Mated: An Enemy King

Betrayal and Rejection

The sound of battle to wake me had been all real. Xatis had been attacked. Someone had been foolish enough to take on such a murderous risk.

My shaky hands flew to my mouth as I took in the sight of death that surrounded me once I stepped out of the cave. Heart still aching, I'd dressed up and decided to leave the cave with every intention to go after Eugan, but barely a few steps after emerging, I had stumbled onto a wolf's severed limb and it'd been the thing to draw my attention to the gory sight before me. A sight not reserved for the door steps of the palace.

It was as if the god of death had been the one to sweep through the woods claiming countless lives at a time. Surely whoever was this foolish to think of attacking so closely must have known that there was no way their endeavor would end any other way except in death? This was Xatis, surely they had to have known that that god of death was closer than a famed deity residing in the realm’s skies.

I wished to look away, to unsee it all, but couldn’t. My feet stayed rooted on my spot too as though the blood of the slain sang to me, drawing strange emotions out of me. I ached for them. Something I did not understand as every one of these wolves was definitely not of Xatis.

"Princess!”

“Alad?” I reluctantly tore my gaze from the spectacle of death before me even when I felt the worry and panic in my best friend’s tone.

“Oh thank the gods! Are you alright?" Alad rushed to my side, breathless. Rinarii and a band of royal guards were not far behind and just like Alad, the sight of me seemed to bring them relief. "I have been searching all over for you."

“Why do you smell of Eugan?” It was the strangest question to leave my mouth, but for whatever reason, I could pick the royal guard’s scent as clear as day. I had not even realized that it belonged to him until Alad held me. The cave had been full of it and now that I thought about it, it was the thing I had been chasing while I searched for Eugan.

“The guard from Leif?” Alad spat, making it clear that whatever he’d expected out of my mouth, it definitely was not that and while he eyed me, his expression alternated between anger and confusion.

“His scent, it's all over you.” Ignoring Alad’s reaction, I frowned, wondering why I assumed the scent belonged to Eugan alone. I couldn’t explain my need to draw closer and inhale more of it either.

Alad drew back, his eyebrows raised. “Since when are you able to pick a wolf's scent?”

A wolf’s scent… Is that what it was? “I–I do not know.” Being wolfless, the thought that I was actually picking a wolf’s scent had not even crossed my mind. Or make that a particular wolf’s scent. Drawing closer to Alad, I realized that that was the only scent I found on him.

“Wait, I could ask you the same thing.” Alad’s eyes flashed dangerously, a sight I’d been aquainted with each time he lost his temper after getting his wolf.

“Me?”

“His scent is all over you. What did the bastard do?” Despite the anger rolling off of my sworn protector, I blushed. As stupid as that was at the moment, I couldn’t help it when whatever secrets the cave now held, flashed in my mind. “Princess?-- I'll kill him!” Alad was gone before I could utter another word.

I followed without a second thought as did my maid and the rest of the guards. “Rinarii, did I miss something?” I growled at my maid, strangely furious about Alad’s intent. I knew there was no love lost between him and Eugan, but that did not give him a right to kill him. Kill him…The mere thought unearthed my own murderous intent to return the favour if at all Alad dared. I did not even care to think it through.

“Oh my lady…” Rinarii stopped, sounding at a loss for words. Forced to a stop, I faced her and realized that she looked it too, something that was unusual for my outspoken maid. Especially when she had the perfect opportunity to make her smart comments now that she knew of me and Eugan.

“Rinarii?!” I growled yet again, but my maid seemed as though she’d not a heard a thing of what I had said.

“What happened to you?” My maid drew close, her thoughtful expression which I had no time for currently, marring her delicate features. She looked me over and frowned. “You do not have your wolf and yet you sound–”

“Rinarii?!”

“M–My lady?” She finally held my gaze and seemed to let go of her own thoughts. “Forgive me, my lady. It’s just that everything has been strange today. About you, this attack– they say Lord Eugan is a traitor–”

“Wait, traitor? That makes no sense.” I resumed my walk towards the palace, albeit hastily.

“My thoughts exactly, but his majesty–”

“Wait, father?” I came to an abrupt stop, hands reaching and tightening on my maid. “Does father think Eugan is a traitor?” I couldn’t keep the panic from my voice as I knew how my father dealt with traitors, with his enemies. The severed limbs whose memory was still too fresh in my mind was evidence of it. What if he truly thought of Eugan as an enemy? Had my father found out about our escapades in the cave? I felt the ground beneath me shift. Despite his indifference earlier, the thought of Eugan ending up as nothing but severed limbs stirred a heaviness in my heart.

“His majesty fights the supposed traitor even now. I’m sure Lord Alad will simply join in and finish what he started before he was tasked with searching for you–”

“What he started?” That explained how Eugan’s scent had ended up all over Alad, but that did not explain why he would fight him in the first place. Unless I’d been the one to confirm their suspicions… Grabbing hold of my gown, I bolted for the palace doors, my heart refusing to ease up on its pounding. I had to get to Eugan before something terrible happened which would be my fault entirely. I had been the one to give myself to him after all. And if father killed him because he thought he’d taken advantage of me– taken advantage of his precious delicate treasure–

“My lady wait! The throne room is not exactly a place for a princess right now.” A guard shouted after me, but all his words did was give me the needed directions of where I should be headed.

The growls behind the throne room’s doors were menacing, almost feral. Two of them were more pronounced than the rest. Alpha males. One of them I recognized. It held a familiarity I’d known my whole life, while the other elicited a flood of goose bumps on my skin. There was no guessing to whom it belonged even if it did not make sense that a guard could carry an alpha wolf. Somehow I knew it was him…my Eugan.

