Chapter 14

Aurora

My wet eyes shoot up, seeing Luke standing in the courtyard just a few paces away from me. My body is frozen, but my wolf is howling in my head, so loud that it’s disorienting, my eyes fixating on the sight of my best friend here in the palace courtyard, something I honestly thought wouldn’t happen.

Despite everything going on, the millions of worries I have swirling in my mind, I jump up at once and throw myself into his expectant arms, holding me tight to his chest like he always use to, and for a moment I picture us out in front of my parent’s house, ready to go to town and find our group of friends to conquer the day together as hopeful, future warriors.

But I pull away, wiping my tears, reality brushing back up my throat and making my breath hitch. At least he is here, although he forces a side smirk and both of us seem too on edge to speak first.

I mustered the courage. “I’m glad you came,” I sigh.

His beautiful light eyes drop down the sight of my gown, something about his grin faltering. “I figured one of us should be here today,” he hums. “One?”

“Paul, Row and Ann declined the invitation,” he sighs. “They didn’t think it would be safe to come here today, Aurora.”

I drop my head, knowing that they are correct in that assessment.

“Getting a gala invitation for your birthday was a little surprising to us all but it was decided as a group that we wouldn’t attend.” His smile is now a firm line, the sight of him so serious, so sure of his stance, that it makes me cry a little more. “I take it by you out here crying in the courtyard instead of enjoying your birthday, you don’t feel like you belong here either.”

I wipe my cheeks, feeling the makeup break at my wet touch. “It wasn’t my decision, Luke, I just wanted to see you and the others, be with my parents, and have my birthday like we all used to. Jaxson is the one that made this happen, put this gala together, and I didn’t have a choice.”

“You may be fated to the prince, Aurora, but you’re not this person,” he says, motioning to the dress. “You were the girl who feared royals, not paraded around with them, you know what they do to our kind. You know what they would do to you if the prince never claimed you.”

My heart breaks at his words.

I’m the same person, I know that, but I will admit I have been rather stagnant in submission to the real truth on how commoners are treated here. They’re used, they’re beat on a daily and forced to be servants, even for my own fucking birthday.

“I don’t have a choice, Luke, believe me, please,” I cry out.

I catch the sight of a tear dribble down his pale features, running a track down his freckled cheeks. “You have to accept the fact that you are a royal now,” he says, choking on the words he forces out of his throat. “Paul, Row, Ann and I are not royals, so I came to tell you that you shouldn’t be inviting us to these events in the future. Your life is different now. You’re different. You can’t put us in danger like this again.”

I hold my wrist to my lips to keep from screaming at him. I can’t let this outburst free in front of my best friend, feeling my heart shrivel in my chest while I need to make sense of his claims. I am the same Aurora, the same girl he grew up with every day for nineteen years, but because of the chance encounter at the casino I’m no longer allowed to keep my friends.

Because of the power trip between commoners in common packs and royals in royal packs, I can no longer have them in my life. I knew the divide existed, sure, and Xander certainly won’t let me forget it, but to hear it from Luke that our time together is ending; that hurts the most.

I push past Luke, crying harder than I had been when I escaped into the courtyard, and I push myself through the other end of the doors, needing away from Luke, from his harsh words, and from the glamorous charade of a party thrown in my honor.

If I’m not a royal, and I’m not a commoner, then who am I? I run through the halls, looking for a secluded spot, anywhere I can be alone and cry, but as soon as I push into a large set of iron and glass doors, I find myself in a room that isn’t unoccupied.

A group of large royal warriors all stand in the center of a vast library, but they don’t focus on the books. They hold glasses of neon drinks, sipping on them until I barge into the room, unsure who they are and what they are doing in here, and not wanting to find out.

A large hand presses to my shoulder, shoving me forward, my heels catching on my dress as I fall forward and hit the marble floor on my knees. I turn over quickly, Xander standing over me with a large grin sprawled over his condescending features. I wipe away my old tears, producing new ones while he shuts the door behind us, clicking the lock over the set of doors. My heart falls straight into my stomach.

“Well, look what we have here guys,” he snickers, the warriors all stalking closer behind me until I’m surrounded. “The pretend princess is upset and trying to run from the party. I guess she knows better than to think she is a royal blooded wolf like the rest of us.”

A rolling laugh travels through the group.

