Shocking doesn’t cover it. The image is burned into my memory, seared into my eyes, of my future wife, again naked, again fierce, and threatening me. And should I be disgusted? Upset? Challenged and angry? Yes.

But I am none of those things.

As sick as I am, I am more alive than I have ever been. Liana is like a fire in human, well lioness, form.

She doesn’t ask questions without her beautiful face demanding that you answer and answer well. I’ve never met such a creature in all my life. It’s not that she’s a lion. I’ve known many. Bull-headed, and stubborn, and not always quick of wit.

But Liana is none of those things. She is a changeling from her realm, the wit of a wolf matched with the strength of courage the lions are known for. The coldness and calculating woman of my kind, wily creatures, they manipulate at every turn having worked quietly within a pack for rank, for order. Using their cunning, they will maneuver so subtly, that you don’t know they are there until the glowing eyes are right upon you.

The lions, and seeing Liana, I now know, have no such order. True, they have their king and queen, but everything else is left for challenge, and every order is shuffled based on strength. She would be their queen of queens. My mother had already said as much.

And she’s giving that all up and for what? A wounded rogue wolf?

She’s either insane, or pressured into the union.

I’m half tempted to tell them to forget it. That it’s not fair to someone as destined as she, but the thought leaves as soon as it comes. To let go of such a flame after only finding it? Nay, I don’t think I’m nearly strong enough for that. Liana is far too tempting to simply give away.

And she still assumes I will do the lion rituals. Hold true to their way. Liana has said she thinks that I will challenge her father. She tells me to fight her king, her kin, without holding back.

Before, I’d been too cool-headed, far too clear of thought to even imagine such a challenge, but now, seeing her, and hearing her words to not hold back---she’d called me husband--- but little does she know, after seeing her even the first time, after the memory surfaced of her at the pond, I’d fight a thousand lions without holding back. Just to have that tilted chin jut at me in defiance once more, I’d challenge her king for that alone.

My family will never understand, so what I do tonight, I do in secret. They’d already negotiated that there would be no ritual for Liana’s hand, but this is because of Katarina.

If she risked it all for our betrothal, and I failed her, maybe my challenge now will pay it back. Win. Lose. Or draw.

Only there will be no draw.

The king will kill me, or I will have her hand. It is as simple as that.

I dress, careful of my wounds, all the while in a daze at the prospect of a future that is for once not planned perfectly, not laid out before me. Tonight, I leave my realm and everything that’s there, possibly for the last time.

But first, politics. I have to meet with our leaders of the individual packs. I need to assure them that my father, the black wolf, has not lost his mind.

Our southern borders, secure, never infiltrated before, are now being open wide to…lions.

Lions who cry not wolf, but man! Hunters, they say.

Wolves are a suspicious kind of people. None of this will settle lightly, and my father is now away once again in a southern village, handling disputes over missing wolves.

He’s had to help them investigate the truth of this claim.

I cringe to think of my people’s heads in wolf form lining some human’s wall in some hunting lodge. Used to, those were our stories to tell around the camp fire, ghost stories almost, fairy tales, but gruesome ones. A little wolf in red just trying to see her sick grandmother, who’s tricked by a hunter.

But more than humans, there is rivalry that goes ages deep between the wolves and lions. Under my father’s rule and the king lion, we have had peace for nearly a century where once there was great war.

A war that all but ended the bears who live further north.

There might be none left. We’ve not even seen a bear, not truly, in over fifty years. Some say they quietly sank into a word we must never utter: extinction. To think it alone brings a chill to my heart.

But now with Liana, understandably, the wolves are going to be very upset to see our traditions tossed to the side. To see a lion enter our domain and lead, even. It’s more than just an understanding now, it would mean tying ourselves by blood.

It won’t be pretty in there.

I expect Oren, a subline of my lineage, will be the first to comment about my lack of ability to keep a wolf mate alive. That is his go-to in these discussions. Or now, so it seems, he can bring up how I can’t seem to marry one of our kind at all. What a failure I have proved to be.

Then there is the matter of their soon to be king risking his entire line in a fight with the King of Summer, the King of all Realms, the lion king. Suicide, they’ll say.

So, I won’t tell them of my plans to challenge Liana’s father.

We fight as a pack. Die as a pack.

This would never be approved of. They’d lock me in the dungeon before they’d allow it. But they’ve not seen Liana’s expectant glimmer in her eyes. They’ve never even been around a lioness, not like this one.

It has a way of changing a man…wolf.

And besides, they don’t know the real difference here. I’m a rogue.

Maybe it’s time I should embrace the lore. Perhaps my battles were always meant to be won or lost in solitude. That must be my fate.

I finish fixing my cravat and despite the wounds, I stand tall and leave my rooms for the great hall.

There is energy once again in my stride. I face certain doubt within my people, but I can’t seem to feel down about it. No, I actually smile a wolf’s smile, a toothy grin, all the while glowing inside because the flame I’ve found, is one I plan to keep. And if I have my way, it will be that same fire in woman form that warms me on cold winter nights from here on out.

Liana…

Even her name makes every risk make sense, somehow.

I’m not stupid enough to think it love…no, ‘tis lust I feel rushing my blood into the places that are least necessary.