Page 158 of An Enigma for the Lycan Crown Prince

Flora’s image gets more distinctive in front of my inner eye, until I can see her fully. It’s beyond my knowledge how she is able to do that. I just know that she is truly amazing.The headache,she says quietly.You are fighting it, aren’t you?She reaches out her hand to touch my cheek, warmth flooding through her touch.

Her mother used to call her the Child of Light. It makes so much sense now.

Stop fighting it,she whispers.Just stop fighting it.

With her words echoing through my mind, I feel like the lights have been switched off all of a sudden, dipping everything into darkness. But it’s not the darkness of an abyss, it’s more like the blanket I used to pull over my head as a child when I felt scared.

Don’t fight it.

There are little dots of light fluttering around me like butterflies. I follow their trail until I step out into a beautiful clearing. Where am I? I certainly didn’t materialize somewhere else. So, this has to be a place in my own mind. I remotely remember a blurred memory I have of the moment I saw my mother die. I was just a little kid then, not able to deal with the pain and reality of what happened. I found myself in this very meadow, with my small lycan with me.

“It’s the place we share together,” I mutter, turning around to check my surroundings, until I find him. “Regis!”

He is standing close to a forest, a look of confusion on his face. He rushes to me when he spots me. “We need to go back to the fight!” he demands.

“Stop it!” I demand. “Flora helped us get here.”

He tilts his huge head in confusion.

“Your headache is gone, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Your senses?”

“Everything is there again,” he admits.

“Good,” I say firmly. “And now listen, we are not going to do that,” I say. “We are not killing our father.”

“He abducted our mate, he killed our mother, he hurt our stepmother. All he touches turns to something rotten because he destroys everything and everyone,” Regis snarls.

“I know, and I hate him. But we are not going to kill him after he tapped out of the fight. We are not that kind of alpha! We are not going down in history as the young alpha heir who lost control and killed his father and is only who he is because the Council had his back. We are better than that! We are our own person. We have fought all these years to stay in control, to be better than our father, to be good enough for our mate. And this is our chance to finally prove it!”

Regis frowns. His fur is pitch-black, so are his eyes, but I still can gauge his expression. “Our mate would forgive us.”

“Yes, she would because she always forgives us, even when we hurt her.”

At that Regis seems to falter a little. “I didn’t mean to-“

“But it still happened. It was an accident, but we weren’t supposed to kill those humans either, and our mate knew that. An accident like this can never happen again! We are going to build this pack from scratch again, and we’ll do it with a clean slate, not as a murderer and not as a lawless lycan alpha with too much power at our hands.”

I keep staring at him, until Regis lowers his head. “Alright, I agree,” he says simply.

By the goddess! I did it? I just won over my own lycan?

Well, to be fair, Regis might have always had a bit of a short fuse, but other than that he was also a voice of reason at times.

“Let’s go back,” I tell him. “Let go of him once we do. I promise I have something else to give him. We don’t need to kill him.”

“Let’s go,” Regis agrees.

With the blink of an eye, we have left the meadow. I make a mental note to learn properly how to use this and how to further connect with my lycan. This is interesting. I doubt it’s commonfor human and wolf spirit to be able to visit their own shared space and connect like that. It’s something I need to build on. Maybe I can help others one day.

Like a calling.

I have never felt like anything was my calling. I have worked on becoming alpha and living up to the expectations around me, because of my heritage, of being a royal lycan of alpha blood with a prophecy surrounding me, and because the Council wants to groom me into becoming their king one day. The only one who accepted me the way I am was Flora. I grew alongside her and was able to build friendships and become my own person.

But this here, this connection to Regis and this knowledge on how to deepen a bond to our wolf spirits is something special. And it makes me irrationally happy that I have found one thing about me that’s not deadly or some sort of violent power. It’s kind and helpful and healing.