Kapitel 10: She is a werewolf
KING GAIUS p.o.v
Greta and I had tried to coax the blue wolf to shift back into the princess, but either it couldn't or it wasn't inclined too.
I waited as long as I could, but I couldn't go any longer without talking to Hilda.
"You'll keep an eye on her? Don't let anyone in here until she shifts back into herself," I warned.
"Of course, my lord," Greta looked at me as though I was crazy for even thinking that she would allow such a thing.
I glanced at the clock on the mantle in the nursery.
Two o'clock in the morning. It had been two hours since Isla had changed into the Wolf and it didn't look like she was going to turn back into a human any time soon.
The wolf appeared to have overcome its initial shock of suddenly being an animal. It now around the room wreaking havoc. It would climb up the drapes and crawl back down onto the bed with tiny legs.
Then it would run around the room, knocking over toys and running into various pieces of furniture.
It had stumbled into the fire twice, but it appeared that the blue furs were fireproof because both times she had stood up, shaken off the ashes, and then continued on playing.
Currently, she was chasing her tail.
"What do you think the queen will want to do?" Greta wondered tentatively.
"I don't know, Greta," I sighed and rubbed my face.
It wasn't likely that I was going to sleep that night and I was already exhausted thinking of tomorrow, let alone trying to convince my wife that their daughter wasn't a bloodthirsty monster.
Greta nodded solemnly, but said nothing.
She simply watched the adolescent wolf bounce around the room.
I snuck quietly out of the nursery and down the silent hallway.
It wasn't often that I was roaming the castle this late.
Whenever I was about, there were usually servants still making rounds. The torches glowed eerily in the darkness. Even with the silver light of the full moon shining through the windows, I felt uncomfortable travelling in the dark, quiet hallway.
It left me alone with my thoughts, which weren't pleasant.
"Damn you, Harry," I cursed under my breath.
It was the other king's fault we were in this mess.
I wondered if Harry had known what the baby was before giving her to me.
No, I decided, he hadn't.
Harry was obsessed with Wolf, especially hunting them down and killing them.
If he had known that the little girl was one of them, he would have kept her and then forced her to hunt down the others.
He would have turned her into a slave.
My father had been killed by wolves, so I hated them as much as anyone, but I didn't feel the same obsession that Harry did.
I did not go actively searching for them unless they posed an immediate threat to my kingdom, as they had been when my father was killed.
They had been attacking villages throughout my kingdom and harry's, killing livestock and sometimes the farmers that defended them.
Something then dawned on me that stopped me dead in my tracks.
"They were people."
My quiet voice echoed softly in the stone hallway, but I was too preoccupied in my realization to really notice.
All of the wolves we had killed, had hunted down, were people.
If they were what Isla appeared to be, they were some sort of magical creature.
They shifted from humans to wolf.
Of course, I and Harry weren't aware of it because the creatures didn't want us to be.
One of Harry's knights had kidnapped one of their babies.
I wasn't sure how the shifting worked, but something was triggered in Isla that caused her to shift for the first time tonight.
Would the wolves sense it?
Would they come looking for her?
Would she eventually want to go look for them?
I wasn't sure how many other parents had to deal with this worry, but I was sure that it wasn't many.
Isla was still a child, she wouldn't know what was going on.
When she is older, she might begin to question it.
All I knew was that I had to keep what she was a secret from everyone.
Only I, Hilda, and Greta could know that the princess wasn't all that she appeared.
Wolves were hated because they posed a threat to humans.
If it was discovered that the princess was one herself, the people would not hesitate to hunt her down.
This situation was one where the help within the castle and the guards that protected it would not stand behind the royalty.
Many were once peasants, who were directly attacked by the wolves on their farms and in their villages.
They would not stand for having a wolf in the castle, whether their king ordered them to or not.
For once in my life, I had no idea how to proceed.
I reached the bedchamber I shared with my wife and opened the door quietly.
She was seated before the fireplace, staring blankly into the dancing flames.
Her hands were folded neatly on her lap.
She had changed out of her gown and into her sleepwear, but she didn't appear any more comfortable.
"Hilda, we need to talk."
"What took you so long to get here," she accused.
"I was sitting with Greta and our daughter," I snapped, not fond of the tone in her voice.
Hilda broke down then and began to sob into her hands.
"What are we going to do?"
"I think that you're going to have to go apologize to the princess about the way you abandoned her when she needed her mother the most."
"Is she herself again?"
"No," I said shortly.
"She's still a wolf."
"How could our baby be a monster?" Hilda sobbed.
I shrugged out of my coat and threw it on the bed angrily.
"Hilda! She is not a monster! Did you see her in there? She was a baby. She could hardly walk on her own, let alone harm anyone. You are not being fair to her."
"Where did you get her, Gaius?" she demanded, ignoring my statements.
"I assumed it was an orphanage, but I'm guessing now that I was, in fact, wrong."
I sat down on the foot of the bed and Hilda turned to look at me expectantly from her chair.
The fire caused her to look like a silhouette to me, which was better.
I found it difficult to look into her face and tell her that I had been lying to her for six years.
"I got her from harry."
"You got her from harry?" she was in shock.
I continued on to explain the encounter as well as I recalled it.
I also told my queen about my theories about the wolves and why Isla was one.
"So what do we do now? Give her back?" Hilda asked.
"To Harry? No! He'll torture her!"
"Of course not to Harry! Back to the wolves."
"No. She's ours, Hilda."
"No, she isn't, Gaius. She was never ours. She was stolen from her mother and father. Besides, what are we going to do with a princess who turns into a wolf?"
"Love her and raise like we have been for six years. She isn't different, not really. She's just a little more than we expected."
"Gaius, keeping her here puts us and her in danger; you have to know that."
"She is our daughter, Hilda. She is our princess, and she is the heir to the throne. We aren't likely to get another one."
"That doesn't mean we should keep someone else's stolen baby."
"They didn't come looking for her."
"They might have, but they're wolves! We would have thought they were just attacking things like wolves do!" Hilda growled at me.
I vaguely recalled an increase in wolves attacks in Harry's kingdom after we had adopted Isla as our own; of course, I hadn't put two and two together until now.
"She stays, Hilda, and that's final."
Hilda sighed and rose to climb onto my lap.
"I love her too, Gaius, but you have to see that this isn't right. She doesn't belong here. She will only bring danger and war here."
"No, she won't. No one will know what she is, other than the three of us. Everything will be fine. Everything will go back to normal."
Tbc
Geschenke
-- Geschenk
erhalten Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein