Two: An Offer From The Lycan King

DAHLIA

Today was supposed to be the biggest day of my life. It was supposed to be the day my husband would finally acknowledge me publicly as his wife but instead, his wife whom everybody thought was dead just returned.

And she didn't return alone. She returned with a son who was the carbon copy of my husband.

The switch was instantaneous. Everybody forgot about the party happening in the next couple of minutes to focus on the return of their beloved Luna. Everybody gathered around here and there were questions about what happened and how she came back with a son. She spoke about getting kidnapped before Aaron ushered her away from the living area to her old room that he kept exactly as it was five years ago.

The maids and guards murmured furtively amongst themselves. Some of them looked at me in worry and pity because the implication of Lilith’s arrival was clear. Things were going to go back to how they used to be and I'd be discarded like the stranger that I was.

“What should we tell the guests?” Maeve whispered from where I stood rigidly with my fists tightly clenched with so much force that my nails were starting to tear my skin.

I looked at her and she had a pitiful expression on her face. I smiled tightly.

“I'll handle them.”

And so I did. I walked to the hall where the party was supposed to take place, smiled at the guests, and told them the alpha had an emergency so the party had been canceled.

I stood for hours till the last set of guests left and I tried really hard not to think of how if everything had gone according to plan, Aaron and I would be in this hall, hand in hand and smiling at guests. But instead, I was alone in the empty hall and on the verge of crying.

I sank to the ground when the last set of guests finally left and that was when the tears finally started flowing. I cried softly for what would have happened if Lilith hadn't returned. I cried for what I was certain would happen now. From the minute Aaron rushed past me, pushed me to the ground to get to his ex-wife and son, I had known that there was no universe where he'd put me over them.

“And I tried… All these years, I tried really hard for him to love me. I built his pack, I built his finances, sacrificed my nights and youth just to make sure that his pack becomes what it is today, and now, I'm going to be discarded because his dead wife has miraculously returned from the dead.”

I started soliloquizing without meaning to. It was the only way to make sense of the gaping hole in my chest, one that was spreading and festering and hurting so much that I wished I could yank it off my chest.

I didn't stop talking even though I probably looked like a mad person. I needed the outlet but I was also grateful that nobody was around to witness…

My eyes caught a sudden movement. It was a man who was just rising from a seat in the middle of the wall. He made his way from where he was sitting and walked towards me like he had no care in the world.

Despite what was going on with me, the first thing I noticed was how he walked as if the world belonged to him, like everything could be falling apart around him and it wouldn't touch him. I've never seen such a commanding aura like his before and my wolf rattled slightly as I tried to recall his face. I knew all the important personnel in the country but his face didn't look familiar at all.

The second thing I noticed was how closer he got to me, the more I got a better glimpse of his face. He looked like a god, like something crafted to perfection with his high cheekbones, sensual lips, blue eyes, and a nose so pointed it made me wonder how he was breathing.

The first thing I felt was annoyance as my anger got the best of me, “Didn't your parents teach you not to eavesdrop on people?”

He stopped suddenly and he turned to me with his brows raised. When he spoke, he enunciated his words so slowly as if he couldn't believe me, “You really can see me?”

I scoffed again, my anger building, “Of course, I can see you. Do I look like I'm blind?”

He paused before he resumed his walk towards me. “I'm not implying that you're blind. It's just mind-boggling.”

“It's mind-boggling that someone with perfectly working eyes can see you?”

“Trust me,” he replied as he took his seat beside me on the pavement without an invitation, “when you know the story behind it, you'd see why it's mind-boggling.”

“I don't care about any of that. If you're here for the party, then I apologize. It has been postponed because of an emergency so you should please take your leave now.”

“Does this emergency have to do with your husband's dead wife miraculously returning to life?”

I started to ask him how he knew about it before I remembered that he had overheard most of my outbursts earlier.

“The emergency is none of your business, stranger. I think you should just leave…”

“I think your husband is a fool,” he interrupted me.

“Excuse me? You don't have any right to talk about my husband like that.”

“Oh come, Dahlia. We can both tell that your husband is a fool for never treating you right for the five years that you've been married and for running into the arms of his dead wife the minute she returned.”

