The Prince's Fated Mate: M/M Alpha/Omega Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Norvargen Wolves Book 1) (12 page)

“Well, of course it is. First Sons don’t normally have the liberty of choosing their own mates. My father and mother were arranged to wed, I had mine arranged for me, and my firstborn son shall have it done for him too.”

“You’re not allowed to choose?”

James shook his head. “What is best for the pack must be done.”

“But,” said Will, deeply disturbed by this. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be forced to marry someone he did love, and then he imagined what it would have been like knowing his parents had been arranged to wed each other. It was very strange to him. “But what if you don’t want to marry the person chosen for you?”

“There’s some allowance for personal opinion,” said James. “If I truly despised Dashel, my father would not force me to wed him. He’d simply find someone else eligible for me.”

“So you’re fine with marrying and bonding with Dashel, even if you don’t love him?”

“I may not love him yet, but I might come to in the future,” said James matter-of-factly. “And my family has known the Redfang Alpha’s family for years. I first met Dashel when I was no more than eight or nine. He will be a suitable bondsmate, one that I will be satisfied with. Anyway, it would be beneficial having an alliance with the Redfangs — though probably more beneficial for them than us, since we are much bigger. Still, they are our closest neighbours, after all.”

“Does Prince Dashel love you?”

James shook his head. “We share a mutual liking for each other, but we understand the purpose of our marriage is not for love. If love comes along in the future, that would be a lucky blessing.”

Will sat there, feeling slightly disillusioned. To have been brought up thinking of a bondsmate as a beneficial transaction rather than someone you loved … how depressing, he thought.

“But,” he said slowly, “what if you had a fated mate that wasn’t the chosen person you’re supposed to marry?”

James looked at him, his ice-blue eyes casting a curious glance over him. “It’s happened only once before, a long, long time ago. An exception was made then, and they were allowed to marry and bond with each other. So the precedent is there. But fated mates are rare enough that we never consider this a possibility.”

Will’s heart swelled. There was some hope, after all!

“What if you were to meet your fated mate now? O-or, I mean, soon, before your wedding. What would happen then?” He stammered as he spoke.

James frowned. “Goodness, I don’t know. That’d be quite a crisis, wouldn’t it? Even if I were able to call off the wedding and end my engagement to Prince Dashel, the Redfang wolves would probably still be offended.
Horribly
offended. It might even put an end to our peace treaty.”

“They wouldn’t allow for you ending the engagement because you’ve met your fated mate?” asked Will weakly, feeling his mood sink down.

James sighed. “The Redfang wolves are a very, very proud pack, Will. Even more so than us Norvargen wolves, if you can imagine that. Father always warned me that they take offence easily. It’s part of the reason why they decided to have me marry Prince Dashel, in efforts for a smoother relationship between the two packs. Ending the engagement would be a horrible thing to do. I don’t think they’d deal well with the shame of their Second Son being thrown away for someone else, even for a fated mate.”

Will grimaced.
Wonderful, just wonderful
, he groused privately.
Either I don’t get my happy ending with my fated mate, or I do and I end up starting a war. What kind of luck do I have?

“But luckily this won’t happen,” laughed James. “What are the odds of I finding my fated mate in Elkpaw Village anyway? Wouldn’t that cause a stir!”

Will forced himself to laugh along mirthlessly.
 

“You wouldn’t happen to know anyone with a fated mate, would you? I don’t. It’s practically mythical in the Den, and you’d think that’s where more fated mates would pop up, given how many wolves live there and how many new people you can meet every day.”

“My parents were fated mates,” answered Will, playing with the blades of grass by his side.

“Were they!” exclaimed James, delighted. “You must know much more about fated mates than I do, then.”

“I suppose I do. Ma and Pa were the only fated mates in our town, so they were a little bit famous for that.”

“Your mother came from the west, didn’t she? Your father mentioned that.”

Will nodded. “She came from the west, and was just passing through Hemslock when she met my father. She stayed in Hemslock until the day she died.”

