Plans Foiled

“Farah, you’re going too hard!  You’re going to hurt yourself,” Dawn complained, as she held the punching bag for her sister.  In the last six months, since they had turned eighteen and gotten their wolves, Farrah had become more angry and aggressive.  Dawn worried about her, but then she herself had become more withdrawn, barely interacting with anyone except her twin and her parents.  Even the company of Eli didn’t perk either of them up anymore.  They had become close these last four years with the young Prince.  Farrah even tried to date him when they had turned sixteen, but Eli had freaked out, and screamed he didn’t have a death wish.  That had hurt Farrah so much.  She has had a crush on him for the longest time. 

It didn’t help that not one boy had ever asked them out. They went to school dances together and no one would ask them to dance.  So eventually, they stopped going.  When their eighteenth birthday rolled around, Dawn, being the oldest, got her wolf, Ruby, first. She waited anxiously for Farrah to get her wolf and after a couple of minutes Jade made her appearance.  They were ecstatic.  They instantly ran out of the castle with their parents on their heels.  They ripped out of their night clothes and after hours of suffering, they shifted into two silver wolves with black fur around their eyes and along their snouts. Ruby’s eyes were a ruby red and Jade’s eyes were jade green.  Koda and Lillyn shifted into their wolves and they had their first family run.  Later the former King and Queen, and the current King and Queen, their offspring and the Princes with their family joined them.  It was a joyous occasion.  It was only marred by a little sadness that Wes was not there.  It hurt Dawn and Farrah that Wes could not be there, but he still had four months of training left.

In the sixth months since the twins had turned eighteen, they had only heard from Wes twice.  King Maxon had informed them that he was doing special missions for King Bousse, but the twins didn’t believe that.  They thought he had found his mate and didn’t know how to tell them that he was not coming back.  Hence, why Farrah is beating the sh*t out of the punching bag.  He was also supposed to be home two months ago.

“I don’t care if I hurt myself.  He can stay away for all I care. If he brings his mate here, I am leaving.”

“You can’t leave without me. I’d die without you and him with a mate.  He’d ignore me, wouldn’t be my friend anymore,” Dawn said, tears springing to her eyes.

Farrah huffed, out of the two of them, Dawn was more sensitive.  She got her feelings hurt easily and was picked on because of it.  Farrah, on the other hand, would shut a b*tch up so fast if she heard someone bullying her sister in front of her, and no one dared to bully Farrah.  Not if they wanted to keep their teeth.

“Then you can come with me.”

“But what about mama and papa?”

“We’re grown now, Dawny.  When we meet our mates we’ll be leaving anyway.”

“You’re right.  Maybe we should leave now, before he comes home, so we don’t have to meet his mate.”

“Yeah, maybe we should.  I don’t want to be here too.  She will hate us.  She won’t want us being best friends with Wes.  If only he had answered the last letter we sent two months ago.  If only he was able to come to our birthday.   I would have loved to have seen him one last time,” Farrah said.  She had stopped punching.  Her fists on her hips as she stared vacantly at Dawn.

“I wish he was my mate,” Dawn whispered.

“Me too.  But he’s not.  So, what do you say we get the heck out of dodge?”

“And how are we supposed to do that?  We’re always being watched.  If not by Eli, by one of the Royal Guards or papa.”

“Let’s say we are going to town, we can pack just what we need in a backpack each, take a couple of our jewelry pieces, and whatever cash we have in our room and sneak out of the kingdom.  We’ll be able to lose whatever guard trails us, even Eli.  Papa won’t go to town without mama, and she hates going to town.”

“Sounds like a plan, sister,” Dawn said, with some enthusiasm.

When they got back to their rooms, they showered, stuffed a backpack with stuff they couldn’t part with and clothes. Some pieces of jewelry and between them, they had thirty-two hundred dollars. They met in the hallway in front of Dawn's bedroom door.

“Have you said anything to anyone?” Farrah asked.

“No, I haven’t gone anywhere, let’s try and just leave now.  Maybe no one will notice.”

“Yes, let’s go.  Don’t walk too fast, we don’t want to look suspicious.”

They calmly but steadily walked down the hall, took the stairs to the palace doors and walked outside.  It was a two-mile walk to town.  They chatted about mundane things.  They waved at people that acknowledged them.  By the time they got to town, they were giddy with excitement.

“We did it!” Dawn squealed.

