Page 75 of Settle Down, Princess

Usually, I was the one doing the tying up, needing to be in control, but right now the sound of Jessalyn’s giggles slid across my skin, binding me with knots, forcing me to stay in my seat as I turned to find where she sat. With Fern, Creed’s sister, and the other single women, all of them clustered around the princess like she was the sun and they were her satellites. Food was ignored as they leaned forward, elbows on the table, to give all their attention to her stories.

Stories about us, I was willing to bet.

“I think I know where our poor welcome comes from,” I said, dragging a fork through the fluffy mashed potatoes.

“So do I.”

Creed shot to his feet, ready to go over there, but both Arik and I put a hand on the back of his shirt. The two of us shared a brief look before we dragged him right back down again.

“Men commiserate and talk shit after a battle,” Roan said with a sigh. “Looks like women do the same.”

“But… we cut down Jessalyn’s enemies,” Creed said, as he strained against our grip like a hound on a leash.

“Did we?” That sharp tone of Arik’s was back, his gaze all the sharper as he took in the women and their antics. Just like I did, he caught the sidelong looks each woman gave us, except the one we actually cared about. Lips pursed, heads shook slightly, making clear their displeasure. “Or did we just despatch the most pressing threat and put ourselves in its place?

A collective sigh went around the table as we focused on our meal. A soldier can’t afford to be squeamish. He eats, sleeps, and shits when he can, lest he never have the opportunity to do so again. The packland cooks were well known for their prowess in preparing food, particularly meat, but it all tasted like glue in my mouth as I chewed.

Only to turn to dust once the meal was over.

The dining hall was more than a place to share food. It was a meeting room of sorts, a place for the different packs to come together, share space, time, news, and company before retiring back to their cottages to sleep. So when several men pulled out instruments, it was just part of the evening gathering. One man tapped out a quick rhythm on a hand drum, looking hopefully around the crowd. Another waving a violin over his head made his way to join the drummer, as did one with a tin whistle, and one more with a mandolin under his arm. The tin whistle let out a little trill as the servers began removing all the plates and food, clearing the tables so they could be pushed back. The musicians nodded to each other and then started to play a little jig with a rollicking beat.

Music had always been my undoing. I’d been forced to learn all the more common dances and then the less common ones, so I could swing around a dance floor with ease whether in a dingy inn or my father’s ballroom. But the sound of a song, with all those different notes played by individual instruments, forced my mind to follow them one by one, skipping from the drumbeat to the sharp trill of the whistle, to the whine of the violin. And so it was that my body moved of its own accord and I rose to my feet, just as Fern dragged Jessalyn out to the impromptu dance floor in the centre of the hall.

Wolf shifter women moved like snakes when dancing. It was almost as if they were double-jointed, swaying, twisting, and rolling their hips with feline intent rather than lupine. Fern performed a simpler set of steps, demonstrating for Jessalyn, before beckoning her closer. Other single women leapt forward, twisting and throwing themselves around the dance floor to the sound of the music, but I didn’t care to follow any movements except hers.

If I’d thought Creed was a leashed dog in her presence, then for a moment, I experienced a feeling of empathy. It was willpower alone that kept me where I was, each one of the men I called brothers standing beside me as we watched Jessalyn follow the steps with her eyes, nodding to the beat of the music before springing forward to join the dancers.

She was elegant and beautiful, shifting in time to the music the way reeds did the riffling wind. I knew that she would have been taught to dance. High-born women were schooled in all ways, ensuring they grew up to perform perfectly the rituals of womanhood. But knowing that she’d been trained in the formal movements of what passed for dancing in her father’s court wouldn’t help me now. Instead, I was forced to follow the lines of her body as she moved, stumbling over the steps Fern performed, then quickly mastering them before adding her own embellishments. The thing that caught my attention most was that she was smiling. It was more than that. She grinned with a wild kind of abandon that I’d never seen her show. Not when we’d walked by her side, not even when she was riding the red dragon. There was no haze in her eyes that pushed her to dance, just…

Happiness.

That shouldn’t have hurt to see. I wanted her to be happy, needed it like my next breath. However, now I’d seen the way it looked on her face when the mask was set aside and she allowed herself to feel freely, not only did I realise she hadn’t been this truly happy in my presence, I knew I’d never be satisfied with anything less. I wanted to make her feel exactly that.

Then I realised that I wasn’t the only one as my attention was caught by the sound of chairs and benches dragging back as men rose from their seats.

Of course they did, all of us had done exactly the same thing, though the women hadn’t started dancing to elicit this response. Mothers, fathers, children too, joined the young women on the dance floor, moving to please themselves, to experience the music with all their senses. That’s what Jessalyn and Fern were doing, which was why they were so happy. For just a moment they could lay their worries down and just experience things. However, single men never seemed content to watch when they could insert themselves into a situation and try to redirect that pleasure their way, and that’s just what these fucking wolf shifters were doing. No longer content with standing and watching, they started prowling around the dance floor.

“Don’t.”

Creed repaid my previous efforts, slapping his hand down on my chest and stopping me from moving forward before I was even aware I had. I didn’t see him or feel myself, only her and them. Men circled the group like hungry wolves, and what else were they doing but being true to their natures? They slid between the dancers, joining the frivolity, but with a more sinister intent. They didn’t just march up to the woman of their choice to grab her and tug her closer. Instead, they were much more cunning, dancing in a woman’s general vicinity, waiting for her to turn to them. And woman after woman did just that, throwing her arms around the neck of her chosen man and dancing with him or matching her movements with his until they were perfectly in step. Even Fern fell into the arms of a big burly wolf shifter. Then another approached Jessalyn.

“No…”

I’d heard Creed howl, growl, and snarl in skin as well as wolf form, but it was odd to realise I was making the same possessive sound.

“This is how it works here.” Creed’s sharp tone cut through the haze inside my head. “The woman chooses.”

“So how the fuck do we make her choose us?” Roan asked.

“We can’t make Jessalyn do anything.” Creed loosened his grip on my shirt. “We weren’t worthy of her, something I think we all knew before, but now…” He straightened up. “Now we need to make clear that situation has changed.”

Chapter 43

Was this what freedom felt like?

To just dance to the rollicking beat in any way I saw fit. To not worry about what my mother, my father, my grandmother—or even some ambassador from a country I couldn’t point out on a map—thought about the way I was dancing. To not have to prove I was worthy of my title in every step of the dance I performed. I’d tossed aside my stays and the ornate gowns packed for me when Fern and the rest of Creed’s family had appeared at the cottage, but it felt like I’d set aside more than just royal protocol when I pulled on the loose cotton dress they gave me. It felt like I’d let another aspect of my true self come out.

Stormarian court dances were made up of a million complex steps. Your ability to remember them and then perform them with any sort of grace was an achievement akin to being a skilled swordsman. Each time you stepped onto the dance floor, you demonstrated your worth to other women and hopefully caught the eye of the men, but I didn’t think about any of that right now. My eyes fell half closed as I just… moved.

---