"No, you do not understand," Dru sneered. "But you keep thinking with your cock like you always do. Do you want to rut the beast? Go for it. Just be sure to tell me if you'd like your corpse to be returned to father or if you would like your head stuffed and mounted on the beast's wall."
Aribelle swung, watching with satisfaction as Dru's head snapped back, and blood exploded from his mouth.
"The gentle prince with a jaw of spun glass," Aribelle crooned as Dru's body thudded onto the forest floor.
Aribelle looked at Dru's prone form, smiling slightly as his eyes remained closed. Blessed silence, at last, she thought blissfully.
"Why?" Thame asked with a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose like he was dealing with an errant child.
Aribelle smiled brightly at him, flashing her fangs.
"Because you were taking way too long to do it," She said simply, with an unrepentant shrug.
Eleven: The Hunt
“Momma, I don’t want to rule over all of these people.”
“Silly child, I will be their ruler. You are just my messenger, for I do not frighten them quite as much as you do.”
"Well, I don't know about all of you, but I sure as hell could kill something right about now," Aribelle joked, much to the amusement of the horde. "Let us begin our hunt and feast as family, for in just four days' time, you'll be reunited with your loved ones. We will celebrate our bonds and cherish these moments with each other, for they will warm our hearts until the pack unites together under the light of the Goddess' moon when the season changes.”
"Here, here!" The crowd shouted in unison; their exuberant expressions openly delighted.
"Is this the part where they all shift?" Thame whispered in her ear.
Aribelle turned her head, her heart giving a funny jolt at the openly fascinated look in Thame's hazel eyes. He didn't look like a man who wanted to study their ways and discover their weaknesses. No, he looked like a man who secretly envied her people, a man who wanted to run freely and have a pack to call home.
"It is a tradition for the Alpha female to take the lead on the hunt," Aribelle whispered back, resisting the urge to smile as Thame leaned in closer.
"How long have you been leading them?" Thame asked curiously, his rapt attention on her mouth as she spoke.
"Two years," Aribelle said a little breathlessly.
The two of them inched closer and closer until their breaths mingled and Aribelle could smell nothing more than his delicious, tantalizing scent. Oh, how she longed for his lips to press against her own, allowing her thoughts and trepidation to flee as quickly as her anger did when he was near.
"That doesn't seem long enough to be called a tradition," Thame said as he smiled, biting his lip as though to hold back laughter.
Aribelle lost a piece of her heart, could almost feel it breaking off and floating into the pocket of Thame's cloak. His smile was a soothing balm to her soul; when he flashed his teeth at her, she felt precious and beautiful.
"I am not the first Alpha of this pack. There was one other before me," Aribelle replied, her breaths coming quickly.
"You're so close," Thame whispered, the tip of his nose nearly rubbing against the side of her own.
"That's because you keep leaning in," Aribelle said with a goofy smile.
"I meant you are so close to begging me to touch you," Thame said with a chuckle.
Aribelle's head snapped back as if he had slapped her. With her brows furrowed in confusion and outrage, she glared at Thame, hiding the piercing hurt that had momentarily stabbed at her heart. Thame stood upright, noticing the shift in her attitude towards him.
"That's what this is all about?" Aribelle said, her eyes flashing back and forth between blue and bloody red. "You want to prove that I will beg you, submit to you? We will see who breaks first and who has the final laugh."
She was torn between being offended that he was only inching closer to try to get a reaction out of her and being amused at his competitive nature. Either way, she had no qualms about beating him at his own game. He had made it quite clear from the instant he arrived in Jurot that he was more bumbling than ruthless, which made Aribelle wonder how much truth was threaded into the rumors she had heard of the two princes of Vildaheim.
Backing away from him slowly, she stared into his eyes from beneath her lashes, keeping her gaze coy and unsure, but sensually seductive. She unhooked the belt from below her breasts, slipping her cloak off her shoulders. Her tunic came off next, followed by her corset, trousers, and boots until she stood before Thame and the pack wearing nothing more than her own skin. Her dark hair tumbled down past her shoulders, her skin golden in the dawning rays of sunlight.
"I would be willing to negotiate who does the begging," Thame choked out, his eyes rounded comically on his face.
Aribelle gave him a wolfish grin and turned toward her pack, allowing the shift to take over. Fur sprouted all over her body, her bones popped and cracked, reforming her curvy frame into that of a wolf's. In less than ten seconds, the woman was gone and, in her place, stood a massive wolf, with dark brown fur, icy blue eyes rimmed with red around the iris. The wolf reached Thame's head on all four of her paws, her wet, cold snout pressing against his neck as the wolf sniffed deeply. The wolf barked a high-pitched sound in Thame's face, pushing him backward with her nose until he fell. When Thame didn't move from his new seated position, the wolf howled low and long; the other shifted wolves joining in on the hauntingly beautiful harmony.
With a short nip in Thame’s direction- a not entirely subtle order to stay put- Aribelle took off into the forest with the pack quickly chasing after their Alpha.
“He’s right, you know,” Wren said when the howling was far off in the distance, and no other person was to be seen.
Thame leaned back against a tree, stretching his legs and resting his head against the trunk. He wanted to memorize the playful look on Aribelle's face, the carefree lightness in her eyes, and the natural softness to her curves. What he did not want to do was listen to more conspiracy of how Jurot and its leader were so vile that even Hades himself would spit them back out from the bowels of hell. Unfortunately for him, there was no rest for those who thought themselves better than these beasts.
"Explain it to me, Wren," Thame said, a bite entering his tone. "Because I do not see it."
Wren played with the ends of her blonde ponytail, darkness entering her gaze as though she were trapped in an unwanted memory. Thame's stomach clenched, for a moment doubting the woman he had seen behind the mask of the beast. He didn't want to believe anything to the contrary, too see nor hear irrefutable proof that Aribelle was a beast in more ways than her wolf counterpart.
"My mother has been ill for as far back as I can remember," Wren began in a solemn tone. "I was responsible for caring for my family after my father passed away. I stopped going to school in order to learn a local trade. I was the blacksmith's apprentice for two years, making hardly enough coin to put food on the table. My saving grace was that my father had built our house for my mother, so I only had to pay the taxes on the property every six months. But even that was too much for me to come up with."