5. The Lycan King's Anger

The castle rumbled thrice. The King was angry.

Seated at the long table, the four brothers watched as their father paced back and forth, his body vibrating with tension. “Have you any idea what your insolence has cost us? Alliances carefully forged over the years. You have thrown it all away for a human girl!” King Baelor’s iridescent eyes scanned the room as he watched his sons, all of whom wore the same unreadable expression.

His stormy gaze flicked to Riordan, his dark-haired son, who happened to be the old and most accountable of the four. “You have disgraced me.”

Silence.

The King’s hand slammed into the table. Wood cracked. Tiarnan flinched. Lorcan’s jaw clenched. Riordan stared at the wall overhead. Cillian’s fingers trembled under the table. Their father’s anger was a terrible thing. They each bore scars that attested to that.

“Get rid of the girl,” the Lycan King said, his greatcoat straightening with him as he pushed off the table with hands weathered with age. Out of habit, he reached for the wolf-fur of his coat—a conquest from several years ago when lycans, wolves and the beings that preferred the dark were at war with each other—and stroked it.

Riordan gazed at his father for the first time since he entered the throne room. His jaw was set and hate for the male glimmered in his eye. “We will not. You may have killed your mate, merely to cut off loose ends, but we will not follow in your—”

Riordan’s words died in his throat as King Dain snatched him by his throat, his eyes bleeding into black as he sneered at his first-born son. “You are useless, like your mother. I should have killed you with her.” Riordan’s eyes bulged as claws dug into his neck, but he would not plead with his father. He would not beg the man who killed his mother in cold blood.

Tiarnan was out of his seat, gripping his father’s wrist. “Father, please. It was my fault—”

King Dain tossed Riordan several feet across the room and the wall shuddered upon impact, cracking with Riordan’s bones. He clutched his youngest son’s fingers that circled his wrist next, snapping them in the opposite direction. Tiarnan stifled a growl. He buried the pain. As much as King Dain loved to assert his authority over his sons and subjects, there was nothing he loved more than preying on their fear for him.

The King raised his hand, his rings slamming into Tiarnan’s left cheek as he hit him. Once. Twice. Tiarnan’s lips split, and his nose bled. “Fool,” the King spat, his wrinkles multiplying. “I am surrounded by fools.” Their father turned in a circle, looking each of them in the eye. “You kill the girl or I will send her off to the garrison. The soldiers will rip her human flesh to shreds.”

Lorcan stepped forward, ever the diplomatic one. His brown eyes were colder than winter as he held his father’s gaze. “We anchored her. Should she die, we die as well. To prevent that, we have brought her with us to complete the mating ritual before her first shift. Her stay here is temporary. Once it is done, and she survives through the shift, she returns back to her world. Our alliance with the Alpha King will go as planned and we will wed his daughters.”

Cillian leaned against the wall lazily, staring at the mess with disinterest. “We have no interest in keeping the human wench.”

A ruse or not? Neither of them were sure. They might have been brothers, but that was where all of the similarities ended. They shared a father, but were birthed by different women from the King’s harem. They hated each other so much, they had different wings and floors built for them in the castle, and even at that, they barely ever stayed in the castle.

They preferred their own lodgings, far from their family. Far from their father. Far from the chokehold and burden of being royalty. Yet, it didn’t change the fact that they all wanted the throne for different reasons. Perhaps, they did have a lot more in common than they cared to admit.

Riordan growled softly, but he said nothing. If their father had even an inkling that they harbored any feelings for the human, she would come to learn that there were things worse than death. The Lycan King would condone no weaknesses from his sons. None at all.

The King’s fingers rose to the crown atop his spun-gold hair, and he dislodged it from its roots, placing it atop the red cushion. “The first of you four to produce an heir will inherit my crown.”

Cillian eyes widened with sudden interest. “The crown is Riordan’s by right,” he said, but it was no protest. He could do little to hide his curiosity and desire.

The King’s fingers drummed against the table. “I changed my mind—”

“You cannot—” Riordan roared, but the king was speaking and his brothers, the covetous trio, were listening with rapt attention, paying him no heed.

“The youngest of you is a few centuries old, yet, you have refused to mate, entangling yourselves with the frivolities of the human world.” King Dain’s voice was heavy with disgust. “I have condoned your insolence enough. Give me an heir and you will have the crown. Our bloodline must be secured, else the power shift will bring about unpleasant skirmishes.” He levelled intense gazes at each of his only sons. “Our enemies await an opportunity to snatch the seat of power from our race and annihilate us. An heir will strengthen your claim and succession and I have spoken with the Oracle to make this the only condition that must be met before a coronation will take place.”

“And if we all have heirs in time for your abdication?” Cillian asked an absurd question, but he needed to be sure of the stakes. The King was known for his cruel cunningness. He had to make sure there was no catch.

The King’s eyes gleamed, and his smile was one of feline satisfaction. “Maeve’s Crown will decide then, who is better suited to be king.”

King Dain’s reign was to come to an end in a few weeks, but if there was no heir to pass down the crown to, he would stay a ruler longer. It was what he wanted, even if he’d ruled for close to a thousand years already. Such was the allure of the crown. Not many could wear it and not forever covet its power. It was much like an addiction impossible to cure. It is why the Queen Maeve of the Fae had made her crown sentient, choosing only one of pure heart to wear it.

King Dain had once been a good male. But somewhere in his few thousand years, he’d become something truly abominable, and the brothers weren’t the only ones in Avallen who wanted him gone. Forever. While it was true that he was till date, the longest Lycan King to have ruled, it was also true that his methods made the other races despise the Lycans.

The brothers watched their father walk away, his coat flowing from behind him, the crown still seated upon its rest, gleaming in the sunlight. They all stared at the dreadful thing, but they didn’t touch it. Couldn’t. It’d burn them if they did. Trust their father to taunt them with what they couldn’t have.

Lorcan in the direction of the double doors. “I suggest we get the ritual over and done with,” he murmured absentmindedly. “Before he decides she’s collateral damage and really has the starved males at the garrison rape and kill her.”

They all growled their reluctance and distaste, but they knew Lorcan was right. Bed the woman and save her life. The brothers considered it a honorable deed, but they knew the tiny woman wouldn’t share the sentiment.

But that, was the least of their burdens.