Chapter 68

“Where’s the newspaper?”

I’m eating breakfast downstairs. Or trying to, anyway. I can barely stomach it. Ansel’s rage-a-holic behavior has everyone jumpy.

“Um, I’m not sure, sir.”

I watch as Charles edges the paper further behind his back. The rest of the staff has gone silent.

Ansel whips forward and yanks for the paper Charles is clutching, jerking him almost off balance.

“Hey,” I shout, standing up. Charles is trembling. I rush to check on him, feeling sick inside.

“Stay out of it,” Ansel warns, his eyes a menacing yellow.

Even Ada pulses with fury. My fingers become sharpened claws, and she’s ready to make a move, but Ansel’s staring at the newspaper in shock. I turn to Charles and hug him tightly.

“I’m okay,” he whispers.

I’m not okay.

Charles and the rest of the servants leave. Ansel’s sitting down, seemingly oblivious to me. I watch him as he reads. His face takes on a defeated, crushed expression. He puts the paper down and walks out.

I get up to look at it.

Prince Ansel: Fit to Lead?

Ansel is the headline story. It’s a major, journalistic investigation into his past. Various sources describe him as brutish, “psychotically violent,” tyrannical with his gammas, and dangerously obsessive in his mission to clean-up the werewolf underground.

But the bulk of the story is information from anonymous sources who reveal the details of Ansel’s sanatorium past, letting loose to the entire werewolf community - that Ansel spent his childhood chronically, and often seriously, ill.

The article details, in an almost play-by-play fashion, how sick Ansel appeared in his interview yesterday. It even quotes doctors who speculate about his health.

I’m horrified for him - and I’m starting to doubt he can turn this around.

He doesn’t really want to be King.

Ada’s voice comes through clearly and confidently, but I shake my head.

Ada, that can’t be right.

But who knows anymore? Once, things seemed so clear.

I think back to my dreams of Jemma and my assuredness that she was real - just waiting for the right time to come. The “realness” of it has faded. I’ve lost hope that she will ever come to exist.

On top of that, I miss my father.

Will Ansel even need an heir, now? If not, then how will I ever save Dad?

I go upstairs and flip on the news. As expected, I’m awash in coverage of Ansel. The polls show him tanking, and because of the news about his health, commentators are deriding him for a lack of transparency and debating as to whether or not he’ll be too ill to fulfill his duties as King Alpha.

Apparently, he’s also now a trending hashtag and a social media meme. They’re criticizing his out of control behavior and using me as an example of his horrible judgment.

My eyes brim with tears. I shut off the TV.

We all proceed with the plans for the class. In the end, only the gardener’s wife and her young son come.

“I’m sorry,” she says, gently.

“It’s alright,” I say, and bend down towards her son. “Hi Thomas.”

“Hair!”

I laugh. “Would you like to play with me today? We’ll learn how to dance.”

For the next half-hour, my mind is calm. We stretch, work on chasse, then he shrieks in delight when we add in a leap.

He’s upset when it’s time to leave. I give him a hug and promise we’ll do it again.

I’m walking back when a roar of chaos erupts in the manor. Some staff are standing frozen, and others are scurrying away like mice. From inside Ansel’s office, there’s the boom of his voice and the sound of things breaking - crashing, banging, and cracking.

I go to the door and jump when a loud thud reverberates against it. Henry comes out a second later, looking rattled. I see the gray eyes of his wolf.

He takes me by the arm and walks me down the hallway.

“We’ve been fielding calls from reporters all day,” he says, breathless. “It’s a nightmare. He’s going to need a spin doctor or major PR firm.”

“What happened,” I ask.

“We were on speaker together, trying to salvage things. I was trying to help him get back in control of the narrative, but he’s…”

“Self-imploding.”

“And exploding. He’s a nuclear bomb right now. He cussed out the reporters and threatened to rip the throat out of one.”

I gasp. “That’s awful!”

Henry swallows. “He’s protective of you. That’s when he flips. I can watch him see-sawing back and forth between himself and Jeff, and then Jeff just lets them have it.”

I don’t know how to feel about that. Loved? Or possessed? My stomach starts to tie in knots.

Henry sighs. “I don’t know if this can be fixed. He’s made it so much worse. I don’t know... It’s gone over my head now.”

“Henry,” I say. “Are you okay?”

His face is etched into a frown and his eyes are alight with nervous energy.

“Yeah,” he says, after a second to pause. “We’ve got this, Lady Karin.”

I break into a surprised smile. “Henry, do you never not have a bounce in your step?”

“Maybe not while I was being slammed into the door.” He laughs. “Just werewolf stuff, you know?”