James smiled gently at him, looking pityingly. “You must miss her a lot.”

“Of course,” said Will softly. “She passed away when I was eight though, so I can’t say that I have that many memories of her. I’ve been alive longer without her than I was with her. My father still misses her a lot.”

“Of course he would,” said James sympathetically. “Fated mates, after all.”

“I’ve heard of some people able to move on after their fated mate passed away, or even of some bonded couples who simply grew distant and fell for other people. But that’s not my Pa, my Pa could never move on from Ma.”

“That’s very sweet,” said James, still smiling. “Do you ever wonder if you have a fated mate? It’s not something passed on by blood, of course, but surely growing up knowing your parents were fated mates might have made you a bit hopeful?”

Will stared at him, wondering how daring should he be. He felt like blurting it all out, revealing to James that they were fated mates and he had known it all along, that for some odd reason, he was a hundred percent certain he was destined to be with James even though James probably would not agree. “I know I have one,” he finally said, testing the waters.

“You know?” said James, surprised.

“I feel it in my gut, I feel it all over me. I know I have one.”

“Ah, a hunch, you mean,” said James, laughing. “So you really are a romantic at heart.”

“You could say that,” said Will, feeling as though a knife were sliding into him.

“Well, I hope you meet him soon, Will. Perhaps I might even make time to come down and attend your wedding.”

He meant it all playfully, but Will felt like he was being stabbed brutally in the stomach.
 

It’s so frustrating being the only one who feels anything
. He felt like a person calling into the distance over and over again, and getting nothing in return, no response, no echo.
 

If he were back home, at least he could go sulk to Kytes or Pa, or distract himself by playing with the twins or simply burying himself in more work around the inn. But here, he was surrounded constantly by James’s presence, and this gave him both happiness and frustration. To be around someone he wanted but not able to express what exactly he wanted — how long more could he handle of this?

I don’t have that much time left anyway
, Will told himself, gritting his teeth.
Just a month and a bit more left. Something has got to happen soon…or nothing at all
can
happen.

*

Elkpaw Village was bigger than what Will had imagined. He had mentally painted the image of a small, shanty-filled street with no more than maybe three dozen occupants, but what he found inside was a rather sprawling community. It was only perhaps a third of the size of Hemslock, but it was still an impressive, organised village, filled with many thatched-roof cottages.
 

When they were nearing the village, they had slowed their running, and rested by the edge of the woods to give themselves time to freshen up.

“We always go greeting new towns in our human-forms,” informed James. “It wouldn’t be very polite to drag our muddy paws to them, anyway. Get your nice clothes, Will, not your night wear.”

So Will scrambled through his bag, bypassing the thin, loose trousers he wore every night at the camp, and pulling out his more formal attire: a white shirt (slightly wrinkled from being cramped in the bag for so long, but he shook it out as much as he could), dark flannel trousers to which he snapped a pair of bracers on.

As spiffy as he thought he looked, when he brought his gaze up to find James, he couldn’t help but pause. The prince was getting dressed, with Adrian fussing over the buttons on his sleeves and getting everything just so. The past few weeks of running as wolves and camping in light, casual wear had made Will forget just how proper and high-class James looked when he was fully dressed. He was clothed in green and gold, which complemented his dark hair very well, and made his muscular form very appealing.
 

“Goodness,” Will sighed, breathlessly, involuntarily, and then caught himself when James looked at him.
 

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Will hastily said. “Just a cough.” He faked a dramatic cough, bringing his fist up to cover his mouth.

To his embarrassment, Adrian looked up from the prince’s sleeve to quirk a knowing eyebrow at Will. Will had never told the servant anything, but Adrian was always quick to pick up a new bit of gossip, and it didn’t take much for him to guess that Will was interested in the alpha prince. Luckily for Will, Adrian was sweet and fond of him — he had quietly whispered to Will just a few nights ago, “Your secret’s safe with me, Will. But mind you be careful and don’t get your hopes up — the Prince is engaged, after all. But I won’t let a word get to the advisors about you, don’t you worry a bit about that.”

