Queen Ola.
That’s my official title now. I turn to face the audience’s slightly less enthusiastic applause.
Most of the North Dakota pack clap just enough to be polite—which is fine. I’m new, from out-of-state, and even if I’m dating a famous basketball player, I haven’t proven myself yet. I’ve got time to work myself up to thunderous applause.
However, the male wolves standing toward the back of the room worry me. They’ve all taken the same stance, arms folded tight and jaws clenched with impotent frustration.
Yellow Mountain Wolves. It’s easy to tell because they’re wearing t-shirts, covered in silhouettes of guns underneath camo jackets—which is dressed up for them. They also look totally pissed that the gay king they didn’t approve of is now being replaced by a black she-wolf from another state’s pack. I’m basically their worst nightmare, and I have the feeling that the only thing keeping them from out-and-out booing is all the strapped up Michigan wolves standing between them and the stage.
If great granddaddy Leroy were here, he’d be calling all these sour-faced YMWs punk bitches to their face. And my throat itches to honor that legacy. Too bad Uncle Kyle made me promise I wouldn’t say anything to them tonight. Their small pack is in charge of the North Dakota time gate, so I’m supposed to be nice. You know, politics. The total opposite of hero stuff.
But whatever. I look them directly in the eyes, as I brush their hate off my shoulder. This is my night. And I’m not going to let any enemies, old or new, ruin it.
Besides, my parents are here, cheering and smiling up at me from the front of the crowd. Best distraction from the haters ever. My mom’s eyes are shining with total pride that her daughter’s also an alpha queen now. And my dads are waving their Viking swords in the air. They’re all so proud of me, it almost makes up for Fensa not being here.
Plus, half the audience is made up of visiting subjects from my former Michigan pack. And thanks to the heavy motorcycle boots many of them still wear in homage to our twentieth century motorcycle gang roots, their hooting and hollering game echoes way louder than the North Dakota pack’s anemic clapping and the Yellow Mountain Wolves anger emoji impressions.
In any case, I don’t bother to motion for them to stop applauding. As anyone who knows me would attest, I’m a loud ass. And as short as Uncle Kyle’s speech was, mine is even shorter:
“I’ve been waiting my entire life for this moment,” I shout out to my new pack, keeping it Real Emotion 100.
Then I raise a bottle of champagne in the air, and yell “Let’s light this shit up!”
Chapter Two
DAMIANOS
I’m sitting in the back seat of an early twenty-first town car parked far beyond the North Dakota kingdom house’s front gates. Yet, the applause is so loud inside the North Dakota kingdom mansion, I can hear it clearly. It creates a strange stereo effect as I watch Ola Greenwolf take the stage at her coronation through one of my thrall’s eyes.
An odd wish suddenly floats through my mind. A desire for an invisible cloak of the sort often described in the upright primate’s fantasy novels and comic books. And though I’ve never been the fanciful sort, for a moment I indulge myself in imagining that I am in the ballroom with the rest of her new subjects. Watching her accept her crown with my own eyes, not those of a dog thrall.
She addresses the crowd with a speech, short and utterly inappropriate.
Of course, it is. My time with her was also short, and significantly inappropriate. Even before receiving the reams of background information on her life, I had the sense that Ola Greenwolf and the word “dignified” had never and would never be used in the same sentence.
But despite her crude nature and her lineage, she has become my sole obsession.
Before our first meeting, there had been what I could only describe as an itch within me. An uncomfortable sensation located so deep inside my belly that no matter how much I rubbed upon my stomach I could gain no relief.
Eventually, I began referring to it as my night pain, for it often plagued me on the eves when I found myself alone in my study sipping on tsipouro. In the months leading up to my first interaction with Ola, my night pain had become quite vexing, but it had been manageable.
That is until I walked down the front steps of my estate one night and found Ola standing there with her fraternal twin sister. Her beauty…it was almost impossible to describe, especially for a drakkon who’d only gained the ability to see as the anthros do less than a century ago. But I found her brown color combination of creamy beige skin, dark umber eyes, and russet hair pleasing, along with her larger than average body proportions.