His wolf was just as menacing as my father’s and on any other day I would have stopped to witness and marvel at what was perhaps the most powerful show of strength between two maginificent wolves. But this was not merely a show of strength, the smell of death lingered in the atmosphere as the wolves circled each other and if I did not speak now, the red that already stained the throne room’s floors would only increase in size.

“Princess! You cannot be here!” Someone stood in my way, but I growled at them, forcing them to stand back. I would have stopped to think about their unusual display of submission that I had never gotten before, not even as a princess, but I had more important matters up ahead.

“Father, stop. This was my choosing, he did nothing wrong.” Coming inbetween two angry wolves was a dangerous affair. It explained why no one of those present had dared to interfere, but it had to be done. Or perhaps I hoped that the relationship I shared with both would be enough to keep either from attacking. I was wrong.

“My queen!” Someone tackled me to the ground, barely moments before my father clashed with Eugan. “Please, this is no place for you.” A bloodied face whose body was clad in similar guard’s armor as Eugan’s, pleaded. I would have glared at him for interfering, but his action and the way he’d addressed me caught me off guard and momentarily drew my attention from father and Eugan.

“Excuse me?`” A sad and longing smile from the guard was my only answer before he was tackled to the ground too.

“Stay away from her!” I recognized Alad’s threatening tone as he effortlessly dragged the wolf further away from me. “Keep your filthy Leif hands off of her!”

Leif… I was about to let Alad know the wolf meant me no harm when my world stopped with that one word. One tiny detail that finally fell into place, making me realize that being in bed with Eugan had made an enemy out of him. My gaze shifted, taking in my surrounding and finally understanding. Leif…they were all from Leif. Eugan’s and Koberic’s kingdom. The dead in the woods, the guard who had just saved me from being caught in the middle of the fight my father was still engaged in, the smaller pack of wolves who’d been forced to the throne room’s floor by my uncle Rakon, Alad and the royal guards. They were all from Leif and it wasn’t just about them being clad in similar armor with Eugan, the royal guard was fighting for them as they had done for him. Back at the cave– Wolves were dead because of me! The realization stung. Was that the reason he’d asked me to stay away from him?

“Father, stop.” Heart heavy with a flood of emotions, I addressed the king of Xatis. “I do not wish to have any more blood on my hands.” My voice cracked, a pathetic display I did not care for at the moment. It was thankfully enough to end the fight and as the two wolves shifted, a semblance of relief trickled in my troubled heart. My father was the only one to come to my side however and it took everything in me not to indulge in what Eugan’s decision not to meant.

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” The confusion in my father’s gaze made me turn to the eyes present. It would be embarrassing. Tongues would wag and in the most shameful way over my decision, but if it saved Eugan, the degrading talk about how I carelessly let myself be defiled…be tainted by a lowly guard was a small price to pay.

I took in the longest breath as though I’d been the one engaged in battle and needed one for my confession. “I chose him. I was not coerced or forced. Please do not hold this against him. I swear Lord Eugan has done nothing to betray you.” At my confession, father smiled, his usual heart warming smile that should have left me relaxed but only left me bracing for something more. The moment was another calm before a storm.

“You think I would fight your mate for simply taking what rightfully belongs to him?”

“My mate?” I did not know what to expect when father opened his mouth, but this– a mate? I stared at the king as though he'd lost his mind. “What mate?” I asked, but instead of furnishing me with an answer, my father merely stared in Eugan’s direction, albeit furiously. “Oh, he’s not–” I laughed. A hearty one. Despite the gravity of the situation, I did. Because this had to be the most ridiculous my father had been. He knew I did not have my wolf, so being mated was out of the question. History had proved that. At the very least, I would have to choose a mate.

But the king of Xatis was not smiling and his demeanour swallowed the sound of my laughter too. "Father?" I called, but when he wouldn't look at me and kept his gaze on Eugan, I turned to the man who held the king's attention.

The royal guard of Leif stood with a defiance I had never witnessed even from the most ruthless of wolves that had ended up in Xatis' dungeons. It should not have been possible with my father being the chosen's mate. At the very least, Eugan should have been on bended knee as the other wolves from Leif and yet there he stood, albeit proudly.

My heart would have puffed up with pride too at the sight, but then it hit me. Every encounter we'd had from the very first time I saw him. Why I had been drawn to him, desired him without limits. Why even now when he’d been declared a traitor, I had this overwhelming desire to save him…to be by his side still. But it couldn’t be…

“Are we mates?” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. The question a pathetic reminder of how incomplete I was. What kind of wolf could not recognize their moon goddess given half? I felt the shame and desperately hoped my father was wrong, but staring at Eugan, his expression held no denial. No denial! I fought to let that fact sink in, because then I would know. I would know the truth that was currently freezing my world all over.

He wasn’t as incomplete as I was, his wolf was perfect and if I was his mate he would know. He would claim me. He should have claimed me. A memory of the way he'd made love to me flashed before my eyes, bringing with it another truth that pierced my heart. Was that all he’d been after? “Are we mates? I choked up on my own words as my eyes stung while regret, hurt and every emotion in its rawness threatened to drown me. “Eugan…”

"Not anymore. I Eugan, king of Leif, do hereby reject you Aryn..."

A king? He was a king?!...and he was rejecting me? Without blinking, without a second thought, the fiery words spilled out of his mouth and with them my world that had been frozen suddenly cracked, my heart along with it as betrayal and rejection sung their bitter songs, leaving me drowning in the most excruciating pain.

“Princess– My lady!”

“Princess!”

“Princess!”

It felt like a thousand voices calling after me. A chorus of panicked voices pleading for me to wake, but while I drowned in my own pain, I only cared for one and yet it remained silent still, making me welcome the darkness that finally engulfed me.