His Vow

Chapter 6

The driver was nervous and he knew it. He could smell his nervousness in the air. The driver slowly turned to him and pointed to the sky.

“I don’t think it’s safe to continue on in this weather, Alpha Prince,” he stated as he slightly bowed his head trying his hardest not to meet Alexander’s fiery gaze.

“Don’t stop until we get to our destination,” Alexander ordered. He was in a horrible mood and was looking for something to attack. If they stopped he’d either attack the driver or the woman situated beside him. However, laying a single finger on her meant banishment. He couldn’t risk that possibility so therefore he needed to arrive to their destination as fast as possible.

Rose didn’t remove her eyes from the sky. The clouds continued to darken in the sky the further they drove and the air was thick with moisture. The once tall and static trees were moving from side to side like ocean kelp. She could feel the car swaying from side to side too.

The driver was right. It wasn’t safe to drive in this weather. She removed her gaze from the sky and turned towards the driver. She could tell how nervous he was by the way he bit his lips and continued to look up at the sky. Their surroundings were starting to blur as the rain picked up its speed. If they didn’t stop, then there would be a very high chance that they’d cause an accident.

She opened her mouth to tell the driver to stop somewhere safe, but before she could say anything, the car stopped. She looked at the driver with wide eyes. Why did he suddenly stop the car in the middle of the road? That wasn't a very smart move on his behalf. She could already tell that the alpha was fuming without even having to look at him.

“What are you doing?” Alexander asked. His breathing was coming out in short breaths and it was clear that the driver’s actions angered him.

“I-I didn’t do anything, Your Highness!” He stuttered. “The car stopped by itself. I swear on my life!"

***

“This isn’t right,” Stephan whined to his father. “Why do we have to interfere?”

A few hours ago, his father had waltzed into Stephan’s room with a bright smile plastered on his face. At first he thought his father had a cup of his infamous “happy tea” but then he realized that he was plotting something and needed his help.

“What is it?” he asked as he narrowed his eyes.

What he heard next made him want to drown in his own tears. His father had “devised a plan to get the two married couple to fasten up the baby process”. At first he didn’t understand what he was talking about, but when he explained his plan more in-depth, Stephan wanted nothing more than to wash his ears out with soap and go to sleep and not wake up for the next two centuries.

“I’m not doing it!”

“But you’re my son. Help your father out, young one.”

“No.”

“I would agree while I’m asking you nicely, young man.”

“I said no!”

“Young Alpha Stephan Hayes, this is an order from King Alpha Hayes. If you go against the order of the King, I am afraid you will have to pay the consequences.”

He no longer had a choice. Even if he didn’t want to help, his wolf was compelled to help by the King’s order.

Now it had been almost three hours since they had started trailing his brother and Rose and they still hadn’t achieved what they were trying to achieve.

“I’m going to make it rain,” Julian informed his son as he started getting ready to use his water element.

They both watched as the clouds burst open and water began to pour down. However, there was one problem that neither of them had thought of.

“So, how exactly are you planning to protect us from the rain?” Stephan asked his father. Julian turned towards his son with an apologetic smile.

“I forgot that we didn’t have a cover,” he laughed as the water roughly pelted on their skin.

Stephan sighed as he shifted into his wolf. Thanks to their super stamina and speed, they didn’t need to shift while they were following the car. However, now that it was pouring down on them, the best solution would be to shift into their wolves. Once they shift, although they’d still be wet, they won’t feel the pain of the heavy rain hammering against their skin.

Julian pet his youngest son’s muddy brown wolf before he also shifted.

Unfortunately now the only way for them to communicate was through their pets. Unlike the normal alphas and packs, male werewolves born into the Royal family didn’t inherit the mind link.

No one really knew why the Royal Family didn’t have a mind link, but according to legends, a beautiful, young witch had seduced one of their great ancestors and stolen his mind link. When he woke up, he had four animals lying beside his head: a deer, a dove, a dragon and a phoenix. Not knowing what to do, he set on a journey to find the beautiful witch.

After months of searching, he one day coincidentally came across her at a village market.

According to the legend, during that time the special elements that Royal Alphas possessed didn’t exist. The witch had exchanged her special powers and pets for his and the whole Royal family’s mind link. Their ancestor agreed, seduced by the idea of being even more powerful than what he had been. However, he had a slight problem. Not knowing what to do with the animals that continued to follow him around, he asked the witch how to get rid of them. She told him that the only way to get rid of them was to not be greedy. He never saw her after that again.

At first he didn’t understand what the witch meant by not being greedy. He shared his fortune, his home and even his food. The animals were starting to become more and more burdensome to the point of him not being able to leave his home. They followed him everywhere and that was not only disrupting the werewolf community, but it was also causing problems for the humans.

However, as he aged he realized that the key wasn’t to share his fortune but to share the pets. He was too blinded by the fact that he wanted to be the most powerful wolf in existence that he hadn’t realized that rogues were constantly attacking the four packs that were in existence at the time. He decided that the best power he could have was the power of saving his people.

He went to the four districts and gave each of them a pet. He gave the phoenix to the North Fire Pack; the Dove to the Central Moonlight Pack; the dragon to the Bloodlust Light Pack and the deer to the Mystic Creek Pack. Each pack’s alpha then suddenly woke up with a tattoo of their animal and a special element that they didn’t previously have.

Their ancestor died soon after and somehow each of his kids and grandchildren inherited each of the elements as well as a tattoo of one of the four animals. The four packs all broke up into little groups and formed their own packs. The first male born with an element was said to be the next alpha of those said new packs.

However, no one really knew whether this legend had any truth to it or if it was just a myth. One thing that everyone knew though was that the Royal family really didn’t possess the mind link.

Therefore, whenever anyone in the Royal family shifted, they communicated through their pets. They didn’t understand how, but their pets had the ability to see one another. Therefore, they would relay messages from their master to the other wolf’s pet and vice versa.

“So what now?” Stephan relayed his message to his pet. The beautiful deer nodded before turning to look up at what Stephan assumed to be his father’s pet.

“He says that now you just have to wait for some sort of miracle. The rain is too heavy for them to continue without any trouble. If they have any sense at all then they’ll stop the car.”

Stephan stared at his father with complete and utter disbelief. Why was he so ill prepared? A miracle? Was he expecting the car to randomly stop by itself or something? Stephan rolled his eyes as they continued watching the car move along the wet road.

What happened next had Stephan stop dead in his tracks. The car abruptly and randomly stopped, making it obvious that it wasn’t the driver who voluntarily stopped driving.

Stephan turned to his father with wide eyes.

“He says that he asked one of the workers to play round with the car engine before they left,” his pet explained.

"Of course," Stephan thought, "only he would think of things like this."

The rain suddenly began to subside. One second it was pouring down on them as if they were standing under a waterfall and the next it was rainbows and sunshine. Literally. Rose looked up at the bright sky with a questioning gaze.

"Is the weather bipolar?" Rose thought to herself.

Alexander angrily stepped out to take a look at their surroundings. The car had stopped only meters away from a little village. If the car didn’t start up any time soon, they would need to find shelter somewhere in the village. By the scent of the area, it was obvious that there were no wolves around. Therefore they needed to be extra careful with their language and actions.

“Did you figure out what the problem is?” Alexander asked the driver. He had been staring at the engine for over half an hour already and still hadn’t said a single word.

“I don’t know how to say this, Alpha Prince,” he began, “so I'll say it exactly how it is without meaning any disrespect. It looks like someone purposely tampered with the engine.”

The driver cowered back at Alexander’s dark gaze. Alexander went over to check the situation out himself. After confirming the driver’s words, he sighed and started walking towards the village. He had a little idea of who the culprit might have been, and although he didn’t know what he was trying to achieve, he had an idea. He would make sure that his father’s plan backfired.

“If you don’t want to sleep outside in the middle of nowhere, hurry up and follow me!” Alexander shouted.

Rose didn’t know whether the alpha was talking to her or the driver so she stood in her spot until the driver pushed her forward.

“I’ll be waiting in the car for someone from the palace to arrive with another vehicle. Although the rain has stopped, the weather is quite cold. Don’t let the Alpha Prince wait any longer.”

Julian was happy that things were going according to his plans. He quickly shifted back and motioned for Stephan to do the same.

“Does this mean we can go back home now?” Stephan asked his father.

“No. This is only the beginning. There’s still so much to be done.”

“What do you mean by 'so much to be done'? They’ll most likely find somewhere to stay until the next car arrives. Can’t you just let them do things by themselves now? Stop interfering.”

“The magic word is ‘they’. Alexander just called out to her so that she doesn’t have to stay out in the cold all night. Doesn’t that tell you that even if he doesn’t show it, he cares?” Julian asked as he jumped up and down in excitement.

“You said it yourself, even if he doesn’t show it he cares. So that means that you achieved what you wanted. Now let’s go home.”

“Not yet. I want to watch what they’ll do. This is so much fun! I feel like those crazy mother-in-laws in those dramas. You know the ones that follow their sons and daughter-in-laws to their honeymoon just to make sure that they’re making babies? Those ones.”

Stephan found it funny that his 50-something-year-old father was acting like an excited fan-girl who suddenly saw her favorite idol at the supermarket. However, his heart couldn’t handle watching the scene anymore. So far he was all right with it because nothing special had been happening. However, he didn’t think he’d be able to handle seeing his love in the company of another man. His father was right. If his brother was able to suck up his pride and ask her to stay in his company (albeit indirectly), then that was a huge step from his previous her-every-breath-makes-me-want-to-kill-someone attitude.

Although Stephan didn’t want his brother to hate Rose, he also wasn’t ready for him to start liking her. His feelings were contradicting one another, but there was one thing he knew for sure, and that was that he was terrified of the idea of his brother actually falling in love with Rose.

Rose quietly followed the Alpha Prince, trying her hardest not to make a single sound. This was the first time she was alone with him and for all she knew, this could have been his ploy to successfully kill her off and bury her without any witnesses.

Alexander could feel someone following them but didn’t dare make it obvious. He knew who it was by their scent and found it stupid that their stalker was doing his job so sloppily. It was like he wanted them to know that he was following them. He smiled at himself hoping that they fell for his trick.

From what he could understand from this situation, his father planned this whole thing in order to get Rose and him alone. He knew that Alexander had a heavy burden around him and so he couldn’t hurt the girl in anyway. That way he was forced to be in her company without laying a single finger on her.

By telling Rose to follow him, he was hoping that his father now thought that he either didn’t hate her as much or that he didn’t mind being in her company. That way Julian would have hope and by the end of it, all of his hopes and dreams would be crushed. Alexander was really talented at leading people on and then crushing them. His father was about to witness his son’s specialty first hand.

He smirked at the thought of his father’s defeated expression.

Rose sighed a breath of relief when they entered a crowded market area. It was the first time in her life that she had been to a market so crowded. It was so crowded that it was hard to walk by without touching the people beside you. She sped up her pace so that she wouldn’t lose Alexander. She didn’t want to be lost in a place full of humans. She had also never been in the presence of a human being for more than an hour. And that human was in the form of a lost 5-year-old child. She had found the little girl crying on the playground asking for her “Mummy”. As Rose was the only adult around, she felt guilty leaving her alone so she took her to the pack house and told her father about the situation. She was later told that she was taken to the police station in which her parents had picked her up.

She felt uncomfortable in the presence of humans, as she was always scared that she’d accidentally blurt out her secret. Humans weren’t allowed to know of their secret and telling a human about the werewolf world was a huge violation of the Werewolf Laws. If a human found out about them, then both the human and the wolf who told the human would have to be executed.

Alexander was glad that he was tall enough to see over all the busy bodies of the crowded market. He searched around for some sort of exit, however it seemed like the market went on for miles. He was really starting to lose his patience.

Rose was having a very hard time keeping up with Alexander. Not only was he walking really fast, but the constant pushing of the people around her also slowed down her pace. Seeing that the alpha had suddenly stopped, she ran, or tried, to his side. Unfortunately for her though, luck wasn’t on her side. She suddenly tripped and went stumbling down. Fortunately though, instead of falling on to the group, she fell on to someone’s back. Realizing who she fell on, she quickly stood up and waited for his outburst with wide eyes.

Alexander looked over his shoulder at what just touched him and silently swallowed his anger down when he realized that it was Rose. Gulping down his pride, he reached his arm out, silently asking her to take it.

When she didn’t cooperate, he turned towards her and told her to take it.

“What?"

“Unless you want to continue falling or you want to get lost, take my arm.”

Rose stared at him with wide eyes. She couldn’t believe her ears. Was he drunk?

People continued to push past her and when she was close to falling down again, she reluctantly placed her hand on the crook of his elbow.

“I hope you’re watching this father,” Alexander internally smirked. He was hoping that his actions were successfully leading his father on. It would be his sweet revenge on forcing something like this upon him.