AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ONE
Koda
I wish I was outside. Or touring a neighboring kingdom. Hell, I’d even take a stuffy meeting with my council. Anywhere else, really, besides here.
Caterers, event planners, servers, and tourists have been rushing around all damn day, a blur of activity in my normally quiet kingdom. It always amazes me how much work it is to keep up a castle like this one. The ballroom hasn’t been used since last year at this time, which means either things needed to be dusted, scrubbed, vacuumed, or replaced.
It’s been very loud and chaotic around here this week, and I’ve been a bit of a grump about the whole situation. I don’t like my space invaded, and certainly not for this purpose.
Try as I might to get out of throwing this ridiculous charade every year, the council insists we keep it an annual event until I find my mate. They tell me the people of my kingdom have done things a certain way for a long time, and I’m not in a position to disrupt their traditions. Not with me challenging my father for the throne five years ago. It was a brutal battle to the death, but I defeated him in the end, thus securing me the crown.
My advisors say the kingdom needs stability right now. Familiarity. They need a king who has a queen. An Alpha who has a mate.
My wolf snarls inside me at the thought of our mate. Or, rather, our lack of a mate.
Every shifter has a mate. Their fated one. The person they’ll live and die for. The downside? If their mate died when they were a child, or if they live on the other side of the world, or in a remote village and you never meet, then you’re just shit out of luck.
So, no pressure or anything.
In the absence of Fate’s matchmaking skills, it’s tradition for kings to host a soiree of sorts. In short, all the newly eligible women who have come of age parade themselves through my castle in hopes they are my mate.
I scoff, rolling my eyes before staring out the window to my right. I often felt caged within these walls when I was growing up. That mostly went away when I became King and Alpha, except for one night a year.
This fucking one.
Resting my forehead against the window, I let the cool glass ground me, giving me something else to focus on besides the miserable evening I have ahead of me. Birds chirp outside, landing on a branch right in front of the window. A male and female starling. Perfect. Even nature is mocking me.
I may be a skeptic of the mating ceremony, but my wolf is the exact opposite. He’s pawing my chest and whining, urging me to go out to the ballroom and search for our mate. I ignore him, and he lets out a pathetic howl of protest.
So dramatic, I tell him. The bastard howls again then turns around in a dozen circles before finally settling down. He won't listen to me when I say the chances of our mate walking into this castle are slim to none. For some reason, he still has hope that we’ll find her.
What a sap.
I’ve been King and Alpha of the Laurel Kingdom since I defeated my father and took over the throne at age eighteen. I have zero regrets. As a father, the man was a harsh, unforgiving narcissist. He wasn’t above using physical force to get his point across. My father’s temper only got worse after my mother left.
Incredibly, my old man was an even worse ruler. Our pack was withering, more and more people moving away each year. Some left due to loss of employment and a widespread drought that my father refused to acknowledge, but most ventured to other kingdoms, even other continents simply to start over somewhere new. Somewhere far away from a deranged Alpha turned dictator.
I understood the feeling. There were so many times when I was younger that I, too, wanted to just pack up and leave. Not only to escape my piece of shit father but to have an adventure. I wanted to see the world, to try to find my mate and find happiness.
Instead, I stayed here. I did the right thing, the thing that I had been trained for since I was born. I fought my father and won. I became the new Alpha and I did everything that I could to help my kingdom grow. To make sure that my people were happy, even if I wasn’t.
“Moping again?” Ryker asks as he nudges me with his elbow. I jolt upright, rubbing my forehead where it was pressed against the window. He laughs at me while I shoot daggers at him with my eyes. The man just gives me a toothy grin, the same one he’s given me since we were just pups.
Ryker is King of the neighboring pack and he’s been my best friend for as long as I can remember. He’s the only one who really knows how bad my childhood with my father was. The only one who has seen the scars on my back and knows how I got them.
Ryker also knows me well enough to know I hate everything about tonight. I’m sure he only came here to see me be forced to make small talk with everyone. He loves seeing me uncomfortable.
“What are we talking about?” Romer asks.
He’s our other best friend and is the King and Alpha of the Sage Kingdom to the south of mine. Romer is glancing around, his eyes scanning the castle as people scurry around, making sure everything is ready for the ceremony.
“How much Koda is looking forward to tonight,” Ryker tells Romer. I roll my eyes.
“Yeah? Think your mate will be here?” Romer asks me curiously.
“Not a chance,” I scoff.
“That’s the spirit,” Ryker mumbles into his glass of wine. I glare at him again.