“Are you finally giving up on this charade?” Xander barks, his authoritative voice affecting the likes of my wolf. I bow my head in submission. “There we go,” he hums, pleased. “I love seeing that. My half-brother’s worthless mutt of a mate knows her place, guys. She is a filthy peasant. She doesn’t belong here.”

His eyes glower down at me.

“Her kind is only good for one thing.”

“I—” I cough, already sobbing in shear fear.

A hard blow sends me backwards a few feet, laid back while I arch my back and try to take in a breath after feeling a kick to my chest so hard that the air doesn’t come back to my lungs for a long, painful moment. I don’t dare move, another blow knocked into my side, my bones cracking under the strength of such a kick. Someone pours their alcohol down my chest, the liquor wreaking in smell.

Turning over, I shield my face with my arms, my bones aching as they try to heal from the hard kicks but like Xander said, I’m a peasant, and my powers of healing myself are stagnant at best.

Someone rips my dress open in the back, the feeling of cold glares drooling down my bare skin forcing me to shudder and curl tighter in a ball. I can’t possibly take on five or six royals at once. I’ll be dead in a matter of minutes if that is their intention.

“So pathetic,” Xander growls under his heavy exhale. “At least she has her looks but I think we need to change that,” he says. The laughing through the group grows louder. “Just enough to make her wish she never stepped foot in this palace, not enough to kill her— not yet. I want her to feel these wounds for weeks.”

I want to barter, to beg, but before I can even turn over, a set of claws are ripped through my back, shoulder to hips, the feeling of my flesh tearing like hot irons slapping against my bare skin. I scream, the smell of my blood hitting me at once, the puddle forming under my body where I lay trembling, spots filling my vision. I need to pass out, I tell myself.

The doors break open, splinters of iron and glass shattered over the entirety of the floor all around me, my hazy eyes catching only a glimpse of Luke barging into the room, Xander turning to focus on my best friend.

I beg for him to run, for Luke to leave and never return in effort to keep him safe, but the room shifts and wolves clash in a group of strong warriors against one commoner. I shield myself from the noise of the fight, the sounds of screams as jaws snap over limbs and the royals pin back Luke’s orange, scrawny wolf.

I try to sit up, slipping in my own blood, falling limp on my side as I watch them trample over my best friend, the only wolf I’ve ever loved before, and I can only whimper at the intense fight.

Screams erupt down the hall where the fight has been pushed into, guards of the king stepping in to subdue the battle, Luke laid out in mortal form at once, bruised and cut all over from teeth marks, failing to stand once, then twice, before collapsing to his chest in a lifeless heap.

I plead through heavy cries for him to be okay, for him to wake up, but I can’t even clear my own head of the chaos and the utter agony of the marks on my back to make it to his side.

I spot king Kennedy first, forcing his son Xander to shift back and the warriors with him do the same, each of them practically unscathed. That’s when the king spots me on the floor in the library, his bright gaze stuck on the blood that covers my body and his polished floors.

Jaxson rushes up next, following his father’s gaze and immediately jumping to my side, kneeling over me, his hands on my face lifting my focus to his worried features and pulling my head from the lake of my own crimson blood.

“No, no, no,” he growls, his teeth clenched shut like they may shift into canines any second. “Aurora, what happened to you? Who did this?!”

“I walked in on them alone in the library,” Xander barks, catching his breath from the fight. He motions to Luke, weightless and knocked out cold from his own injuries on the floor. “He tried to fight me out of the room, but he clawed at her first, then turned on me and my warriors.” The other royal guards all nod in compliance to his lie of a story. “If I didn’t step in, he would have taken advantage of your mate, Jaxson.”

“Guards, take that fucking mutt to the barracks!” King Kennedy roars, his voice making me and my wolf tremble.

“Come here,” Jaxson says, curling his arms around my body and bringing me up to his chest, his scent so strong, so bold in my nostrils, that I let my head fall back over his forearm. “Get a damn healer to meet me in the medical wing, now!”

Jaxson holds me close as he pushes through the onlooking crowd, my eyes faltering shut for minutes at a time before I am able to snap back alive and take in my surroundings, inevitably letting them shut soon after.

I open my mouth to speak, feeling a bruise cover my jaw from a kick I took from Xander and his buddies. I try to fight the words out and scream the truth, scream for Luke to receive help and tell them the second prince had done this to me, not my best friend; not the man I love. My body finally gives in, the pain submerging me into darkness.