Page 4 of Rejected By the Shifter King

Chapter One

"GO HOME, MUTANTS! GOthe fuck home!"

A mixture of cheers and boos followed the angry chant, with the crowd unevenly divided between the paranoically hostile minority and the worshipful, gawking majority. A small number went as far as attempting to get past the stoic-looking uniformed individuals forming an additional barricade in front of the hotel's steel gates, but as soon as they heard a wolf howl from close by, they backed away, blustering and cursing in a comical attempt to hide their cowardice.

It was obvious the humans thought they were listening to some Lyccan battlecry, but actually it was just the hotel pet, a red wolf trained to intimidate potential troublemakers with its howling.

The scenario was hilariously pathetic, and it would've been worth more than a few laughs...if only such a thing didn't happen every time L'Alliance had a publicized gathering.

The commotion continued for several more minutes, and throughout it, the Fournier twins watched quietly from the third-story balcony, their stances alert despite their dislike of the situation.

Similar to most of their kind, the Fourniers' distrust towards any other race but their own ran hard and deep, and the only reason they were here, suffering the presence of fools and traitors, was for duty's sake alone.

A small scuffle broke out at the edge of the crowd, but another howl from the hotel pet instantly quelled it.

"Wolverine's here,"Aluin heard someone yell, and his distaste towards humans grew. Clearly, the hundreds of thousands of dollars that L'Alliance had spent on its awareness campaign was all for naught, with the way humans insisted on acting as if life now was a scene straight out of an X-Men movie.

L'Alliance had hired the most celebrated professionals of the human race to disseminate facts and get rid of fake news. They werenotimmortals like Edward and Bella. They didnotrequire wands like Harry Potter. And they werenot, for fuck's sake, mutants in any way, and Domenico Moretti sure as hell was no Charles fucking Xavier.

They had everyone from Nobel Prize winners to former war heroes to Olympian gold medalists speaking such truths over and over, and yet none of it had obviously made a difference, if the crowd outside the hotel was anything to go by.

"It's best to ignore them like we always do," Alain said in response to his brother's visible derision. "We've always thought humans were idiots. Now, they're simply proving us right." He glanced down one last time as he spoke, knowing but not really caring what others thought of their overzealous attention to security. It might seem overkill or even inappropriate, considering they now possessed the lofty-sounding title of defense ministers. But as far as the twins were concerned, Lysander's last command remained their most important responsibility.

Protect my bride at all costs.

But unfortunately for both of them, the princess made this an extremely difficult task, with the way she constantly insisted on exercising her independence—-

Something's coming.

His guts had clenched hard for no reason, and Alain's head snapped back to the crowd, gaze narrowing as he scanned his surroundings. It was the usual, or rather the new norm: bigots and groupies, activists and fanatics - all present and accounted for, but...

Something was coming.

He could feel Aluin tensing similarly beside him and knew that his twin had sensed the same thing. The last time they felt like this, it was when vampires had razed their old realm to the ground, and they had been thousands of miles away - too damn far to be of any help.

"You feel it, too, don't you?" Aluin's voice was taut.

Alain gave his brother a clipped nod. "I'm trying to get a sense of it..."