Forbidden Queen
Chapter Three - Preparations to Leave

Alex

While Katy is training, I have been having regular meetings with Euan, my grandfather and aunt. They will form a temporary council to rule the pack in my absence. I have been Alpha for only a few days, and here I was preparing to leave, but it is important that I accompany Katy to the Royal Kingdom. The Lunar Eclipse Pack and the Royal Pack need to be united if we are going to defeat Lucius. I plan to take some of our best warriors with us when we leave.

I also need to give Katy all the help and support that I can as she grows into her new role as queen.

And I know that I can’t let her leave without me. Now that we are mated, bonded for life I cannot bear to be apart from her. Even the few hours we spend separately while she is training drives my wolf crazy. We must protect her.

Lucius will know by now that Carl is dead, and that his plan to take over our pack has failed. His spies will have told him that Katy is the lost princess that he has been searching for. She has never been in more danger than she is now,

I will feel better when we reach the royal kingdom, and she has been officially crowned queen. It will be far more difficult for Lucius to get to her then. But first we must get there, and the journey to the Royal pack will be extremely dangerous, it will give Lucius the best opportunity to capture Katy.

Joseph and I have been planning the journey with this in mind. We have made sure that we bring enough Royal Guards, and Lunar Eclipse warriors with us to protect her from attack by the Black Moon pack.

At the same time, I cannot leave the Lunar Eclipse pack undefended, if my pack is weak then this will give Lucius an opportunity to take us out. Forming a temporary council to rule the pack will prevent this. Euan has been left with half our warriors, and we are recruiting more wolves from the pack to train as replacements for the ones I will take with me.

We have very few female warriors, my father didn’t ban them, but they were discouraged from joining. Jane and Amy are very much the exceptions in our ranks. Now that Jane is our Gamma, she is actively recruiting females to join the warriors. She is an inspiration to many of the younger shewolves, and the warrior training programme now has ten additional female trainees.

My grandfather and aunt will provide Euan with the support he will need to carry out the day to day running of the pack in my absence. As much as I trust them, I am still nervous about leaving them to govern the pack without me. It is for this reason that I have been forcing them to go through the plans for when I leave over and over again.

We are talking through what needs to happen when I leave for the twentieth time, when my grandfather says “Enough, I successfully ran this pack for thirty years. I think I can manage to help Euan administer it while you are gone.”

“I know” I reply with a smile “but I feel bad. I have only been Alpha for a matter of days but here I am about to leave the Lunar Eclipse pack at the most dangerous time in its history. It is my duty to protect the pack.”

“And by leaving you are” my aunt tells me. “The only way to keep this pack safe is to defeat Lucius, and that can only be done when Katy is crowned queen and she can unite the packs against him. To do that she needs your support, and the Royal Pack will need our warriors. You are making the right decision and the pack understands that.”

I barely know my aunt, but I have made the right choice in including her in the council. She is a strong wolf and will help Euan and my grandfather to help keep the pack safe.

“Anyway” Euan says, “I am confident that our new recruits will soon replace the warriors you are taking with you, all they need is a bit more training. I have also had another twenty of the Omegas sign up for defence training,”

“Good, that is more than I had expected” I tell him. I had decided that although the Omegas would never want to be warriors, they should be given the opportunity to learn how to defend themselves. I wasn’t sure how successful this would be, Omegas are peaceful by nature, but the initiative had proven very popular.

“I know that I am leaving the pack in the best hands” I tell them.

“There is something else we should discuss” my grandfather says. “My sources in the Black Moon pack have told me that Jordan has fled there. Lucius of course welcomed him with open arms. I think we have to prepare for the fact that Lucius will plan to use your brother against us.”

I snarl. I have come to hate my brother. I had hoped that after the attack he would just disappear, and I would never have to hear his name again.

“Keep me informed if you hear anything else. If there is an opportunity to bring him back to face trial by the pack, then I want us to take it. He is a danger to us if he is left to roam free, and the families of the dead deserve justice.”

Katy

After managing to land a couple of blows during my fight with Euan. Joseph has decided that my basic training is over, and that I would benefit from training with the Royal Pack. He will be conducting my training from now on

For the first training session, he has decided to pit me against the strongest warrior he has with him from the Royal Pack. This wolf is huge, almost 7ft tall, and built, with more muscles than any werewolf that I have ever seen before. Which is no mean feat, all werewolves are tall and muscular. He is fiercer and more frightening than Euan.

Joseph starts our session by saying.

“I am going to teach you techniques that in the short term will help you to take out warriors who are stronger and better trained than you. I am going to teach you to fight dirty. If you are attacked, they will be aiming to kill or kidnap you, there will be no mercy, and your fighting skills although they are progressing are too weak to take on an experienced warrior and win conventionally.

Faced with a warrior like Alan, here” he says pointing to the large warrior beside him. “You will need to use the terrain and any opportunities you can replace if you are going to have a chance at defeating him. The fighting techniques that Euan has taught you won’t help you fight a bigger, and better trained warrior. Eventually with continued training I will be able to teach you how to fight any warrior and win but that will take time.

Now Alan is going to attack you, you need to do what you can to stop him. Anything goes.”

Is that it? Joseph has given me no tips on which dirty tricks and opportunities I could use to defeat a warrior like Alan. I was hoping for more help before I would have to face this wolf in a fight.

I watch Alan as he slowly moves towards me, a small grin on his face. He doesn’t need to hurry his size and weight will give him a greater advantage than speed would. I look around trying to work out how I can use the terrain to help me fight Alan.

We are training close to the river and there is sand and stones surrounding us. I move to the left and grab a handful of sand and throw it into Alan’s eyes. He splutters and stops while he tries to clear away the sand which is clouding his vision. In the second this buys me I lunge forward, trying to drag my claws into his chest and push him back. I don’t succeed in moving him, even in his disorientated state he still manages to stand firm and push me back, but I have at least managed to create bright red welts across his chest.

As he starts to recover, I jump back, and Joseph ends the fight.

“Good,” he says. “You have succeeded in stopping and disorientating your opponent. You have bought yourself enough time to flee. Which is what you need to do if you end up facing a warrior like Alan in a fight. You won’t be able to beat him, you aren’t strong enough your aim should be to get away.”

I nod. As much as I would like to be able to take down warriors that are as strong as Alan. I know that my main objective at the moment should be to survive.

“You could have done more damage if you had been able to replace a weapon. Look around you what can you see that you could have helped incapacitate him?”

I search the ground and notice a large branch, “that” I say pointing to it.

“Yes, that would be a reasonable weapon” Lucas says approvingly.

The next thing I will teach you is to target each warrior’s weaknesses. There are key places on the body where if you can land a blow will cause real damage and could give you the advantage. The first one you have already identified – the eyes. The other key ones are the throat and the groin. I will show you how to target these areas tomorrow.

As we finish, a servant arrives at the training ground, she is out of breath. She must have run all the way from the pack house to the training ground.

“The Royal Pack warriors have arrived” she announces.

“Good. At last, we can prepare to leave for the Royal Kingdom” Joseph says as he starts to walk back to the pack house.

Now it feels real. We will be leaving soon, and I am about to fulfil my destiny and become queen.