Chapter 1 ROSALIND
“Mother please, stop packing these kinds of outfits in my luggage, what are you thinking?” I shook my head at her.
“You folded your underwear wrong,” she announced, like this is a crisis worthy of an intervention. She stepped over the piles of clothes on my bed—combat boots, academy-regulation tops, the single formal dress she insisted I take “in case there’s a ceremony or a scandal”—and zeros in on the small mountain of folded things in my travel trunk.
I was halfway through shoving my second combat knife into the side compartment of my duffel when I said, “If the academy inspects my underwear folding technique, I’ll happily drop out and save us all the trouble.”
She did not laugh, which was how I knew she was building up to something.
She cleared her throat. “So. Before you leave for Norsen… we should talk about a few things.”
Here it comes.
“I swear, if you’re about to lecture me about shining my boots—”
“Sex,” she interrupted brightly.
I blinked. “I’m sorry?”
She squinted at me mischievously. “I’m thinking you are of age now, and you might want to have experiences of your own. You know there will be boys at your academy, and you may even find your mate there.”
“For the love of the moon goddess, please tell me we’re not about to have the conversation I think you are trying to have right now” I stared at her, hoping my suspicions were untrue.
,
She clasped her hands together. “Yes, we are. We are about to have the talk, I am going to be telling you how to enjoy yourself without getting pregnant.”
I groaned painfully, already dreading the conversation.
“You’re going to be surrounded by boys. Young men. Some of them, not very bright. With abs and urges.” She clasped her hands together again like she was discussing table manners. “I just want you to be… safe.”
I stared at her. “I’m going to a military academy, not a mating campaign, mother.”
“Yes, but you’re very pretty. And stubborn. And sometimes bad decisions happen on cots or under staircases or—”
“Oh my gods, stop talking.”
She kept going. “Do you need—”
“If you say the word condoms, I will set myself on fire.”
Her lips twitched like she was trying not to laugh. “You could at least pretend you’re open to the conversation.”
“I would rather spar blindfolded with a starving rabid wolf.”
“So dramatic,” she muttered.
I threw a rolled shirt at her and she flicked it off with two fingers like it personally offended her.
“Mother please.. No! I won’t be needing any of that lecture, the other girls at your seamstress’s school may need your motherly insight to what sex should or should not be.” I said, rolling my eyes at her.
Her expression changed, and I knew what was coming. “Do you really have to go? I know you are old enough to do whatever you want, but does it have to be that far away? Peanut, would you stay back home at least for a year, for your mother's sake?”
“Mother, we talked about this. I have to go, and you know why.” I said, holding her hand.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “You don’t have to go, peanut. You are only about to be twenty-one, you do not have to worry about our lands, we are okay.
We have enough warriors that protect us, we are safe, and there are no looming threats.”
I knew that, all of that was true. There were no looming threats for now but I could not help but think back to four years ago, when my bright pink world had darkened into something far worse than looming threats. We were a pack of peace loving rogue wolves, we never sought to take what we did not own and expansion was never our purpose but we welcomed every rogue wolf that needed food, clothing and shelter.
We thrived and prospered until one day, when the king of the lycan kingdom of Narth decided it was time for war. Two years of warring with Narth, one of the strongest lycan kingdoms to ever exist and still we could not be subdued, we had no fancy uniforms, no fancy armory, just pure power and the will to live.
Most importantly, we had my older brother Rivan. He led the northern faction into the war fearlessly at nineteen, winning many battles and always bringing peonies and pennies back home for me until one day. I was waiting at the city gates for him as usual and when I saw some of the warriors I knew from the northern faction, I was happy, the moon goddess had heard my prayers and my brother was home safe.
The warriors walked in, one after the other, each one looking more devastated than the last and then I saw him, my brother but this time he did not walk back in with his own feet, he was carried in by a boy around his age. Blonde hair, dark grey eyes, blood smeared across his face and chest. That was the last time I ever prayed to the moon goddess.
