Rejecting the Alpha Prince

8

ERIK

I had plans for that morning.

Those plans included waking up late in the arms of the beautiful Crescent girl I'd met the night before, enjoying a nice breakfast, and then having a good lunch together with my family.

I'd achieved none of that - and now I sat in an uncomfortable hospital chair between my parents, my heart swollen with grief and anger.

It can't be ...

They'd been found in the early hours of morning, dumped along the edge of the Crescent Moon land like garbage bags; my Uncle Franz and my friend, Gunther, one of the wolves in our escort, so beaten and covered in blood they were basically unrecognizable.

I already knew I'd never forget the words of the wolf who'd knocked on my door that morning to tell me.

Never.

It was almost lunchtime now, and we were all still there - the doctors had been in the operating rooms for hours, trying to save them.

"I can't believe it," Mom whispered, her face covered with tears. "How ... why would anyone..."

"I don't know, prinzessin," Dad murmured, brushing her hand. He was trying to be strong for us and for Franz and Gunther, I could see that, but it was clear that he felt like dying, just like us. "I don't know."

I shifted in the plastic chair, trying to release some of the tension that had built up in my muscles - in vain. They remained contracted, and the tremors that shook me didn't slow down.

Attacked and almost killed.

How the f**k was it possible that the two strongest warriors I knew after my father and siblings had ended up like this? Uncle Franz was a beast when he fought, fierce and deadly - how was it possible that someone had overpowered him?

More importantly, who had done it? Who had dared to attack them? Who was strong enough to defeat him and Gunther?

"Hey, guys," Uncle George greeted us with a nod, pale in the face, coming toward us flanked by at least a dozen wolves. "How are they?"

"They haven't told us anything yet," Dad replied, laconic. "They've been in there for hours."

Uncle George pursed his lips. "If anything had to go wrong, it would have happened by now," he pondered. "I'm sure they'll both recover just fine. Are you guys okay?"

I nodded quickly. The three of us were in the house when everything had happened - Franz and Gunther, on the other hand, were on patrol.

They were on patrol to protect us. To protect me.

Just thinking about it made me want to vomit.

It's your fault, a cruel voice in my head whispered. They almost died because of you.

It was true. I knew that among the Red Bloods there were some that resented me for not making a formal decision about the Alpha title yet - it was likely that they had decided to take revenge. Perhaps coming on that tour with my parents had been a poor decision.

Or maybe you're just being paranoid, I sighed. They might have been Rogues who found two isolated prey.

For some reason, though, I doubted it. I could feel it in my bones - that had been a deliberate act against my pack and my family. Franz and Gunther were not the only Blauer Mond on patrol - and they were, by the way, in a fairly safe area of the forest, an area where Rogues would never roam around.

They had been targeted and attacked.

The others had come to the same conclusion as me, because there was a look in my parents' eyes that I, unfortunately, knew well: it was the look they had when they spoke, as rarely as possible, about the war.

No one had spoken the words out loud yet, but it was clear in all of our eyes: attacking such an important member of the royal family and of the royal pack was a declaration not just of hostility, but of war.

The last time such a thing had happened was twenty-three years before, when my mother had fled Clayton to save me.

Since I'd been born, there had been peace in the wolf world, save for a few skirmishes here and there over borders and pieces of land. The very idea that peace could c***k, or even break, gave me the chills. I knew the look that darkened my parents' and uncles' eyes when they spoke of the war - my father was a Lycan prince, my mother one of the most powerful Alphas in the world, and in their eyes there was fear.

Fear of dying, of seeing loved ones die, fear of killing. Of getting blood on their hands again. Of seeing all the hard work they'd done to make the world a better place ... destroyed. Thwarted by someone else's selfish plans.

"Honey?" Mom brushed my shoulder, calling me in a low voice. When I looked up at her and saw the man in the white coat behind her, my stomach fluttered.

I immediately stood up, my heart beating furiously with anxiety, with terror - what if the doctor's response was not what we all hoped for? What if ... oh Goddess, what if ...

I felt my eyes sting with tears. My mother's warm hand clasped around mine was the only thing that kept me from collapsing there and now.

"The injuries of both of them were very serious ..." the doctor said. "Whoever attacked them had to be a real monster. I asked our pathologist for a consult and he confirmed what I thought - this can't be the work of a wolf. No werewolf, not even a Lycan, could produce such injuries".

"Then what attacked them?" my father growled, and my mother asked. "They're ok, right?"

The doctor swallowed. "We don't know, Your Highness," he said, addressing Dad first. "The wounds ... it's something I've never seen in many years of working with predator shifters. Anyway ..." he added, turning towards Mom. "They both survived the surgery, and we're moving them to the ICU. Their condition, however, is extremely delicate - both of them had severe internal bleeding, and unfortunately, Mr. Stein suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage. The risk of him not waking up is not to be underestimated."

"Oh my God," Mom uttered in a choked whisper, and I squeezed her hand tighter, trying to comfort her.

"What about Franz?" I asked at that point, knowing she could never formulate that question.

"He's better," the doctor said. "Gunther was worse off, so it's safe to assume that he tried to defend him. However, these are extremely critical hours for him as well. If they both make it through this night, they'll have a very good chance of recovery."

"But there is a risk that they won't make it," George said, his voice cold as ice. "Right?"

This time, the doctor merely nodded.

Something stopped in me, and a terrible weight crushed my heart, unraveling through the rest of my body.

There's a risk they won't make it.

They won't make it.

They won't make it.

A sparkling river in a green forest flashed before my eyes, and an iridescent fish attached to a fishing rod: the first one I'd caught as a child, with Uncle Franz.

"YES!" he'd beamed. "Now hold it, I'll go get the pliers!"

After the fish, an old Golf - my father's old car, now little more than a wreck, on which Uncle Franz himself had given me my first driving lessons. Needless to say, I'd smashed it.

Memories crowded my mind - all the times I'd visited him with Mom at the police station, the nights when he would pick me and my siblings to take us out for McDonald's when the castle menu included soup, all the times he'd had my back with my parents when I was with someone.

I can't lose him ... I can't ...

He'd been like a second father to me - not that Dad lacked in anything, of course, but ... the one between us was not a simple uncle-nephew relationship. No, it was deeper than that.

And Gunther ... my goodness, Gunther and I had grown up together. We'd done all kinds of things, as children and as boys and as men. Our mothers ... we'd exasperated them to the point of insanity.

What if I lost my friend, too?

"Oh, darling," Mom whispered, hugging me. Only at that moment - when I sank my face into her shoulder and felt the wool of her sweater getting wet - I realized I was crying.

"I know," Dad murmured, as he joined our hug. A few moments later, Uncle George joined in as well - and for a while, we stayed like that, holding each other, trying to comfort each other. To convince ourselves that everything would be all right.

They attacked my uncle.

Slowly, an emotion that until then had remained in the background of the tsunami that had swept over me began to take hold, until it became the dominant one.

Wrath.

They attacked my uncle - and they won't get away with this.

I might not have been a Lycan like my father and siblings, but I was my mother's son - and she was the deadliest and most powerful she-wolf in the world.

I was not exactly one to be underestimated.

And anyone who dared to attack my family and my pack would soon realize that - with deep, bitter sorrow.