A treaty between four kings

A Treaty Between Four Kings

The rest of the night up until the moment when Alpha Gordon climbs up the podium to greet his pack and the guests and make the announcement passes without hitch. Alpha Gordon has warned me to steer clear of other people in the room since I have turned out to be a walking and talking time bomb, and I am doing just that.

Yet my eyes keep being drawn to the group of four elegant men in the room, one of whom saved me the other time. He’s looking at me too, and heat rises on my cheek. He’s not engaged with the other perfect-looking guys in his group; instead, he’s focused on me.

I think he’s about to make a move when Alpha Gordon starts his speech, snagging all of the attention in the room.

“I want to start by thanking you all for making the time to be here.” He starts, but his eyes are focused on only one person in particular. Although our bond is almost gone, it still hurts to see that he is not even the least affected by all of this.

“This is five years since I took over from my father as Alpha of the Withall Pack, and we’ve been growing. Concerning that, there are two announcements I would like to make today.” He smiles slightly, and my heart misses a beat, although it's obvious the smile is not for me.

Get yourself together. I tell myself.

“First is my marriage to Jennifer Archard, who will be the Luna of my pack.” My eyes cloud over, and it suddenly becomes hard to breathe. He’s going to marry her right after rejecting me and our bond? Is this why he demanded that I stay back and attend the ball?

To humiliate me right after humiliating me.

Tears drop from my eyes, but I wipe them away immediately. I turn around to leave—there’s no need to stay here—when I hear the next announcement that takes me stumbling on absolutely nothing and landing flat on my buttocks.

“Secondly, is our treaty with Alpha Hunter Moonridge of Greenhill Pack?" That is not what caused my shock. But the next words that he says. “And to cement or relationship, I am offering, I am offering him Loraine Kellen of Withall Pack.”

All eyes turn to me. I feel as though the best thing that can happen now is for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

***

Hunter’s POV

I don’t like parties, especially ones in a pack as small as Withall, but there is a very good reason I am attending this one. I glance at the watch on my wrist—it was a gift from Preston and quite expensive.

“I still don’t understand why we have to go to this thing.” Kris whines for what I think is the hundredth time. He is the youngest of us and obviously not the most social. Well, I don’t blame him; he is just like the rest of us.

“I mean, I understand why you have to go, but why us?” He continues, “We are not the ones Alpha Gordon is about to make a treaty with, and I’m not even Alpha yet.

I resist the urge to roll my eyes at him. I wish that sometimes he would act maturely, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

“You are going there to support your brother and also receive the gift of a treaty," I answer, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice.

“Anyone of my brothers can do that. There’s Preston and”

I throw him a look, and that shuts him up the entire time I dress up and through the ride to Withall. The ball has just begun by the time we arrive, and I see Alpha Gordon, a young, handsome man in his mid-twenties, standing with a certain Raven-haired beauty.

Killian leans in and whispers. “That is the lady whom he recently engaged. Jennifer Archard. Her father is the Lycan king’s beta.”

The corner of my lips curls up into a smirk. “They are a good match.”

The scent filters into my nose, and my wolf begins to jump around inside of me. It seems that he too has caught a whiff of the scent, which smells like:

“Lavender and cinnamon.” Kris and I say the word out loud together, and I glare at him.

“What did you just say?” He gives me a weird look and turns away immediately. “Kris –”

Again, that scent wafts into my nose, seizing up every part of my body.

Mate. My wolf jumps excitedly, and I try to calm him down.

I glance around the room, checking for who the source of the scent is, until I eventually find her standing at the entrance, clutching a small purse in her hand, and looking completely out of place in the elaborate banquet Alpha Gordon has made.

“Who is she?” I lean into Preston and ask. Coincidentally, he also has eyes on the same woman. In fact, all of my brothers are looking at her, including Killian, who I always thought was not into women.

“Do you smell that too?” Killian asks. “I thought it was just me.

Kris makes a low grunting sound but otherwise keeps his opinions to himself.

“I think all of us smell it, and I also think we all know what that means.” I don’t have to say it out loud for them to understand that we might be sharing a mate. This scared-looking girl seems as if she’s about to leave her heart on the ground and run away.

“She is Alpha Gordon’s mate.” Preston announces, and all eyes in our group snap to his face. “But it looks as though he rejected her or she, him. Their bond is fading away.”

I have no idea how he senses these things, but I believe him anyway. Preston has always been right about things, and I have no reason to doubt him.

I glance over at Alpha Gordon, who has not taken his eyes off his engaged Venus since we arrived at the ball, and wonder why he would leave someone as beautiful as her for the other one. Physically, the girl he chose was nowhere compared to the one he rejected, and he still rejected her.

After doing the hard math in my head, I realised that I understood why he did what he did.

Before I have time to think about what I’m doing, I’m standing behind her, and she is suddenly turning around. We bump into each other, and my arms close around her small waist too quickly. My wolf purrs inside of me, eager to come out and meet our mate.

“Are you okay, miss?” I ask; my voice is husky and dry. I shift her away from myself gently, just to regain some semblance of balance, but that does not help, and my hand is still wrapped around her waist.

Before she has the chance to reply to me, Alpha Gordon arrives on the scene and pulls her away from me. My wolf gives a low, threatening growl, but I calm it down.

“She is fine.” He answers on her behalf. “Please excuse her clumsiness. Loraine can be such a klutz sometimes.”

Loraine. My wolf sings the name repeatedly.