“Mind you don’t catch a cold now, Master Translator, not when we’re about to need you the most,” said James, grinning.

“I won’t,” Will promised. He reached up and fixed James’s collar, which hadn’t been folded down neatly yet.

“Thank you,” said James, chuckling. He raised his hands and pressed around his collar, checking thoroughly that nothing else was astray. “You’d make a lovely bondsmate one day, fussing over your mate’s messes.”

Will blushed and scowled at the same time.

“Kidding, kidding,” said James, giving one of his lovely laughs. “I expect you’d be the head of your own household one day, bossing around your bondsmate and making sure he doesn’t let a speck of dust dirty the inn.”

“Look at who’s the one making up stories now,” said Will scornfully, secretly thinking that that would be wonderful, while knowing it was impossible.

They had marched up to Elkpaw Village, and from there, Will was put at the forefront, launching into action almost immediately by speaking with the Village Head who came out to see who the strangers were.

“To celebrate his engagement to the Redfang Second Son Dashel, the First Son James has arrived,” Will announced, piping the words of one of James’s attendants into one ear, and quickly spinning off a translation.

The Village Head bowed in respect and replied through Will, “It is an honour to receive you and your company, First Son. I am Ardan, Elder and Head of Elkpaw Village, and I welcome you to our home.”

They followed him to the village hall, where they were seated and served drinks and snacks. Will was too busy going back and forth between the Village Head and James to eat anything, though he did hurriedly take sips of water to replenish his dry mouth every now and then. Translating wasn’t the hard part, but translating
fast
enough for the conversation to flow smoothly was troublesome. Still, as the conversation deepened, with the Village Head sharing all recent news in the region with the Prince, Will couldn’t help but feel enormously grateful to his mother for all she had taught him.
 

They were given rooms to sleep in, and for the first time in three weeks, Will had his own private quarters that he could hide away in, that he didn’t have to share with a servant or an attendant sleeping mere feet away from him.
 

“A bed,” he sighed with happy relief, tossing his bag on the floor. He didn’t mind camping so much — it was easy and fairly comfortable to fall asleep on the hard ground as long as he was in his wolf-form. But a proper bed reminded him of home and Hemslock and the inn, and that brought him comfort.
 

“I wonder what Pa is doing now,” he muttered to himself, taking off his shoes and rolling his ankles. “And Kytes, and Byron, and everyone else. Pa and Kytes are probably worried about me, aren’t they? Probably wondering what’s going on and if I’m anywhere closer to winning James’s heart over.”

He pressed his face into his pillow at that last thought. Was he any closer to winning James’s heart over? He didn’t think so; they had gotten remarkably close over three weeks, but he was still firmly no more than a friend, and he already knew the type of person James was: James would never defy his duty to the pack, and he probably couldn’t even conceive of the idea of looking for love. He was already engaged to a respectable and powerful omega, what reason would he have to throw that aside?
 

“What am I even doing here?” Will laid down and stared up at the bare ceiling, cobwebs faintly visible at the corners. “Am I just wasting my time after all this? I’ve only about a month left with James before we reach the inn again, and then he’ll be having his celebration feast — and I highly doubt I’ll be able to spend any time with him then. A month, just one month left to spend with my fated mate, before he’s off back to the Den to have his wedding. What
is
wrong with him? Why does he feel nothing for me?”

More and more questions, and not a single answer given to him.
 

On a whim, Will shut his eyes and said softly, “Ma, you told me that you knew Pa was your fated mate the moment you saw him. And I knew it too the moment I saw James. Now, why isn’t the same thing happening to him? Have I got this all wrong?”

He didn’t know what he had been hoping for, but he got as much as he had been expecting: silence.

*

He rested in his room for an hour, and heard a loud bell being rung outside, but he didn’t know what it was for. A few minutes later, a knock at the door came.
 

“Master Translator,” Adrian sang cheekily. “Dinner’s about to be served in the village hall. The First Son sent me to fetch you.”