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“To lead the Moon Children.”
“They needed an Alpha.”
“Moon Children have selected an Alpha on their own since time began. They never needed or wanted the crown to intervene. I know my people only run me out because they forgot who I was, to them I was an outsider, an impostor, but part of me felt like they had secretly been waiting to do that for a long time.”
I shook my head. “They loved you. They still love you. I’m sure there are many of them out there right now who remember you, who remember how things are supposed to be.”
“And they’re probably killing each other as we speak.” He paused. “Mother and father didn’t give me a choice, either.”
“They didn’t?”
“The people of the Court were starting to ask questions about the Royal Selection. I was coming of age, and no plans had been set. Our parents had no intention of putting me through it… I was too young to understand why, so I didn’t question it. In any case, the wolf had only recently awakened inside of me, so I was too busy experiencing the world to care.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“It’s alluring, the first change. The wildest ride you’ll ever go on, and it only gets better from there. One day, mother told me it was my duty to lead her people. Our people. She told me who she was, the White Wolf. Told me the tribe needed an Alpha, and that I was to be that Alpha. I didn’t have to challenge anyone; I didn’t have to fight anyone. I just showed up one day, and the wolves accepted me.”
“Doesn’t that seem incredibly suspicious?”
“It does now, but back then, I was on top of the world. It wasn’t until much later, until I heard a Royal Selection was being prepared for you, that I started to ask questions. Father told me to keep my nose clean of it. Mother knew I wouldn’t put it down, so she let me in on a secret and forbade me from ever repeating the words—least of all to you.”
I couldn’t help but fidget on the spot in which I was sitting. I sat upright and gave Radulf my full attention. “What did she say to you?” I asked.
He took a deep breath. “She told me that one day, something terrible was going to happen to you, and that the only way to stop it was to make sure you were soul-bound to someone before your twenty first birthday.”
“I’ve lost total track of time, but isn’t that my next birthday?”
“It is.”
“Wait… are you telling me she knew about Malys?”
“She told me there was someone out there who had vowed to take you away forever, and that if I went through the Royal Selection, it meant that you couldn’t. I had to leave so that you could be the one to have a bond… that a bond would protect you from the evil waiting to snatch you up.”
My little Snowdrop.
I heard my mother’s voice echo in the back of my mind, and it made my heart squeeze. I felt pain. Sadness. I missed her, and I missed my father, but I was angry as well as sad and in pain. They didn’t trust me to be mature enough to handle the situation properly. The worst part was, they were right.
I did everything I could to avoid taking part in the Selection. I skipped meetings, I ran out of the castle on days when I was supposed to be overseeing trials. I actively disliked each and every pampered Lord that came out to see me.
I made my parents lives difficult because I didn’t want to sit there and have a bunch of idiots fight over me. I wanted to run freely in the wilderness and explore my newly discovered wolf side. Instead, I was told to be a good girl, sit down, and blindly marry some random person just because they had won a contest.
I wasn’t some prized pig to be won.
I wasn’t some show pony to be paraded around the court.
I was the Princess of the Winter Kingdom, a Moon Child, and boy if I threw enough tantrums worthy of the titles.
I liked to think I had moved away from all that, now. If I had listened to my parents and done as they had told me to do, I would’ve been married off to Lord Cyr and… then what? Been made to play happy family with someone I didn’t know and didn’t care for? I would’ve driven him mad and eaten him alive—metaphorically speaking.
To say I would’ve inevitably ended up disappointing my parents was an understatement.
If not for Malys, I never would’ve met Valerian. I never would’ve gone to Earth and truly gotten to know my grandmothers. I never would have experienced all the wonderful and terrible things I had gotten to experience in the time since I gave away that memory. It was a stretch to say that I was thankful for what had happened to me, for the choice I had made, but it was another step towards owning that choice and accepting that it was now my turn to pay the price.
“Why didn’t they tell me?” I asked.
Radulf shrugged. “The burden of knowledge,” he said. “They must have thought it was too much for you to know.”
“They treated me like a child, like I wasn’t capable of making my own decisions. If they had told me, if they had explained everything to me, I would’ve done things differently.”
