by Alexia Purdy
Lilliana
A movement caught my eye from a darkened alleyway at my right. I clutched my useless, soaked jacket and scurried past the ominous opening, hoping to avoid any unwanted attention. The city was no place to wander at night. Especially for a girl like me. Even the humans were smart enough to stay indoors and out of the desolate avenues, crooks and crannies of the city, especially when the dark skies poured out endless rain.
“Hey.” A voice hit me from behind, and I craned my neck around to get a peek without stopping. The stranger wore a dark rain jacket with a hood that completely covered his face. Perfect. “Hey, lady, don’t I know you? I do, don’t I?”
“No. I don’t think so,” I hollered back and sped up, crossing the street and stepping into a curbside river of dirty city water. I gasped as the freezing liquid hit my skin and soaked through my socks and shoes. I’d have to dry them out somehow, if I could even find a dry enough place. Every doorway, every staircase I passed was locked up tight for the night. If I came across any viable shelters, it would be a blessing. The way things were looking, I was going to shrivel up and die from pneumonia before anything good happened.
“Wait! I do know you! Just hold up there, lady!” The man yelled at my back, echoing closer than ever.
My heart raced in a panic. Could I risk a confrontation with someone? I was frozen to my marrow and exhausted. It wasn’t faring well for a fight in these conditions.
His steps crept closer. I could still hear him through the raindrops and my thumping heart.
Shoot!
“I’m sorry, I’m really in a terrible rush—” My body jerked back as the words left my lips and he grasped my jacket, giving it a good, hard tug.
“I’m talking to you! Don’t you know it’s rude to ignore someone?” A haughty chuckle escaped the man’s throat as I managed to peer up through the hard rain slamming into my face. I was sprawled onto my knees as he pulled me to the ground. Stupid jerk!
“What the hell is your problem?” I barked at him, jumping to my feet and backing up enough to pull out one of the weapons secured to my belt: two short baton sticks. They weren’t my favorite weapons, but they’d been the only ones I’d been able to grab before they tossed me out of the ArcKnight palace.
The man was two heads taller than me and showed off his shiny grill as he threw me a menacing smirk. He was out here to cause trouble, nothing more.
I cracked my neck, readying for the struggle. At least it would warm me up in this icy rain.
“Got yourself some pretty sticks, I see.” He swatted at one of my arms, smacking the back of my hand hard. It stung enough I stepped back, taking in a quick sniff of wet, earthy air.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” I jolted forward, swinging my arm in a full arc to slam one of my batons against his temple. The satisfying crack and his subsequent stumble felt incredible. It'd been weeks since I’d actually sparred with someone, but a street fight would definitely do the trick to oil up my skills.
Before he could recover, I kicked his thigh with the heel of my boot, right where the muscle would spasm and give, bringing the giant man crashing to the ground. I miscalculated a spin kick toward his face by a millisecond and joined him on the ground as he grabbed my ankle and pulled me off my feet.
My breath rushed from my lungs as I slammed against the concrete. The smell of rancid garbage, weeks-old leftovers and whatever else strewn across the alleyway filled my nostrils as stars sprayed across my vision. Staring up into the darkened, cloudy night sky, I considered calling my wolf forward. I hated shifting to fight a human, and this man was nothing more than a mere mortal, but he had almost over two hundred pounds plus a few feet on me. Even with his clumsy, oversized body, he was faster than I’d given him credit for. He’d bested me with nothing more than a mere snatch of my legs. If things didn’t turn in my favor, I wouldn’t have any other choice.
“Shit,” I muttered. I shut my mouth and eyes as the pouring rain assaulted my face. I coughed and sputtered, blinking to try and stay focused on my assailant.
His darkened eyes—colorless in the washed-out night—narrowed, followed by a sinister grin.
“That’s right. Stay down, bitch. Just the way I like my women.”
I lifted my leg with a snapping jerk, kneeing him in the balls and bringing his body, now crouched over me, falling into a massive heap, pinning me down.
