I lift my hands above my face, frowning at the burns marking my palms.

  “By the wolf, what have you done to your hands?” An unfamiliar voice makes me jolt, and I look up to see Erin standing by the bathroom door and hear the sound of the shower running, steam pouring out behind her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “Or sneak into my room?” I question, sitting up as she hurriedly walks over.

  I did knock, but you never answered, and I left you an extra ten minutes, but if we don’t start getting you ready now, you’ll be late,” she explains to me, frowning at my hands. “How did you hurt yourself is the more important question.”

  “Do you think dreams can be real? Dreams of goddesses and gods?” I ask her.

  She lifts my hand in hers before looking up at me with her ebony eyes. I believe she is in her twenties, but her hand feels rough under mine, telling me she has worked hard for a good amount of her life.

  She shrugs. “My father works in the Pack Prisons, with the worst of our kind, and he is a wise wolf. When I was ten, I had terrible dreams, and he often told me dreams are rarely just dreams. They are our mind’s way of escaping reality.”

  “What are the Pack Prisons?” I question.

  She steps back from me. “A place where wolves who have committed crimes, unspeakable crimes, are kept. There are other things in there, old and powerful beings and creatures who feed off the energy of wolves in the night.”

  “In the pack I was brought up in, they would just have a trial and kill any wolf who committed a crime,” I say.

  She smiles, straightening up. “Death is a blessing. A life in the prisons...it’s being drained, slowly, of everything that makes you. They take the memories first, then the voice, then every bit of the soul, until they are in a state of constant pain. They only leave fear, and that is the punishment every man or woman in that prison deserves.”

  “Sounds like a place I never want to go or see,” I reply. I definitely think of a person who should be thrown in there for everything he did to me.

  “Right, your hands,” she mutters. “You can’t go to the celebrational ceremony meal with burnt hands, and your wolf healing won’t fix it in time. I will have to get a dress with hand coverings or long gloves, and of course, ointment to take the pain away and help with healing. Get in the shower, and I will be back.”

  “Thank you,” I tell her as she walks away. I head into the shower room, shutting the door behind me, and I strip off my dirty clothes before climbing into the shower, enjoying the hot water falling down my body. I rest back, trying to push the dream of Hades, Demeter and Persephone to the back of my mind until after the meal when I can get my alphas alone to speak to them about it. My hands sting as the water runs down my palm, the burn covering everything but the upside-down mountain mark. I carefully and painfully wash my hair with my hands, enjoying the watermelon scent and the silky feeling of my hair before finishing up and climbing out. Wrapping a towel around myself and leaving the shower room, I go to continue getting ready in the bathroom.

  The bedroom has completely changed in colour, thanks to the setting sun, and I pause. As the sun sets over the waterfall, it casts beautiful shades of poppy reds, burnt oranges and vibrant yellows through the windows of the castle into my room. The sunlight reflects off my body, highlighting my skin and hair, and for a second, I see myself lightly glowing.

  The door is knocked once before it opens, and I turn back to see Erin come in. For the next half an hour, she plasters my hands with a green ointment that turns clear, leaving a protective seal over my palms, before drying and curling all of my hair. She applies makeup, drawing delicate bat wings and swirls coming out from the corner of my eyes, and I barely look like myself when she is done. I slide into the dress before standing in front of the mirror as Erin ties up the lace on my back. The dress has loops for my middle finger, covering the top and bottom of my hand in midnight blue lace which runs up my arms to the main part of the dress, which flows down to my feet in folds of star-littered-night-sky blue silk. After putting soft dark blue slippers on my feet, Erin places her hands on her hips and grins.

  “You look perfect,” she compliments me. “The city is buzzing to see the alphas and...honestly, you. Everyone knows the reason they put off the rite and left was to find you. And now you’ve come back and entered the rite. It’s all very exciting.”

  “Thank you for all your help,” I tenderly say, blowing out a breath. “The Rite of Wolves,” I whisper. “I wasn’t expecting to come here to fight.”

  She gently places her hand on my shoulder. “I think you will win. You have my support, whatever you need.”

  “Thank you, that means a lot,” I admit. “I’m a little overwhelmed by this place and all the people. I’m glad to know one of you is on my side.”

  “More than one, Mai,” she replies as I walk to the bed and pick up the thigh strap and my two daggers. She comes over and shakes her head.
“Weapons are banned in the throne room. They won’t let you take them in.”

  “Damn,” I mutter. “Alright. I can shift if I’m in danger, anyway.”

  “Don’t you dare shift and ruin that dress! It took me days to make it.”

  “You stitched this yourself?” I question in awe, and she nods. “It’s really amazing.”

  The door is knocked twice, and Erin opens the door where two guards are waiting outside. They speak quietly with her, and she leaves the door open as she comes over to me. “The alpha female has called for you. I will clean your room for when you return.”

  “Thank you, Erin,” I say and walk to the door. The guards bow and turn at the same time, holding their back straight, and walk fast down the corridor to the staircase. We go up four staircases, and I’m completely losing track of where we are before we come to a large pair of stained glass double doors. The stained glass is made of panels of every colour in shard shapes, making no particular shape, but as the dimming sunsetting light shines through, it casts the multicolours onto the wooden floor so it looks like a rainbow as we walk across it. The guards open the door for me, but they don’t follow as I go in, and they close the doors behind me.

  I turn back to take in the large bedroom, but my eyes flicker upwards first, past the four massive chandeliers to the painted ceiling, which is a forest of dark green trees, a shadow between them all. Two black metal staircases wind up the sides of the room to a veranda that hangs over half of the room. Green vines of dozens of different plants climb up the veranda, curling around the metal bannisters and walls. Several rows of large oak wardrobes hide under the veranda, and a large, impressive four-poster bed is in the middle, and sitting on the edge is the alpha female herself, clipping a crystal earring into her ear. She rises off the bed, her moonlight silver dress trailing after her as she walks to me.