Royal Rebel

C H A P T E R 3 - Marcel.

My eyes landed on the docks, and I found myself in a slight state of disbelief when I realised that it was only a matter of time before we ended up docking by the Kingdom, only a matter of time when we would all have to face the consequences of our actions, the consequences of what had happened on the Continent. And I had to admit that I wasn’t as worried about the matter as I had been when we had initially left, when we had all been in a state of panic, when we all knew that everything had gone so terribly wrong and there was no way for us to fix it.

But now that I had had another night to sleep on the matter, another night to think about everything, I realised that this was a matter that Aurora was more than capable of dealing with. I didn’t know how I was going to explain everything to her, but I knew that she would make waves in terms of settling the dispute that we had created. Aurora would do what was best for the Kingdom, and I was sure that the two of us would be able to agree that what was best for the Kingdom, was for it to not break into a state of warfare.

It would be complete and utter chaos, and the casualties simply wouldn’t be worth it. The humans would suffer an even greater loss than we would, which would automatically result in their hatred towards us increasing even more. I believed that the hatred would never truly disappear, no matter how much we worked towards it, no matter how much we tried to better their circumstances, where we could.

But even as I was thinking about the good of the Kingdom, I found that I didn’t really care much for it at the moment. It was just another place, a place where we would be able to find refuge from the place that we had just run away from, but that was that. I was more concerned about Hera than anything else, more concerned with the fact that she still hadn’t shown her face, that she still hadn’t made the effort to come out here and face all of us. I was willing to understand that she had some internal struggles to deal with, but this was getting a bit much.

We were all dealing with some internal struggles, but we all continued to remain civil with one another. I frequently wondered whether or not everyone else was as affected by her lack of appearance as I was, or whether it simply wasn’t that bad to them, because after all, I was the one who was mated to her, I was the one who was supposed to spend the rest of my life with her. They had all managed to separate from her when she had come to the Kingdom without much argument, which made me realise that this wasn’t so bad for them.

I chose to believe that they were more affected by the fact that they were on their way to a place that they didn’t know at all, to a place that they had never been before—except for Anna, of course, but that was a different story. Hades and Karen were literal foreigners, had never set their feet on the soil of the Kingdom, had never been able to breathe in clean and unpolluted air. I couldn’t even picture Hades going for a run, knowing that it would never have been possible in a place that was as crowded as the Continent.

I had even started to wonder whether or not I was supposed to go and look for her, whether I was supposed to go and make sure that she was alright. Perhaps she had crawled into some small dark hole where no one would be able to find her, and now, she couldn’t get out. But that would be ridiculous. If it was the case, then I was sure that someone would have been bound to hear her whimpering, because after all, you would be bound to make a noise if you found yourself trapped somewhere where you didn’t want to be trapped.

But just as that was a possibility, the possibility that she was actually staying in her hiding place for a reason was just as big. And if I went ahead and invaded that space, who knew what she would do? Newly-shifted wolves were often labelled as out of control, and although I had every reason to believe that Hera possessed a sense of control like no other, it was still too big of a risk for me to take, to big of a risk for me to invade that space. Before I know what was happening, my eyes could get clawed out, or maybe even something worse at this point.

I had no idea what I was supposed to be expecting, and therefore, I had no idea what it was that I was supposed to be preparing for. The situation was only seeming to get more difficult with every second that passed, with every meter that we got closer to the shore. I would almost go ahead and say that my heart even started to beat faster, something that hadn’t happened since the other night when I had been under the impression that I had just sealed my death certificate by shifting on the Continent.

I knew that it was apprehension, knew that it was because as much as I was telling myself that everything was going to be alright, there was still a part of me that had doubts, still a part of me that believed that there was more than enough possibility for something to go even further wrong. Perhaps the boat would sink before we reached the shore, and then we would never have to explain a single thing to Aurora.

It meant that I would still be able to keep my dignity, that I wouldn’t have to look her in the face and admit that she had been right and admit that I had been wrong when I had told her that there had been nothing that could possibly go wrong. If it hadn’t been for her decision to send the boat back despite our lack of reservations, the chance that we would have been dead by now, was more than just a chance. It was almost a guarantee. And although someone else might have felt like they owed her their life if they had been in my shoes, if our roles had somehow been reversed, but I didn’t feel that way at all.

