Princess Luna

Chapter 10 - A new plan

Alpha King Alexander’s POV

Anger consumes my every moment these days. I am king! I should have everything I desire, and more! Otherwise, why should I bother trying to rule this stupid little kingdom as such a just and fair ruler? My daughter and son in law should be happy that I want to make their eldest son king of the Emerald kingdom! They should want young Alexander to learn how to run this kingdom. It’s their patriotic duty!

All I ever wanted in this life was a bit of happiness, and a few heirs in the castle nursery would have done a lot towards making me happy. But my past mistakes keep getting in the way. I had pissed off the moon goddess, apparently, when I had been forced to reject my fated mate by my father. The mate I had been required to take “for the good of the kingdom”, a rich Lycan princess from the Netherlands, Eleanor, had ended up being a huge mistake. In the 18 years we had been mates, we had no pups at all. After 5 unhappy years of trying, I stopped visiting her bed altogether after I discovered she had never intended to have any pups. She had been taking preventative measures to ensure it never happened. I was relieved when she had died and I was finally free to take another mate!

Then eleven years ago, I found that I had a daughter with my rejected mate Juliette, who had grown into a strong and powerful Lycan. And I again found my fated mate Juliette and thought I had finally found that happiness I had been chasing after all these years. Until I again pissed off the moon goddess by trying to kill my daughters fated mate and encouraging her to take a mate I chose for her. I had been forced to save Amelia’s mate or face punishment from the moon goddess herself! At that point I made Leonard Hart my heir, since at the time my closest “kin” and heir was my brothers adopted son Prince William. It had made sense to do that at the time.

Since then, though, Juliette and I had two more daughters, Isabelle and Janette. And while I love them, they are not very promising. Neither one are strong Lycans, since they are only half Lycan, and neither of them are all that clever. The best use I might have for them is to mate them off strategically to improve relations with other kingdoms.

Amelia’s mate Leonard, my current heir, has become a very powerful Lycanthrope. And he is clever, and honest. And stubborn. A bit naive, though, in expecting others to also deal honestly. And he hates politics. I had high hopes in the beginning that in teaching him how things work in our government and how to run the country that I would find him an eager student. And I had hoped that he had been grateful that I had saved his life and made him my heir. Only, I’ve been very disappointed. Leonard claims he came back from the brink of death only because he was “saving” Amelia from going to war against me! Leonard claims he didn’t want to be saved, and didn’t even wish to be my heir. He has shown zero gratitude for anything I’ve done for him. He disagrees with most of my political agenda, often times quite loudly and in public. He shows me zero reverence neither as his king, nor his father in law.

The only thing Leonard has managed to do right, as my heir, is to give me several strong lycan grandchildren. The eldest, Alexander, in particular. Young Alexander is perfect to be heir to my kingdom, only Leonard and Amelia barely give me any time to spend with my favored grandson, and to mentor him as my heir. They claim he needs to have a “normal” childhood, and given a chance to choose his future. But he’s not normal at all! He’s the heir to the kingdom! And he needs to start learning the ins and outs of ruling the kingdom from a young age, or he’ll end up being as useless as his father is to me!

I still could not believe that Amelia was strong enough to push her royal aura on to me hard enough to force me to give young Alexander back to her after I had finally gotten him into my clutches. I knew she was strong, but I hadn’t realized exactly how strong she was before that night. And if I hadn’t seen her nearly decapitate her gamma Jason before my own eyes, I would never have believed it possible, while being 8 months pregnant and unable to fully shift. I needed to tread carefully around my daughter, if I didn’t want to lose my own head in a similar fashion.

Amelia has also proved to be far more clever than I ever expected, as well. It obviously hadn’t taken her long to discover that we had taken her mate. Then she had been quite clever in figuring out that Jason had found a way around following her orders rather than mine. After she had grabbed young Alexander and left, she had managed to evade capture by pretending she didn’t know we were tracking her by dumping her car near a hotel, and getting rid of anything that we had added tracking ability to. Now she was effectively hiding from us.

Early this morning we had made the drive to the Bull Run pack to collect Amelia and the children, but they were not there. I had forced my aura onto all of her packs officers to give up their location, but they all claimed not to know. That other than a grubby little cabin deep in the woods where the children had been staying temporarily, they had no information. I demanded to see this cabin, and though there were signs that it had been occupied recently, they had obviously left the cabin already. In my anger, I set fire to the cabin and told the Beta that if I ever find out that he has lied to me about the Hart family’s whereabouts, I will burn the entire pack to the ground, and his own children will be fatherless. Then we drove back to the Emerald pack immediately.

This evening we had nearly gotten my oldest granddaughter Lucille to give up their location to my daughter Isabelle, but she suddenly stopped responding, the only information we had gotten was that they were somewhere in Portland, near a park, and the buildings name was difficult to spell. So obviously it’s an apartment or condo, in Portland. That doesn’t narrow it down enough to be tremendously helpful.

Dennis enters my office, looking glum.

“Were you able to get any more information on my daughter’s whereabouts?” I ask, not feeling all that hopeful based on the look on Dennis’s face.

“Just that it’s confirmed that they are all in the same location for now.” Dennis informs me. “Each of the children talked briefly to their dad. Also, she called from a different phone number than the day before. She must have a bunch of burner phones. That will make it even more difficult to trace her location.”

None of this information was at all useful to me. Perhaps I’ll have to talk directly to Leonard and get him to see reason. I had thought that a couple nights in a prison cell, and the threat of execution for treason, would soften his stance on the matter. That the threat of losing her mate might have Amelia handing the boy over to my care immediately. I certainly hadn’t expected her to choose young Alexander over her own mate to begin with! Not when she will soon have 7 other pups, who might now end up being fatherless.

Apparently I have miscalculated the situation. I will need some other leverage to get what I want. Or I would need to get information from Leonard using more underhanded techniques. Hmm, yes. That is an idea I could utilize. Men, as well as wolves, have been known to say or do all sorts of things under the right conditions. I just needed to provide the right conditions.

I call my beta Alfred, and I told him everything that I would need. He promised to have everything ready by the day after tomorrow. I was impatient to do this immediately, but it’s better that everything be done properly.

Not only was I going to get the information I needed from Leonard’s own lips, but I was going to sink Leonard’s reputation in the eyes of his own mate. Amelia will be angry at me for taking young Alexander, but she will not be tempted to kill me over her pathetic mate. She might even kill him herself, if I can provide enough reason for her to do it.

If I could just manage to collect Amelia before she gives birth and separate her from all her pups, she will be grateful when I give some of them back. I’m not a monster, after all. I only want one of them!