Alpha Queen [1]

xxvii

You guys better believe I'm back after such a long hiatus 👀

A few things: this will take place before Enemy Queen so no spoilers will be revealed! Another thing, I aged Alex up to 18 at the beginning of the story so she's going to be about 18.5 here.

As always, enjoy the story :)

The warm morning sun tickled my nose and my eyes fluttered open.

I was a bit surprised to find Ares sleeping in so late because, unlike me, my mate was an early riser. Sometimes I caught him up before the sun rose just walking around the castle—though I may have been rubbing off on him as he was getting up later and later with each passing week.

Normally I would've liked to stay in bed a bit longer but today was an important day.

"We should get out of bed." I ran my fingers through his hair and his arms around me tightened.

"I'm tempted to send Blake or Claire in our place." He mumbled into my neck.

There was a special event for royal wolves at the beginning of every summer called the Alpha Ball. Invitations were only sent to the Alphas and Lunas of the eastern packs, unless they handed them off to a proxy, which was what Ares was wanting to do instead.

"What time do we have to be there?" I asked.

"We'll be fine if we leave by noon."

I sat up and looked at the clock on the nightstand. "It's almost eleven." I gasped.

Ever since Darcy betrayed us, Ares hadn't trusted any other wolf to serve me. I was perfectly fine dressing myself so it didn't affect me at all, but it did take me more time to get ready.

Ares tried anchoring me to the bed by wrapping his arms around my waist.

"Which is why we should just stay in bed."

"Don't be ridiculous. This is the first one I've ever been invited to and I don't want to be late." It was a bit weird to be telling him this since he was always so punctual. In fact, he was acting off this whole morning. "Do you not want to go?"

"Do you know how many I've been to?"

". . . A lot?"

"Good guess," he chuckled with his eyes closed, "The last one I attended was five years ago but I had been going to every single one since I was born."

I tried to do the math in my head. That meant he'd gone to more than fifteen, so he probably got sick of them a long time ago.

Understandable.

"Well, you haven't been to any with me. It might be fun." I said hopefully.

I wouldn't force him to go but I would go alone if I had to. This was an important event and people would definitely notice if we didn't show up.

His eyes opened and I met the bright blue color that I loved. I would never get tired of looking into his eyes.

"I guess I can go to another one."

"That's the spirit," I couldn't help but smile when he caved in. "Now come on, we don't want to be late."

.•*•.

This year the Alpha Ball took place at the Theron castle, which was so classically beautiful that it could have come straight out of a fairytale. It was definitely more fashionable than it was functional. The white brick castle was symmetrical but wasn't as fortified as most I'd seen and the lawn was cut clean unlike our unruly grass and bushes.