Wallace, Max, Thomas and Jean Rene were in the Hummer. The redheaded giant had actually hugged the truck when Max drove it out of the woods. Jean Rene assured him he was as deadly as he was fun. Constantine, Virginia and Lillian were in one of the black SUV’s the European group had driven, leaving Diana and Josette, chauffeured by Rob. Jean Rene said Wallace was deadly and wondered what was worse than that. Rob hadn’t said more than three words since they arrived and something in the way he looked was...spooky.
They’d called Max’s dad and told him they were coming. He’d argued with them, the phone call ended with everyone angry. They hadn’t told him about Ronin or the challenge, the man sounded like his was about to explode with just the news of Max moving Josette from her secluded area. Not even the knowledge of the number of people traveling with them eased the man’s mind, but he didn’t know who was traveling with them.
Josette was nervous about meeting her new father-in-law. So far he’d proven to be stubborn, arrogant, and a little bit uppity. She didn’t begrudge him the stubborn, she’d become a bit of that herself, but the rest she could live without. Maybe he had a problem with women. Her grandfather had been king, but Nalia had certainly ruled. Now he was back where he started, worse even.
“You shouldn’t worry so much about Max’s father.”
Diana words snapped Josette out of the daze. “How did you know?” she asked.
“You’re face. It’s worried, but there’s sadness there also. He will love you once he gets to know you,” she said taking Josette’s hand.
“He just seems a little chauvinistic, don’t you think.”
Diana laughed, “My darling, that’s not chauvinistic, that’s an alpha wolf.”
“What advice can you give me? Max is an alpha but his father…”
“The first time I saw Nonakris she was a great white wolf. Bigger than the Lycaon and he was the biggest wolf I’d ever seen, especially coming from such a small human frame. Her muzzle dripped with the blood of the enemies she’d killed, men who had been sent to kill her and her mate. Her body still held the arrows and her coat was slick from blood from the many wounds she’d sustained. There are strong women but never one as strong as an alpha male. She is the strongest wolf I have ever seen, her human body is not as strong as mine, but she is still more powerful.”
It was the most words the man had said and they were reverent words for his queen. Josette had a feeling Rob didn’t speak until he had something worth saying.
“Thank you Rob,” she said. He nodded to her and was silence once more.
“You will have to show him you are queen. It is a show you will have to put on time and time again until everyone knows you.” Diana said.
“Jean Rene said you use to live in America, but the stories that my dad and Max told me made it sound like you hadn’t lived in a long time, five hundred years to be exact.”
“When I met Jean Rene no one knew he was the oldest of our kind. He was unique in that he had human parents, but also that he had the ability to turn anytime he wanted and didn’t appear to age. For a long time he searched for another like him. He was a lone wolf, an alpha with no pack. So he was challenged often, no one trusted him not to try to take over their wolves. One day the king of wolves challenged him to a fight, to prove that he was stronger. Jean Rene assured him that he didn’t want to be king. He didn’t even want to be alpha of a pack. But the king refused to believe him, or maybe he just thought he had to show his wolves he was the stronger. Jean Rene lost the fight, on purpose of course, but that still was not enough for the king. He kept Jean Rene prisoner and tortured him for months.”
“Why didn’t he just break free,” Josette asked.
“I think he was tired. He was already several hundred years old. He was wolf, but so very different, and so alone. “
“He wanted them to kill him.” Josette said.
Diana was nodding. “Yes. But he was set free. He gave up his hunt to find another like him, formed a pack of his own, but was hunted by Thomas’s cousin Alfred Wolfe relentless until he was forced to leave France. You see, Jean Rene was legend or rather Jean Rene de Laurent was. He was able to live among the people with his named whispered to children at night as a fairytale because he was as old as time. No one thought he was the legend, just a man who’d taken the name.”
“So he moved to America and mated with you. Was it love at first sight?”
Josette turned in her seat; ready to become one with the story. A living, breathing, fairy-tale princess in the seat beside her. It was like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty telling their tales.
“Yes, I was drawn to him as soon as I saw him. I wanted to touch him and breathe in his scent. I wanted to run my fingers through his beautiful black hair.” Diana laughed at Josette who was nodding her head. She was the same way with Max. “I was just as alone as Jean Claude, but there was nothing unique about me. I wasn’t a werewolf and I wasn’t immortal. I lived alone after my mother died. I had friends but I wasn’t very social. I was a career woman. Josette looked at Diana confused now...career woman?
It wasn’t five hundred years ago that the Sun Wolf and White Queen found each other it was only thirty. What the hell.
“How is that possible?” Josette asked.
Diana shrugged her shoulders. “I have no idea. The European wolves know us but the American wolves do not. I think my part to play was just added to an existing story after I convinced Jean Rene to go back to Europe and declare himself king of all wolves.
“But you’re Nonakris, why did you want him to be king.”
“I didn’t know it at the time. I was an American who had fallen in love with an ancient mythological creature. Shortly after he bit me and before my first transformation he told me about the European werewolves, and Alfred Wolfe tactics, between the power plays of the two, they were putting the secret of the wolf in great danger, much like Ronin is doing now. I told Jean Rene it was his duty to be king. Hell, I told him he was the one true rightful king of werewolves.”
“When did you learn different?”
Diana laughed at the memory, “An old woman told me,” she said nodding at Josette’s look of disbelief. “Jean Rene had just won his first and only challenge as king of the wolves; we’d passed new laws and decided to tour the entire country to let the people see their new king and his queen. We were attacked on one of the stops and two giant wolves saved us from a dozen Wolfe Hunters. We were completely surrounded by twelve men. I was eight months pregnant and had an arrow sticking out of my shoulder from the fight the night before. I told Jean Rene to take the arrow out of my shoulder. We stood together ready to fight to the death when my wolves showed up, but they were not alone. Two wolves, as big as the largest horse, came out of the woods. The hunters didn’t even try to fight, they turned and ran.”
“I love that story,” Rob said from the front. Diana smiled and continued. “We had our first fight the night before. I’d clawed Jean Rene’s face in a fit of anger because he’d ordered me to stay out of the fight.”
“So you fought him, like me and Max, eight months pregnant?”
Diana leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “There are more ways to get us to submit that are more...pleasurable.”
“Oh,” Josette said. Her face the color of a barn.
Diana winked at her and leaned back in her seat. “Anyway, we continued with our tour and visited the oldest werewolf village in existence, a line almost as old as Jean Rene. It was there that an old woman, the grandmother of the local pack leader, told us the story of Geri and Freki and their child that Odin made human and her werewolf guardian.”
“Do you have any other children beside Geri?”
“She is one of a trio,” she said, “Thomas and Alexis are her brothers.”
“So Geri is your...heir,” Josette said searching for the right word.
“Yes, she is the next Nonakris. I gave birth in wolf form on a blue moon eclipse. The boys were born pups, the girl a human.
”
Lupa (Second Edition) Page 28