The Alpha's concubine (Girl x Werewolf)

Chapter 40/Dinner

The Red Paw Pack's carriage of State/Inner(forest) level of the Alpha's winter palace.

 Emma's POV

"This is the pre-pre-pre proposal dinner. By tradition the bride to be drives to s remote location where the groom has a quiet dinner." Victoria said.

We were in a carriage pulled by, I'm struggling to find the word... lobsters. Giant lobsters. Land lobsters the Lycan's called Acrith. We were travelling through the station's inner forest level. It was dusk and we crawled through the green, black and purple forest. It was six and they had to slow the sunset down for me due to delays. That's what it's like when your the alpha's bride - you can boss the sunset around. We were in a tin can in space so this wasn't that difficult. Victoria had done it, apparently, it was classic Sabrina to interrupt the day-night cycle for her dressing convenience.

"Are we there yet?" Bex said.

"Three miles , fifteen miles per hour five minutes since you asked last time you do the math." Victoria said.

"Twelve minutes then," Bex said.

Victoria lent back "Remember. The Alpha has emptied the restaurant except for a few choice invites. It's traditional for the press to watch you through telescopes. They will want to see what dress Sabrina picked out."

I looked at the slinky thing stretching over me.

"She picked this?" I said it was definitely too thin for Sabrina.To taseful and no were to put fighting stars. 

"No, she picked the hunting knife and the whip. The dress was chosen to match." Victoria said. Adding "Have you thought about where to Honeymoon?"

"Well " I began "No because by that point I won't be here, Sabrina will."

"The Alpha was asking if skiing on the moons of Jupiter would be good. I said you're more kind of a Lunar girl."

I jumped serval chapters ahead. "Vee. I'm not asking the Alpha to honeymoon on the Moon."

"It would be perfect," Victoria said surprised.

At this point, Bex picks up on the tones of our voices. Even Pandora looked over.

"What's up?" Bex said looking up from the palms of her hand.

I take a deep Breath "Miss tasselled hair here as a hair-brained plan about a bank robbery on the moon."

She had this plan since she was about nine. 

Victoria sat up at this, "No I'm not" she said loudly and came closer to me "It would be perfect."

"Victoria the man in the moon, Bank-e-moon does not exist. It's a fairy tale your dad made to confuse you."

Victoria's eyes just screamed heresy. "All myths have some basis in fact."

"Yeah, the basis of fact in this case was you were super gullible as far as anything your dad said". I said.

"Bank-e-moon?" Bex said "hashtag WFT."

I looked at my bright red fingernails yhuggg,"don't bother looking it up. Partly because it doesn't exist. Mostly because you don't have a real phone." I began. Bex's shoulders slumped.

"I'm sorry, I'm more bitchey than normal but I'm getting into character for my first outing as Miss Sabrina ice queen."

Victoria turned to Bex "Bank-e-moon' the man in the moon, goes by many names. Eldorado" . She took a swig from a sports bottle she had filled so she could still drink and not spill any on the dress.

"Literally Man of gold in Spanish," I said.

"Atlantis." Victoria parried.

"Archaeologists found it," I said.

"Troy," Victoria said.

"Also discovered in the 1890s," I said.

"There is a reason they never landed on the Moon," Victoria said.

At this point, Pandora leans forward "They did. I had to tidy all that mess up. They left all this junk and rubbish behind, rovers, dead experiments, landing legs, plaques, Golf balls. You can tell all the astronauts were men, I mean female astronauts would have tidied up after themselves."

I looked over to Pandora "You go with the gender stereotyping."

Pandora rolled her eyes "I'm all genders simultaneously."

I looked over "does that mean you've got half of your self patronising the other half of your own identity?" I asked. It was a genuine question. You don't get to meet a pan-bodied entity every day and there are all these tiny questions you just need answering.

Pandora nodded "Naturally. I wouldn't be able to be human if I didn't"

Victoria sat back "I don't understand you. What's wrong with you all? You all could become incredibly rich."

Pandora smiled and pointed at her self " I am literally the banking system. I'm also the driver and you're about five minutes away."

This signalled the others to start fussing about how I looked. As they fussed I looked out the window. At intervals, I could see the Alpha's soldiers standing aside and looking at the carriage in awe. We were travelling on the innermost cylinder. This was a re-creation of the Lycan homeworld called Den. It was a dense forest but speckled with occasional buildings for ceremonial use. The temple of Mithras, the hunting point, the palace of eternal summer, Achrich - the temple of the moon goddess, the stone rings of loch Loman. It was currently late winter here. The sunset designer had gone all out to make the twilight look suitable for an Alpha-ess meets Alpha romance.

Soon we began going up hill and the trees parted to show a fairy tale castle at the peek of a small mountain. The road was wrapped around the rock like a rope coiled around a barrel. Soon the carriage passed over a wooden draw bridge and under a stone arch.

"I had so much fun building this mountain," Pandora said noticing where I was looking, " Best ten minutes after my arrival. Just don't look at the pebbles in the river beds. They were really wrong for some reason."

We entered a cobbled court yeard with an oak tree growing in the middle of it. The flickering light of the sunset was slowly replaced with huge burning torches being light.

"Remember they will be watching from a respectful distance of ten miles. Stay in character. The waiters don't know either." Victoria said "You pretending to be out in the night you've just stopped for something to eat and you happen to meet the Alpha. It's some weird-ass royal Lycan tradition."

I was struck by how complex the whole ritual was. More complex than earth rituals. "If this kind of Alpha to Alpha wedding is incredibly rare like once in a couple of hundred years. How long have they been going for?"

"The Lycan civilisation was about 32 thousand years old when I found them, that was about ten centuries ago but time gets a little fragmented then," Pandora said. I suddenly wanted to know more.

"Before you found them?"

Before I could ask the carriage pulled to a stop.

I only had enough time to look at Pandora. "When you found them? So they didn't build y..." I said but got interrupted before Pandora could reply.

"Remember to smile and have a look of  fake surprise," Victoria said undoing the door.

"So pretend to be someone who is pretending to be someone she isn't," I said.

Victoria pushed the door open for me and said: "That's right. just like the rest of us." 

********

Thought we would go with a classic this week.

 Don't forget to vote. 

Sounds classy, doesn't it? Sorry we were talking about the Italian Elections - what were you thinking we were talking of?