“We did.  No one even noticed we left the palace.  I’ve been watching and no one has followed us,” Farrah said.

“Okay, now we have to make it to the border without the patrols seeing us.  Easy-peasy,” Dawn said.

Farrah followed a little behind Dawn as they made their way around the shops and the patrons of the town.  There were a couple of vendors that tried to talk to them.  They were well known, and when they came to town to shop, they always spent a large amount of money on the wares that were made by hand, helping those that were less fortunate than them.  But this time they just smiled and waved.  As they got close to the border, they stopped at a vendor that was selling perfumes.  They acted like they were interested as they watched the border guards milling around.  

“What now?” Dawn asked her sister.

“Watch,” Farrah whispered.  She walked over to a group of women and talked to them.  They giggled and nodded.  Farrah opened her purse and handed each woman a hundred dollars.

She ran back to Dawn and waited for the distraction they needed.

Farrah and Dawn watched the women walk over close to the guards and then a cat fight broke out.  Hair was being pulled and screeching and taunts could be heard.  The guard leaped into action to pull the five women apart.

“Let’s go,” Farrah said, as she grabbed her sister's hand and they made a break towards the border.  

“We’re almost there!” Farrah yelled, laughing at their near freedom.  Just before they crossed the border, hands reached out and grabbed them by the backpacks.  The girls screamed in shock and fright as they both dangled in front of the last man they wanted to see.

“And where did you two think you were going?”

“Hi, papa,” they both said at the same time.

“Answer me!” Koda roared.  They both flinched.  That wasn’t just papa, that was also Ruby and Jade’s father, Kenji.

“We were trying to run away,” Dawn whispered.

Stunned, Koda looked at his two precious daughters.

“What? Why?  Don’t you know how dangerous it is out there for two female pups?”

“We are not pups anymore, papa.  Can’t you put us down?” Farrah asked.

“Right, sorry,” he mumbled.

“How did you get to us?” Dawn asked.

“You two walked right past me as you left the palace.  I found it odd that you didn’t say hello to your favorite papa.”

They giggled, “You’re our only papa,” Farrah said. 

“Exactly, that’s why I found it so odd.  So I decided to follow you.  I watched you pay those women to start a fight, and then I saw you dashing towards the border.  Now, answer my question.  Why were you running away?  Your mama and I would have been devastated, not to mention when Wes gets home, he’d be so heartbroken if you weren’t here to welcome him.”

“Heartbroken?” Farrah sneered, making Koda gape at her.

“Yes, he’s been fighting his way home for the last year.  Going on mission after mission so he wouldn’t come home too early and do something that was against wolfen law.”

“We know that’s what King Maxon has said, that he’s on a mission, but Dawn and I know it’s not true.  We knew he was going to forget about us.  We haven’t heard from him in months.  We know the true reason.  He’s found his mate.  We told him this was going to happen.  We told him he’d find his mate and forget all about us,” Farrah burst out.  Tears streamed down her face.  Dawn hugged her, also with tears in her eyes.

“We knew once he found his mate he’d want nothing to do with us. We’ve learned and seen how strong the mate bond is,” Dawn said.

“We don’t want to be here when he brings her home.  He’ll ignore us, act like we don’t exist or worse, be polite as if we were strangers. We just want to go find our own mates, papa, then maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much when we do finally see him again,” Farrah whispered. 

Koda didn’t know what to do.  He wanted to scold them for trying to run away, he wanted to laugh at their naivety, and he wanted to gather his pups in his arms and comfort them.  He took a deep breath.

“Wes is on a mission for the Canadian Wolf King in Saskatchewan.  There have been rumors of females from all the species getting kidnapped.  Fairies, shifters of all kinds, witches, vampires, you name it.  Someone or something has been snatching up females.   You two going out on your own is out of the question.  You could have gotten snatched up too.  Goddess, knows what would have been done to you.  You should not worry about Wes having a mate.  You would know, trust me.”

“How would we know?” Dawn asked, wiping the tears from her cheeks and then turning and wiping the tears from her sister’s cheeks.

“It would be all over the Kingdom.”

They stared at their father.  They knew when he was lying, he never looked them in the face.  Right now he was looking all around them.

“Come, let’s get you back to the palace.  A surprise will be here soon.  You won’t want to miss it.”

Dawn and Farrah looked at each other in confusion and then defeat.  They weren’t escaping now. Papa would never let them out of his sight anytime soon.