Page 70 of Settle Down, Princess

“So, revered elders, what do you propose?”

I’d said those words as if those assembled would present us with a simple strategy, almost a fait accompli. As if it was perfectly reasonable for us to sit around this well-worn table and eat our fill, then sensibly plan out how we’d steal a princess from my brother. The rest of my pack turned to the elders, waiting to hear their wisdom, but I knew that there could be nothing simple in planning how to manoeuvre past the pitfalls ahead.

Nobody took anything from my brother, Magnus, King of all Khean, not without his permission. And if they did manage to steal from him? They’d quickly discover the error of their ways.

“Don’t ruin this,” Roan had said, so I kept my mouth firmly shut.

“We have not renegotiated the terms of the treaty between our peoples and the crown in this king’s lifetime,” Ford observed, the tiny twist of his lips saying more than his words did. The brief smile that followed was tight at the edges, more a grimace, as there was no mirth in his eyes. “But it is a key part of our agreement with the crown.” A small shake of his head, barely perceptible. “We are not vassals, beholden to the king, but a sovereign nation that operates within the Kheanian border. Our treaty with the crown tells us what can bring the king to the bargaining table, and a wolf shifter’s fated mate is one of those things.”

But they didn’t want that. They didn’t want that fucking bastard anywhere near the packlands. The thought of Magnus coming here, bringing his poison here… I glanced out the window at the pastoral idyll beyond. Rich fields brimming with crops and the woods that spread out after that. Neat cottages, each one with a lazy spiral of smoke curling from the chimney. My hand went to my chest, scratching at my breastbone without thinking, as if that would make breathing easier.

He’d ruin it all, all of this. The elders thought they could rely on the fact that the wolf shifters made up the most effective branch of the royal army, that Lanzene and Matteau largely avoided invading us for tales of the wolf shifters’s ferocity, but… I pulled in a breath, then forced myself to keep doing so, just focusing on the way the air whistled in and out of my nose. Better that than listen to what was being said because I knew that if I did, I would not be able to follow Roan’s directive.

There was no reasoning with Magnus.

He was incapable of negotiating. His administrative staff did the majority of that part of the king’s duties. They had been forced to, lest the country end up in flames, because Magnus couldn’t accede anything to anyone. The thought of making an allowance for someone was like a needle in his side, a goad to his flanks. He simply could not conceptualise the idea of giving ground to someone for mutual benefit—nor even the idea of mutual benefit—because in his mind, all that mattered was what he might lose.

In truth, each one of my pack knew that, on some level. But for the moment, everyone was pretending.

I held my tongue as I watched them discuss the way forward, trading thoughts back and forth and debating their merits. They resolved on the idea of calling a conclave of different shifter packs from across the entirety of the packlands to provide a united front when meeting with the king. And I wished with my entire heart that it could work.

But there was a reason why I was the naysayer, the one who pulled others’ ideas apart as soon as I saw the slightest chink, the smallest sign of weakness.

Don’t hope, don’t dream, don’t want anything, that had been my mother’s directive as I tried to survive my first battlefield: the royal playroom. My father had shoved us together, the legitimate son and the one that was bastard-born, thinking that with familiarity some kind of fraternal bond would be forged, tying us to the other. Instead, I became Magnus’ first victim. My tongue flicked out, finding the scar my brother had left there when he’d repeatedly smashed a wooden horse into my face, continuing to do it over and over until my mother was forced to step in.

And she’d been beaten summarily by the queen’s equerry, her bloodied and battered form left on my father’s bed like a cat might do with a bird it’d caught.

Don’t ruin this, Roan had exhorted, but he didn’t realise that it would be ruined without any intervention on my part. Magnus would do so all on his own, and then I’d… My throat became so dry that I had to swallow hard but then felt I might gag, the feeling of choking on my tongue. It would not stop until I swallowed down an entire cup of water.

“I will send out word to all the different pack leaders,” Elder Wren said with a decisive nod. “They are all preparing to come this way for the mating games. This just brings things forward slightly.”

“So, we have your permission to pay court to the princess?” Creed asked, acting more puppy than wolf.

“We only ever step in if there’s too large an age gap or it seems like it’s not in the best interest of the woman,” Poppy said, with a gentle smile. “And that does not seem to the case here.”

“You still have to get the girl to agree to this mating,” one of the other elders said with a long look at all of us.

“That’s half the fun.”

Chuckles went up around the table, then the elders started to reminisce about their paths towards their fated mates, supplying us with advice and having a laugh at our expense. I just sat in the background, waiting them all out, until my pack finally rose to their feet.

“What now?” Roan asked Creed.

For once it was to him the pack turned to for leadership, not me.

“We break the news to Jessalyn.” The joy on Creed’s face, and the way his eyes were shining, was an image I felt I would store away forever. “We try to make amends first, but…”

For the first time since we’d met Jessalyn, he was really smiling. It made me remember the dark impulse which had driven me to push the two of them together that last night we were in Stormare; our first night with her. Something inside me had wanted to see Creed fracture and put his ideals aside for once because then he’d be down there in the dirt with me. But instead of debasing himself with a princess who he was supposed to protect, he… I shook my head. He’d found the one woman in the world for him.

I knew what it would be like if we found a way for the princess to accept the bond. Creed would love her until his dying day with the kind of unending devotion that would surely warm even the coldest princess’ heart, let alone a passionate woman like Jessalyn. Roan and Silas would take a little longer to make their devotion clear, but they were halfway in love with her already and waiting to make that final step.

Waiting on me.

That’s what Roan meant when he’d told me not to ruin things, I realised in a rare moment of clarity. Because I’d been ruining things all along. It was my anger at being forced to go to yet another pisspot country and fetch another poor, unsuspecting princess that had tainted my every response to Jessalyn. I’d channelled my fury at her, rather than at my brother, the one who compelled me to perform this repulsive role.

In his attempts to get rid of me, Magnus had forced me to join the army. He couldn’t even manage to have me killed on the battlefield, because me and mine had survived every insane mission he’d sent us on. In the process, our daring, our luck, had turned us from a group of raffish teenagers into the legendary Bastard Prince and his band. When those machinations failed, Magnus had decided to focus on a strategy to destroy my soul, to tear me apart in a much slower fashion. He demoted us to palace guards and then ensured that we were there to watch all the despicable things he did. Then he’d sent us on all those missions to procure each new victim, playing with their lives as he dared me to say no.

Both he and I knew that ‘no’ would mean a charge of insubordination; ‘no’ would mean I was declaring myself to be above his authority; ‘no’ would mean I was accepting my father’s decree—that his bastard son become the next king of Khean, not Magnus—and that I was prepared to make another move against my brother to topple him from his throne. I’d been struggling to breathe since we’d reached the pack house, but as I came to a realisation, my chest freed up. Air as sweet as wine was sucked into my lungs, moving in and out without impediment. For some reason, the gods had seen fit to allow us to survive, through one suicide mission after another, year after year. And it was only now that I’d realised that this latest mission was just the latest one.

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