I had never enjoyed being indebted to anyone for anything, and in all honesty, I would never allow myself to feel that way towards Aurora. She struck me as the kind of person who would always keep record of it, who would always remember. And those were the type of people who I didn’t get along with, who I would ever be able to get along with. But whether or not I ever got along with Aurora, or not, it wouldn’t make any difference at all. It didn’t even matter.

What mattered, was whether or not she would be able to dig us out of the mess that we had created, and if she couldn’t, then I needed her to give me her written consent to do whatever I deemed necessary to put an end to it—because one thing that I did know for certain, was that the humans wouldn’t be happy about what had happened. They would make a big deal out of all of this, and I said that out of the depths of my heart. They wouldn’t forget about this, wouldn’t let it go as if it was nothing.

The only thing that counted in our favour, was the fact that we hadn’t injured anyone, that despite it being her first shift, Hera had somehow managed to cling to her humanity and keep herself from doing something that she would have been bound to regret—because she wasn’t a killer. She wasn’t even supposed to be a werewolf. She fit in perfectly with the classic human, the ordinary person who was able to fit in anywhere. And now, she was something that she feared more than anything.

It seemed like the distance between us and the shore had halved, and I couldn’t help but ask myself whether it would have been better if I went and looked for Hera. She hadn’t been up here once, which meant that there was no way that she could possibly know how close we were to the shore, how little time she still had left to remain hiding in her safe space. And if anyone was going to go and look for her, then it might as well be me.

I knew that my mother would be bound to be upset if she found out that I had been killed by Hera, and the chances of her trying to wage a war against her, would be quite big, but I was doing my best to be optimistic. Even though there wasn’t much for me to go on, other than my instinct, I guessed that I was a better bet than everyone else. Admittedly, my relationship with her wasn’t as strong as her relationship with her brother, but one thing that we had that the two of them did not, was the fact that we shared the mate bond.

And I had marked her.

Which hadn’t been much of a big deal previously, other than to show the world that she was mine, despite the fact that she was a human, but now, now that she was shifted, it meant a lot more than that. It meant that within the next month, she would be bound to go into heat, and I would have the time of my life trying not to complete the mating bond. It would be an insanely difficult task, and if she wasn’t thinking straight, the chances that I failed was more than great. It was a likely possibility.

It also meant that we would be able to mind link, that we would be able to communicate in the way that other mates do, but the reason why I wasn’t doing it at the moment, was because I didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want to surprise her and have her freak out even more. I needed to show her everything that she could do once she had come to accept who she was and what she was capable of. But until then, I would have to accept the fact that she would rather remain in her hidey-holes, instead of facing the world around her.

But that needed to come to an end—at least just for a little while, just long enough for us to explain what had happened to Aurora, and to help her come to a solution in regards to what had happened, because this wasn’t something that one singular person would be able to handle, no matter who you are or how frequently you dealt with situations like these.

I told myself that I had no reason to continue standing up here and wasting time, that I had no reason to watch the space between the boat and the shore get shorter and shorter. What I did have to do though, was to start searching the boat in an attempt to find Hera, in an attempt to find my mate. I didn’t even know where I was supposed to begin my search, but I guessed that it definitely wasn’t on the deck, since we had been here permanently—and by we, I meant Hades and I, as well as all of the crew. I got the impression that Hera wouldn’t have enjoyed being someplace where there was a lot of foot-traffic.

Come to think of it, it was rather strange that no one had bothered to mention that they had seen her, that she was somewhere on the boat. It was almost as if she wasn’t here, as if she hadn’t been here, but I had seen her get on board—and then there was the fact that her scent seemed to be everywhere, regardless of the fact that she had seemed to be nowhere. There were so many things that didn’t seem to make sense, that didn’t fit in with everything that had been happening, with the rest of the puzzle pieces. It was just such a difficult thing to process, such a difficult thing to figure out.

I must have tried figuring out where she could have been for an entirety of five minutes before I realised that I hadn’t even been everywhere on the boat, which left my options as limited. The only resort was to go and look for her myself, was to fine comb the boat from one corner to the next…

And if that was the only way that I was going to find her, then that was what I would do…