He exhaled a rumbling complaint that shook my chest as I struggled to breathe under his weight. The behemoth wasn’t rolling off me anytime soon, for the pain and subsequent collapse had angered him even more. If I didn’t get out of this precarious wedge, I’d be more than just breathless.
I resorted to smacking his face with my fists in rapid succession.
“Get the hell off me!”
“You bitch! You’ll pay for that!” His acrid breath filled my nostrils, adding to my discomfort.
Thwack!
A loud crack resonated near my face right before the jerk went slack. Great. A freak ice storm hail ball must’ve hit him right in the head or something. Now there’d be no way I could roll him off me before I’d pass out from lack of oxygen.
Death by suffocation via squashing. What a way to go.
I wondered what the people who found us would say. Both dead in the alleyway come morning light, one by hail, one by suffocation. I could see the headline now: Former Princess Dead from Suffocation, Buried Under Giant Assailant Killed by Freak Storm. She shall be missed, yada, yada, yada. Yeah… I don’t think so.
“Give me a break!” I yelled as loudly as I could, but my chest was burning with a thousand tiny prickling spasms with each shortened breath. I pounded on the guy, shoved and bucked to no avail.
The next second, a rush of freezing air encircled me as the weight of the man fell away to the side. Another man in a drenched hooded jacket now stood over the body of the would-be rapist creep. I took the opportunity to crawl away and use the nearby building wall to lean against as I caught my breath. My batons were somewhere in the wreck of the alleyway, but I couldn’t even concentrate enough to try and find them. Almost suffocating was no walk in the park.
“You all right?” The new guy didn’t approach but waited to see how I would react. How nice of him. He was probably waiting for me to catch my breath to ask me for something obscene. Like that was going to happen. I’d die before any man could do anything to me, and I’d make sure he’d pay for it dearly.
“I’m all right.” I barely managed to speak above a whisper before another cycle of violent coughing arrested my efforts.
“You don’t look all right. Royalty shouldn’t roam the city unescorted, especially during violent downpours.”
I scoffed at his rough voice and made the mistake of taking my eyes off the guy as I kept trying to inhale without pain. When I looked back up, I found nothing. I darted my eyes across the alley, but the culprit intruding on my destitute mood was now nowhere to be seen.
“Who are you?” I called out into the storm, my chest slowly recovering from the assault. A rumble of thunder swallowed my thin voice before I could finish my question. Still, squeezing my eyelids closer together to avoid the stinging rain, I kept searching for the stranger.
A rush of air pushed at me as a figure dropped in from above, landing quietly into a nearby puddle of water. Crouching, he slowly straightened and peered at me from underneath his hooded jacket. The man was not much taller than I was, but with his broad shoulders and meaty frame, he could easily take me down without much effort.
Unless I shifted. Then he’d have a beast to reckon with.
In a quickened flash, the stranger closed the distance between us until our noses were millimeters from touching.
I gasped.
“Princesses don’t belong lost in the rain… in the darkness.”
“I’m not… royalty. Not anymore.” I let out a long breath, feeling a wave of sadness contrast with the warm ripple he’d evoked within me. His face was barely visible under the dim s
treetlamps. The enticing angles I could make out led to a pair of dark, stormy sea-blue eyes presenting an infinite abyss as they reflected the scant light. His irises emitted a dull glow from within, making their own eerie auras. I held my breath, stunned.
“I don’t know what you mean, Princess. Once royalty, always royalty.”
He pulled his hood back to allow me to see his face as he lowered his head and eyes to the ground in a show of submission and courtesy. He had dark black hair cropped close to his scalp on the sides and longer on top. His light olive complexion gleamed with raindrops that sat on the short stubble lining his chin and cheeks.
I relaxed, realizing he was a guard. I didn’t know if he was ArcKnight, but he didn’t appear to want to attack me. He could be MarkTier pack for all I knew, but his gestures were those of a subservient royal guard. I was less than deserving of this cordial treatment. I was less than zero now. Apparently, he didn’t yet know about my banishment.
