MasukAthena
“Useless”
“She's a disgrace to the royal family,”
“A wolf less hybrid”
“She caused the death of her mother.”
“A curse.”
“A fat one.”
Nameless faces whispered around me, drowning me in their curses.
“No, No, I didn't, I'm not” I protested weakly against the sea of voices drowning out mine.
“She doesn't deserve to be a princess. Relying on daddy's favour,” another voice sneered
“Brother's little pet.” Another giggled
“Weak,”
“No, no, I'm not, I'm not” I whispered, my heart clenching, tears pooling in my heart.
“Murderer, she murdered her mother.” The voices increased.
“No. No. No,” I screamed, my eyes blinked open.
I winced at the bright light, adjusting to it as I stood, I was still in Ethan's room. The soreness from down there had reduced but it was still there, a shameful reminder, I must have slept off.
“Here, take.” Ethan handed me a cup,
I gulped down the contents, feeling a warmth creep up my heart,
“another nightmare?” He asked.
“Yeah. But I'm fine.”
“Are you sure?” He looked at me dubiously.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Now explain,” his eyes narrowed, “who was it this time?”
“No one, I'm fine.” I mumbled.
“Right, and I'm gay” he rolled his eyes.
I giggled, “who knows, you may be” I shrugged, “you never can tell”
“Ewwww…. Nothing about a fellow man's dick or ass interests me.” He snickered.
“Fine, if you must know, I just got dumped” I said, knowing fully well he will never let it go till I gave him something.
“That's probably for the best, afterall you're meeting your fiancé today” he said absentmindedly
“What fiancé?” I wondered
“Shit.” He slapped his mouth, “Sara or Chase didn't inform you?”
“Inform me about what” my voice was getting louder,
“Okay, Thena, you need to calm down. Father only did it because he had no choice and it is the best way to protect you.”
I hurled the closest thing I could find at him, “Calm down!! For my protection!! No choice!!” I shrieked
“And no one thought to tell me” I hurled a vase
He swerved sideways, “Chase was meant to tell you.”
“Don’t drag my best friend into this, and what happened to the one who fixed the engagement? What happened to telling me with his mouth?” I snarled.
“As if anyone wants to deal with that temper of yours” he mumbled to himself.
“Really, I'll show you my temper!” I charged at him, ignoring the pains I felt.
“Sorry, sorry, direct this energy at father, I'm innocent in all this.” He whined, running around out
We ran around for a while, before I collapsed on the bed from sheer exhaustion.
“My life is over” I thought.
“It's not that bad,” Ethan consoled, “he's the heir apparent to the Valerian throne.”
“Isn't that the cursed bloodline?” I snorted, “your father sold me to a cursed blood line.”
“Come on sissy, don't be like that. You know our blood can break the curse, just be optimistic about it. Besides, they're already waiting at the dining hall. Father too.”
“Good. Let me go see him, over my dead body will I be engaged against my wishes.”
I changed into casual wear and stormed to the dining hall, Ethan behind me, edging me to cool my temper.
The steward opened the door before I got to it, good he knew not to get on my bad side right now.
I froze right on my tracks, right adjacent to where I usually sat was the last person I expected to see.
The bastard of an ex mate I had, I sneered at those silver eyes, hate filling my heart at the sight of him.
“What is he doing here?” I snarled
He looked me over, his eyes shining with surprise then shock when his dimwitted brain registered who I was.
He had no response, still staring with his lackey next to him as a loyal dog, eyes wide.
“What? Cat got your tongue?” I snickered.
“Hello, princess.” His voice was cool, he really did know how to keep his cool.
I rolled my eyes, ignoring him I stormed up to my father, “you betrothed me to this” I pointed at him Rowan
“Ahh, welcome my angel. How do you like your surprise?” He grinned.
“A surprise entails a party, a gift, something spectacular, not dropping a bomb and terming it as a surprise father, you can't really marry me off to him”
“I'm sorry princess,” his grip tightened on the fork, “it's out of my hands now” he sighed.
“You've got to be kidding me,” I stormed over to Rowan, “read my lips, I would rather be torn apart by a firing squad than to marry you.” I snorted and stormed off.
I ran into Chase pacing outside my room, Sara beside him both looking panicked.
I ignored them and stormed in,
“Thena, where have you been? I've been worried. I even had to call Chase.” Sara panicked.
“Did you know?” I snapped.
“What?”
“Don't play dumb. Did you know?”
Their heads hung low, “His highness only told us last week, we were meant to tell yesterday but you disappeared after the party.” Sara mumbled.
“Get out.” I pointed at the door.
“What?”
“You heard me Sara, out now!” I growled.
Hurt flickered past her eyes, but she walked away, chase turned to follow her but then stopped.
“I'm heading to the human kingdom tomorrow, my wagon doesn't have space but the boot of my car will be empty, and coincidentally I happen to be leaving before the rest of the palace wakes.” He said and walked away.
I smiled, and that was why he was my best friend, he knew me inside out.
“Out, Chase.”
I spent the rest of the night preparing, tomorrow was going to be a long day.
RowanHe was already in the east hall when I arrived.Sitting at the far end of the table like he owned it, one ankle crossed over his knee, a glass of something dark in his hand at eleven in the morning. That was Rurik. Always already there, always already comfortable, always making sure you noticed both things.We shared a father. That was the beginning and end of what we shared.He looked up when I walked in, smiled with all his teeth. “Brother.”“Rurik.” I pulled out a chair on my side of the table and sat. Didn’t pour a drink. Kept my hands visible and still, an old habit from negotiation training. Show them your hands, show them nothing’s coming, let them relax just enough.“Congratulations are in order I hear.” He swirled his glass. “The runaway princess has returned. And with a gift.”“Watch your mouth.”He raised both hands, the picture of innocence. “I only meant the child. A daughter, yes? She has your eyes, they say.”“Who says.”“People talk.” He shrugged. “Palaces talk.