“Maybe,” I say, raising an eyebrow.

“Sometimes,” he says. “We forget the other half of our nature. But I’ll take the animal side any day. The comradery of being linked with a pack, you know? The wild sort of love…”

He winks at me and I blush.

“Truth be told, I’d take the tussle again with Sir Ansel over the very human phone calls with those reporters. That was the real nightmare, honestly. Trying to deal with their insinuations, and he’s so on edge…” He makes a noise of exhaustion.

I feel Ada’s warm presence and think about Henry’s understanding of both the light and shadow that we carry with our wolves.

“Listen,” Henry says. “I’m going to work on some things to help. I need to give him some space, but he might see you.”

I nod and let my hand fall on Henry’s shoulder in gratitude for a second, before walking back to Ansel’s office.

I take a deep breath and open the door.

Oh my goddess.

The first thing I take in is the utter destruction.

He’s obviously flown into a rampage. Furniture’s upturned and broken. Pictures are crooked on the wall or lying on the floor, severed in two.

And Ansel. He’s collapsed on the floor, in the middle of the mess. There are little bits of floating pieces of torn paper floating down on to him, like some sad version of confetti. His chest is heaving, like he can barely breathe, and he looks exhausted, with a face so sad it could be out of a Greek tragedy.

“Ansel!” I rush to him.

He just looks at me, still struggling to breathe. I stare at him for a moment until Ada nudges. I pull him to me, and he lets me. He lays his head in my lap. We stay like that for a while, in silence, surrounded by debris.

Ansel begins to sit up and I grab his face. Our faces are pressed together, but we both hesitate before we kiss. He gets up and leaves me alone in the room, without a word.

We go to bed alone.

I don’t plan to enter Ansel’s dream, but somehow I do.

The world is lit up with fire. All around me, people are running and screaming. I stand frozen, trapped in the middle of the chaotic mob of people. Someone knocks me over, and I shield my face and head from being trampled, when Ansel breaks through from a heavy blanket of smoke. He covers me with his own body to safeguard me, and then he yanks me up, and we run as he helps push us through the crowd.

Nowhere will be safe for long, and there’s nowhere to go, but we take shelter in an abandoned storefront, just on the border of the fireline.

We climb inside the storage room. It won’t be long now. I’m trembling. Ansel pulls me to him. My head falls on his chest and I can hear his heart beating. I listen for a while.

then I sit up and kiss his neck. He groans, ever so softly, and I watch the rise and fall of his chest gets heavier.

I move to his lips. He wraps me up in him, and we ignore the screams and the roar of fire outside.

He sweeps my hair off my shoulders, and places one hand against my neck, to pull me closer as our kiss intensifies.

I press my hand up against his chest and start yanking at buttons. In between kisses, we pull off our clothes. We moan in unison as I sit in his lap, straddling him, and he fills me.

I wrap my arms around his neck and he grips my hips and ass. We move together rhythmically, deeply. The world is crumbling around us, but there’s nothing we can do, The wave of pleasure begins to crest. I ride him frantically and desperately, arching my back as he kisses my neck.

I wake up suddenly, as though I’ve tumbled out of his mind. I lay in bed, trying to catch my breath, still reeling from the high of orgasm.

Holy shit. I rake my hair back. I can feel beads of sweat at my hairline. Feeling too warm, I peel off my comforter. I’m drained the way I always am after dream-hopping, but I struggle to go back to sleep.

In the morning, Ansel and I bump into each other by accident on the stairway.

“Sorry,” I say, nearly colliding into him.

I sway against the edge of the step. He reaches out to catch me.

He looks at me, and that one look is all I need to know that he remembers the dream, too.

He turns away and begins to walk down the stairs ahead of me, already back to ignoring me.

“Henry’s been up there since early this morning,” Maggie tells me in a hushed voice when I get downstairs.

“Doing what,” I say.

“Making sure he didn’t pass out in his own vomit after he drank himself silly. Holding his hair, so to speak. But, guess what,” Maggie says. “Henry called Doc. Ansel agreed to see him today, and then Henry got him scheduled with his psychiatrist.”

That gives me some relief.

After breakfast, I take a long bath, try to read a little, but then I’m restless again.

I find myself down in the piano room. I procure a dusting cloth from Charles and I set to work, dusting and shining it.

I open the piano, carefully, to clean the inside. Hidden inside the top corner of the lid, I see something that surprises me. I run my finger over my and Ansel’s initials. Ada and I both share the same bittersweet aching.

Then, the sound of a window opening jolts me.

In a darkened corner of the room, the shadowy outline of a man hurdles through the window and into the room.