“You haven’t heard, have you?”
Confusion spilled across his features. “I’m sorry, m’lady. I do not know what you mean. I’m a perimeter guard. I rarely enter the MarkTier palace grounds.”
So he was MarkTier. His eyes glided up to my face. If he knew now what I meant, he didn’t say it. Maybe he wanted me to say it. He was just like a good royal guard dog. No questioning anything the royals did. At least he’d had no orders to extinguish the banished ArcKnight princess. What a relief.
But who had told him to help me? My confusion felt like a rock in my stomach. Great.
I frowned, pressing my lips tight. I hated this. To say it out loud made the cut deeper than it already was. I was glad my new tears disappeared into the droplets of rain sliding down my cheeks. If I were still a royal, I would reprimand him for embarrassing me. But I wasn’t. And I’d never be one again.
“I’ve been banished,” I whispered, but I knew he heard me. I spun on my feet and walked away, the words still bitter on my tongue. I didn’t want to see the look of pity he’d give me now that I’d told him the reason for my unusual appearance beyond the gates of my palace. I had nowhere to go. No money, nothing. I’d been put out with the clothes on my back and one bag of possessions. My walk of shame through the kingdom and out the gates into the middle of the night was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Even so, I was determined to make it, no matter what.
A hand clasped over my shoulder, and I whirled around, a guttural rumble emitting from my throat from the morph I was holding back. It wasn’t wise of him to startle a shifter. I knew my eyes would startle anyone not of my world, but my unusual, yellowed eyes and the fangs growing from my jaw as I let the shift change my features should have been enough to scare anyone to bits. Not him. He let his arm drop to his side as he watched me fight the morph.
There was no fear in his stormy blue eyes. In fact, there were no emotions betraying his feelings at all. Just like a good soldier. His lack of response stifled the fire increasing in my veins and readying me to fight. Deflated, I let go of my wolf magic and let my human side slip back on.
Exhaling deep breaths into the night air, I closed my eyes and tilted my head back.
“Leave me alone.” Tears kept coming, and I wanted to drown in them.
“M’lady, I cannot leave you here alone. It’s not safe.”
I whipped my eyes open and glared at him. “I told you I was banished. You can stop with the formalities and get. I don’t have time to waste on a pathetic royal guard. Especially a MarkTier. I'm okay on my own.”
“If you come with me, I know a safe place where you can get out of the rain and get warm.”
I laughed. It came out more hysterical than I intended, but I was not in a mood to keep it together any longer. The fact that he offered me any shelter at all, most likely his home, was gracious, yet the knowledge that it was most likely on ArcKnight territory made the offer even more bittersweet. I was banished not only from the royal ArcKnight palace but from lingering on any of the pack’s territories, which included a substantial chunk of the city.
I was truly alone now.
“You’d be punished for harboring a non-citizen… a traitor like me. I can’t. You know I can’t.”
He held out his hand. It glistened with water, for he was soaked to the bone, just like me. The cold rain didn’t affect him at all. I was the one shivering and on the verge of hypothermia, and yet he waited patiently.
“It’s beyond the ArcKnight border. I promise.” His eyes gleamed in the momentary moonlight sneaking past the storm clouds above. They were breathtaking and unusual. I’d never seen another shifter with eyes like his.
It may be beyond the ArcKnight stronghold, but they weren’t the only pack ruling the city.
“But the MarkTiers….”
“They have no jurisdiction there either.”
Staring at him in disbelief, I let my eyes linger on his for an eternal moment. His offer brought more questions to my mind than anything else. Even so, there was something there that held me in a trance and beckoned me to follow. Taken in by that hypnotizing cobalt sea, I reached out, accepted his hand and let him lead me through the murky city paths I’d never trodden, deeper into the unknown.
This place was now my new home, and it was nothing but strange and frightening.
But what choice did I have?
Chapter Three