It filled me with a strange warmth to have this stranger validate my experience and so I nodded even though I knew it was wrong.

“Yeah, he is a big fool. A very big fool. I loved him for five years. Grew his pack for five years and the only time he touched me was during the full moons. He never acknowledged me publicly. He never even looked at me. He never…” I trailed off, unable to go on because my chest was hurting too much.

The stranger beside me only nodded emphatically. He turned to look at me, “You deserve better than him. You deserve a man who'd love you and worship you like the queen you are.”

I chuckled through my tears, “You are only saying that. You don't even know me.”

“But I do know you, Dahila Adams. I know you married Aaron when no other shewolf wanted a drunkard of an alpha who was so crippled by the grief of his wife's death. I know you worked so hard to get his pack back in order and I know that he's an idiot for treating you like this.”

“Everybody knows that about me.”

“Maybe,” he shrugged, “but do they know you enough to know how deeply you care for the less privileged? How are most of the programs you implemented are tailored to get rid of poverty? How you treat everyone equally? How you redistribute your personal wealth to help people with diseases?”

My lips parted slightly, “How do you know all of that about me? I mean, who are you really?”

Because I genuinely didn't know who he was. I studied his face carefully and even though he looked a bit familiar, I couldn't recall who he was at all. All I could tell was that he was an alpha from his aura and energy

“That's not the important thing here, Dahlia.”

“So what is the most important thing?”

He hopped down from the pavement and stood in front of me, “I was going to take you away from Aaron whether or not his dead wife returned anyway. I was biding my time but now, I'm just going to ask you to leave your husband and come and be mine instead.”

My mouth dropped open, “What?”

“You heard me, Dahlia,” his eyes held so much sincerity and authority that it kind of scared me, “Leave your husband and go with me instead.”

The warmth of our earlier conversation disappeared, replaced with anger and disgust at what this stranger was insinuating. I jumped to my feet too and even though my sudden movement put us in proximity, he didn't have the decency of moving away until I did.

“I don't know what you take me for or who you think you are but you're not going to make my decisions for me, okay? You can't just waltz in here and ask this of another man's wife.”

He opened his mouth but I put up a finger to stop him.

“And I'm the Luna of this pack, you'll keep quiet when I'm talking and you'll also leave now before I have you locked up for coveting another man’s wife.”

His reply was a grin that lit up his eyes and made him look oddly familiar. I frowned as his face started to click into place.

“I never thought a day would come when the Luna of a pack would talk to her Lycan King like that.”

His face clicked then and my heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach when I realized who he really was. The Lycan king of the whole werewolf kingdom. The man whose power and authority preceded him. The man whom all alphas and Lunas bowed to. I could feel it now, all of his energy and aura, twisting around in the air and making me shrink myself.

He was a busy man who was hardly seen in public and the invitation I sent to his office was just performative. I didn't expect him to actually show up here or talk about me like he knew me or tell me to leave my husband and go with him.

But none of that mattered now. I was rude to him. I had threatened to lock the most powerful man in Velmora. He could have my head for that.

“I'm… I’m sorry,” I stuttered, heart still pounding with my gaze lowered, “I didn't recognize you and I was…”

“You've done nothing to apologize for, Dahlia,” he sounded bemused and his voice made me look up at him. There was a strange sort of warmth in his eyes, one that settled over me like a blanket and made it impossible to look away.

“And I'll be back for you,” he completed with a tone of finality like I didn't really have a say in it. Like he could actually end up having me just because he wanted to.

He walked with his back till he got to the entrance, “I'll see you around, Dahlia,” and that was when he turned, walked out through the door, and disappeared into the night.

I went back to the main pack house too, still in disbelief of everything that had happened, especially the Lycan King knowing me enough and wanting to claim me. It was bizarre but definitely not as bizarre as a dead woman coming back to life with a son. The pack house was already deserted and quiet by the time I got back there. I told Maeve to go to bed instead of helping me undress. I did it all by myself and when I returned to bed, I made a desperate wish that Aaron would at least return to spend the night in our matrimonial bed as he had done for the past month.

But he didn't.

And deep down, I knew with a certain clarity that he'd never return.