The Hidden Maiden

Chapter 5 - The birthday party

Victoria's POV
After an hour car ride, we finally reached the Royal pack. Luckily for us we stayed near the area. Some packs took 2 to 3 hours to reach here. It was already 7pm and all of us exited the SUVs and found ourselves staring in awe the huge mansion. The Royal pack had over 2 thousand pack members but they don't all reside within this mansion. Only the royal Beta, Delta and their families, with other royalties and high rankings, get to live in the mansion with the royal family. The rest of the pack lived in separate houses. That's the kind of power and wealth the royalties have.

Other packs' Alphas and Betas come here biannually for conferences to discuss important business. All of us scurried into the foyer and up the stairways to the ballroom. It was sparkly clean and spacious inside, and velvety curtains on the glass doors were drawn to show the beautiful freshwater lake behind. The ballroom started to crowd and endless murmurings filled the hall. Not long after, the Alpha King, together with Luna Queen Natalie and Alpha prince Lewis, entered the ballroom and ascended a small platform. They stood in front of theirs seats, which looked like thrones by the way, with the queen and Lewis on each side of the Alpha king. The royal beta and delta stood below with their sons.

"Welcome all to the royal pack. As you all know it's the prince's 21st birthday celebration tonight. Please, enjoy yourselves this evening!" He boomed with confidence as he addressed the crowd, and I can feel his powerful aura radiating off. Both the queen and prince revealed no emotions and just sat there still as statues. Well they're definitely good looking enough to look like they were carved..

The Luna queen with her ash blonde curls and icy blue eyes, in her bronze evening dress she looked stunning. And Lewis, he did a back comb which showed off his sharp jaws and his bright amber eyes. The Alpha king had bronze brown hair and the same amber eyes. He looked impressively masculine in his tailored black suit.

On his command, staffs holding platters of finger food and champagne flutes cut through the crowd for people to take what they want. Teenagers began mingling and Alphas Lunas gathered to socialise with one another. The royal family similarly dispersed into the mass. All I can see is shewolfs in colourful Victorian dresses moving around, some stopping to small talk with male wolfs and vice versa. The clinking of champagne glasses and clacking of heels distracted me from hearing the full conversation the girls were whispering about.
"-is certainly a heartless man. Everyone knows how he rejected his one true mate to marry the late Luna queen Maya. And I don't think he felt any remorse remarrying the current queen either." Megan said.

Yes, everyone knew the story about the Alpha king Ivan Rowan. It's sort of a past time here in this town really. They said his true mate was a low ranking shewolf whom he met during his trip to Ireland. He went on to reject her and the poor lady met her end, driven by insanity.

We only have one predestined mate in our lifetime. A mate bond forged after the pair mark each other will naturally create a pull and thus it'll be difficult to stay away from each other for long. Not to mention the heightened impulse to mate would make it so much more insufferable. Hence, once marked (or marked and mated), rejection would be unthinkable. It'll result in excruciating pain and more often than not, an eventual death. Since the Alpha king had not done any of those upon meeting her, he couldn't have died from it.

Instead, he decided to marry the late queen Maya, previously a noble lady from Spain. Sadly her untimely death from an illness made her queen only for a short period of two years. She's also the birth mother of Alpha prince Lewis. Soon after she died, the Alpha king remarried Princess Natalie Alario, the current Luna queen. In this case, when a wolf marks another who isn't his/her true mate, the mark doesn't stay permanently and it wouldn't affect the wolf as severely since the mate bond is weaker.