Training With My Enemy
~~
Westin
~~
My first official day in Wales, I was too angry to do much of anything. I just sat there, seething in rage about the fact that Clovio was here with me. He was the last person that I wanted to be forced to be anywhere near. If I had to spend any amount of my time with these Jaegan traitors, then I would have preferred Warrick, who had tried to get my Rika’s friend to fall for him.
At least he hadn’t dared to put his hands or lips on my mate.
Hahh. I couldn’t think like that. Rika wasn’t my mate. Not yet anyway. She hadn’t bonded with me yet, and no matter what I felt when I looked at her, thought about her, smelled her, or anything at all that had to do with her, it didn’t make a difference until Rika returned the sentiments. At the current moment, Rika was free to be with who she wanted.
Still, this didn’t mean that I couldn’t torture the hell out of the man. He had caused me pain, and now I was going to return it to him threefold, if not more. Oh, I wasn’t going to hurt him, not really, but he was going to wish that he had never met me or Rika by the time that I was done.
That first morning, while Clovio was getting his instructions from the others that lived in the Alpha’s home, I mostly just sat there and glared at them all. When Clovio did look at me, he usually looked away quickly, fear filling his eyes.
"Why is he looking at me like that?" He asked one of the men that was explaining his duties to him.
"Huh?" The man, someone from this pack that I hadn’t known before, looked up at me with wonder and curiosity. "I could not tell you." He shrugged. "He is not a wolf, so I do not know his customs. He also came from the States, like you."
"I came from the states just now, but I am from Germany." Clovio told him, admitting that he didn’t know any more than the wolf man did.
This went on for a while, Clovio getting his orders and being shown the ropes while I just glared and gave him looks that I wished would kill him. I also planned the many different things that I would do to him. The ways that I would make him pay.
"You look as if you are concentrating quite a bit." Alpha Cadwal said as he sat next to me. "What is it that you are thinking?" He was looking from me to Clovio and back again.
"I am planning my revenge." I spoke gleefully, but kept my voice low enough so I knew my enemy would not hear me.
"Is there a reason that you need revenge against that human?" Cadwal asked, with more curiosity in his voice.
"He made a move on my mate."
"Ahh." The Alpha nodded as he understood. He would know what this meant, and how important it would be in our world. "So, he tried to steal her away from you and made a fool of himself?" This seemed like a question and a statement at the same time, so I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to respond. Instead, I just looked at him with narrowed eyes.
There was a slight pause while it felt like Alpha Cadwal was reading into my soul. He was looking for something inside of me that I didn’t understand, but I couldn’t hide either. What was he doing?
"Am I wrong?" He finally asked "I mean, if she was your mate, she would have turned him down instantly, right?"
"Well, you see, sh..she is my mate, but for some reason, she hasn’t recognized me as such."
"Oh?" He nodded, acting as if he understood fully. "How old is she?"
We worked on removing the runes and other clues that the Jaegan had left around the pack’s territory, and the rest of the nation as well. I thought a lot about Rika and why I hadn’t been with her, thinking how Cadwal was definitely right. I had been immature, thinking that just because she was my mate it would all work out instantly.
Her wolf probably hated my feline at the moment, and that left us at a stalemate.
My inner beast, the Jaguar that strained to get free and run through the woods, to find Rika and make her mine, was starting to listen to me a little more as time moved on. And I was finding that the little asshat, Clovio, wasn’t getting on my nerves quite as much with each passing week.
About three months into the time that we were in Wales, the little pissant got the nerve to come up to me and engage me in a conversation.
"Uhm, M..Mr. Westin?" He was a lot more polite than the last time that I had spoken to him.
"What?" I said, but there was no bite to the word. I was losing my anger a little more each day.
"I..I know that you are planning to get revenge on me, and I know that you have every right to do so, after I had hurt Rika like that. I am sorry, I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but I was wondering if you could get it over with. I, uhm, I am finding it hard to focus on my work as I wait for the blow to come."
"So, you admit that you did wrong by her?" I glared at him, a little of that anger coming back.
"I do, and I want to make amends. I lied to her, and I am sorry. I want to explain to her that I had no choice. They had killed my cousins, if I had defied them, I would have died as well. None of us were safe. Still, what I did was wrong, even if I was forced to do it.
I want her to know that I was in the wrong, and that she did nothing wrong at all."
"Hahh." I sighed at his words. Dammit! This little shithead was making it hard for me to hate him. "She wasn’t the most innocent in it all either." I closed the book that I had been reading when he walked over to me. "She wanted to branch out so much that she latched onto you. I think it was a combination of her naiveté and the fear you harbored from your family.
It created this mess that none of us were able to get out of."
"A..are you sure?" He narrowed his eyes at me. "Sh..she is the Princess, so I didn’t think that you would say something like that."
"I am seeing things a little more clearly than I used to." This was true as well. I was taking a step back and able to see all of what happened. How I had actually treated Rika, possessive and angry when she wouldn’t acknowledge me, how Rika had rebelled and latched onto Clovio, and how this boy here was just that, a boy. He was frightened and did what he was told to do.
Now we had all changed, and I was sure that even Rika had grown up in this time already.
"S..so you’re not going to get me?" He tilted his head in confusion.
"I got you already." I laughed. "You’ve been scared out of your mind this whole time. That was it. I can’t hurt you, you aren’t actually guilty of anything." He jumped at my laughed words, but then a smile settled over his face.
"Y..you really are different than I expected."
"You as well, kid. You as well." I shook my head and went back to my book.
For the rest of the time that we were in Wales, I didn’t treat the little pissant like I hated him. I didn’t act like his friend either, but it was more of an amicable acquaintanceship. We got our work done at least.
Some of that work that we needed to do included things like settling the peace when an announcement was made in December. Queen Trinity and King Reece had revealed us to the world. I had not been expecting that before the announcement was made to our people just a little while beforehand.
There had been some riots and protests that followed the announcement, but thankfully, there wasn’t all that much that had happened in the area. We kept the peace and made sure things were going smoothly.
Mostly, I was just waiting for the time that I was able to go back. I had told Reece that I needed to be gone for a certain amount of time, so he told me that I was to leave for a year. That would put it into September when I finally made it home to see if Rika was able to recognize me as her mate now. It was something that I was eagerly counting down to, only six more months to go.