AthenaI made a mistake.Not a catastrophic one, nothing that couldn’t be managed, but I let my guard down for approximately forty minutes in the east grounds watching my daughter befriend a wolf, and now I was paying for it by standing in my room thinking about what Rowan had said.I’m bad at this. I’m working on it.Six years ago he wouldn’t have said that. Six years ago he wouldn’t have crouched down to her level in a corridor and answered questions about wolves for twenty minutes with the patience of someone who actually had it and not just the performance of it.People changed. I knew that, had lived it myself, had changed so completely from the girl who’d broken a bond on her knees spitting blood that sometimes I barely recognized her.That didn’t mean I had to do anything with the information.I changed out of the east grounds clothes and sat at the small desk by the window with my sketchbook. Drawing helped me think, always had, my brain settled when my hands were doing someth
RowanVera had apologized.I hadn’t told her to. Lake had, apparently, on his own initiative, which meant I was going to have to have a conversation with him about overstepping, except that the outcome had been fine so the conversation was going to be difficult to frame correctly.I’d watched it happen from across the dining hall. Athena walking over, sitting down, the whole thing done quietly and without spectacle, no raised voice, no scene. Just her, a chair, and whatever she’d said that had made Vera’s face do what it did.Then Vera crossing the room twenty minutes later to apologize and Athena accepting it like she was signing off on a document.Lake slid into the seat across from me. “She handled that well.”“I saw.”“Better than expected.”“I expected her to handle it well.” That wasn’t entirely true but I wasn’t going to say that out loud.“Rurik wants a meeting.” Lake said, moving on with the efficiency of someone who knew when not to linger on a topic.“Of course he does.”“T
AthenaI found the dining hall on my own.Took two wrong turns and ended up in what I think was a weapons storage room before I got my bearings, but I found it. Small victories.It was early enough that I’d expected it to be mostly empty. It was not mostly empty. Maybe thirty wolves seated at various points across the long tables, the low hum of conversation that stopped in sections as I walked in, like someone turning down a volume dial one notch at a time.I kept walking.Chase was behind me, Amara’s hand in mine, and I could feel her looking around with that wide open curiosity of hers that hadn’t yet learned to be self conscious. I envied her that.I found a spot at one of the side tables, not the head, not the far end, somewhere in the middle that said I’m not hiding but I’m not performing either. Chase sat across from me, Amara beside me, and I picked up the menu card on the table and looked at it like thirty pairs of eyes weren’t doing what they were doing.Food came. We ate. A
AthenaThe east wing was nice.I hated that it was nice.I’d been prepared to find something to complain about, some deliberate slight in the room choice, something that would confirm what I already believed about being here. Instead I walked into a suite with high ceilings and wide windows overlooking a garden, furniture that was heavy and dark and clearly expensive, and a connecting room that had already been set up for a child.Amara walked into it and stopped dead.There was a small bed with carved wolves on the headboard. A window seat. A shelf with books on it that someone had clearly placed there recently because the spines were too neat, too deliberate.“Mama.” Her voice came out hushed.“I see it.”“There are wolves on my bed.”“I see that too.”She turned to me with an expression that was trying very hard not to be delighted and failing completely. Then she ran and threw herself on the bed and the stuffed rabbit flew somewhere and I stood in the doorway watching her and felt
RowanShe arrived on the third day.I knew before anyone told me. Something shifted in the air around midday, some low pull at the base of my skull, faint enough that I could have ignored it if I’d wanted to. I didn’t examine it too closely. Just set down the report I’d been reading and looked at the window.Lake appeared in the doorway twelve minutes later. “She’s at the gate.”“I know.”He opened his mouth.“Tell the council the meeting is postponed.” I stood. “And keep Rurik away from the east wing.”“He’s going to ask questions.”“Let him ask.” I straightened my jacket. “Just make sure he asks them from a distance.”The courtyard was half full when I got there. Word moved fast in a palace, it always had, and I could see the staff finding reasons to be near windows, near doorways. I ignored them. Walked to the front steps and stood there with my hands clasped behind my back and waited.The car came through the gate and stopped.Chase got out first. I’d known about Chase, had him lo
AthenaDami cried.I hadn’t expected that. Dami was twenty two and sharp-mouthed and acted like nothing touched her, and she stood in the middle of the emptied shop with her arms folded and tears running down her face like she wasn’t even aware they were happening.“Stop it.” I said.“I’m not doing
RowanLake wouldn’t stop talking.That was the thing about him, he filled silence like it personally offended him, and the drive back from the human quarter had been forty minutes of him cycling through every possible angle of what had just happened while I sat in the passenger seat and said nothin
Six years.I had turned every stone in three kingdoms, burned through favors I’d spent a decade accumulating, and she had been here. Here. In the human quarter, behind a glass door with her name stenciled in gold ink like she hadn’t dismantled two kingdoms with her disappearing act.I stood across
Rowan's Pov The door slammed shut, the vibration heavy in my heart.I wiped off the blood with the wipes from Lake.“What a bit—” I shot Lake a glare, he paused half way, “your highness, how could you stand up for that omega that doesn't know her place” he grumbled. “It's fine. I hurt her too.







