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Chapter Fourteen
Arne hadn’t stopped grinning since we landed. It was a quick trip, so quick that we barely had one small snack to tide us over between tours. Before I knew it, we were back on the plane and being taken back to the kingdom.
The place they’d brought us to was magnificent. Not only did the sustainability measures enable their people to work and produce products without worry over resources, but the extra electricity and water being generated by the system was pushed into the electricity and water companies in adjoining lands at a price. The people were actually making money off of the system.
According to the man, all through translation of course, and from what I could gather, it had taken them a little over four years for the system to pay for itself. It was harder than usual for me to read the lips of someone whose first language wasn’t English, but I did the best I could. I told Arne I would have tons of questions, and that seemed to make his day. Leif was skeptical, but that was okay. He asked pointed questions, but when I thought the answers proved my point, he simply nodded curtly.
I would have to get his take on everything when we were alone again.
“Are you still having second thoughts?” Arne asked, taking the seat next to me. Leif sat across from us, and Ms. Dover was toward the front, clicking away at her laptop and on her phone at the same time. Was it okay to use a phone in a plane now? I shrugged aside the question to focus on Arne’s question.
“No. Not anymore. Are you?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. I know it’s a big expense initially, but it will pay off for the entire kingdom in a couple of years. We can have electricity, efficient electricity which will make things so much easier on the people of the pack. Some may give you some backlash, but that’s going to be the case no matter what you do. You already have a thick skin, so we just have to endure it.”
Leif crossed and uncrossed his legs as the plane took off. Since we’d been whisked away from the solar fields, he’d been more and more tense. His shoulders were tight, and he clenched his jaw.
“Leif, you do not agree?”
His eyes ticked to me. “What? I do not agree about what?” I noticed that his hands gripped the armrests of the seat, and his knees were now up like he didn’t wish to touch the floor of the plane.
“Leif, what is the matter with you?”
The loud boom of the engines probably drowned out my voice as air was pumped into the cabin. Outside, the world looked tilted as we began our ascent into the skies.
“Here,” Arne said, reaching under his seat for something. He handed Leif a white paper bag and instructed him to breathe into it.
“What is happening?” I demanded, though I had a clue. But Leif was such an anchor to me, and I’d always assumed he was afraid of nothing and no one.
Clearly that wasn’t the case.
“He’s never flown before, Janis, well, not since the first time this morning. He was sick on the way, but you were fast asleep and missed the theatrics.”
Oh, my dear mate. He hadn’t blinked an eye when we told him we were going on an airplane. It was Gunnar who almost lost his dinner as we informed him, but now it was Leif who had endured the process to be able to go with me. I hadn’t flown before, either, but apparently airsickness was not in my makeup.
I unlocked my seat belt and made haste to the other seat before buckling that one. I took Leif’s hand in mine, trying to get my wolf to commune with his, to calm both his wolf and his human body.
“Hey, we’re going to be fine. Just a few hours.”
We landed, and I’d never seen Leif so happy. He rushed down the airstairs, and I saw his mouth move, saying something to the ground as he bent over, trying to get his bearings. He had lost his cookies, so to speak, several times, and I had to tell him not to be embarrassed. We all have our weaknesses and our fears.
As I watched my mate recuperate, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My wolf came to attention inside me, warning me something was near.
“On either side of her,” Arne said. He placed his body in front of me while Leif broke free of his sickness and stood at my flank. Arne took my hand in his as three wolves came from the small patch of trees and stood before us. Ms. Dover had already said her goodbyes and gotten into her car, otherwise, we would have to explain these wolves to a human. My guards closed in around my mates and me.
As I took in the features of the strangers, one I knew by heart. His black fur shone in the light of the setting sun, and deep-blue eyes tried to pierce me from a distance.
Bors.
“It’s him,” I said, and my mates stiffened.
I leaned to see my uncle’s face as he spoke. He had shifted onto two legs; his arms were behind his back. “Yes, it’s me, tiny queen. Look at you, jetting off in an airplane and taking over what is mine. How dare you! The kingdom is mine! I made it what it is.”
I scoffed and raised up on my tiptoes to speak over Arne’s shoulder which was a task in itself. “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to fix, the mess that you made.”
He growled and stepped forward. Arne’s grip on me tightened, and Leif wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me against him.
“I made no mistakes. You are making a mistake, Janis. They will never love you. They will never accept all of these improvements.” He spat the word improvements. “The only way to successfully rule a kingdom is to make them fear you. Respect and love don’t last. Fear is the only way to get those fools to bow down.”
“Well, you’re not in charge anymore.”
A smile rose on one side of his face. “We’ll see about that.” The other two wolves charged Arne and Leif. They pulled and tugged at them, trying to get them away from me, to leave me vulnerable for Bors to zero in on the kill. My mates didn’t budge and surprisingly didn’t shift, either. That was what he wanted, for the wolves to be distracted enough to leave me like a lamb to the slaughter. My guards closed in even tighter, their instructions only to protect me.
But Bors didn’t bet on the toughness of my mates.
Arne kicked at one of the wolves, sending him flying while Leif kicked the other right in the ribs, enough to have him whine and stumble off.
“You should be more careful leaving the kingdom, little queen. This is but a taste of what is coming to you in the future. I’m building an army that will rival anything you have behind those walls and, when I do, I will leave none alive. None.”
