Page 37 of Polar Fates
Ignoring tradition of passing on the crown to his oldest son, the King declared Arcas his heir. I imagine there was uproar and jealousy, but Arcas took it in hisstride.
Then I died. Well, almost. Kind of. I died and I had no way of letting Arcas know that I wasn’t actually dead. He mourned me, he almost threw away the chance to become King when my father passed away just weeks after my own death. But luckily, my sister persuaded him to take thethrone.
Arcas became King of Arcadia and a much better ruler than my father ever was. He was a just ruler, a wise King who listened to his subjects and respected them. I watched from afar, filled with pride and joy. Here was a man who’d grown up as a bear cub. He was proof that shifters were capable of being so much more than justbeasts.
I watched as my granddaughter Ana was born; a beautiful little girl who shifted into a bear as a new-born and didn’t shift back until she was three. That’s when Arcas did something I didn’t understand: he hid her away, refusing to tell his people that she was a shifter. Nobody knew about his own nature either except for his wife and some of my relatives. For his subjects, he was a human like anyother.
My little granddaughter had everything she needed, but she never became Queen. Her younger brother, a human boy who didn’t have the power to shift, took the role as the next ruler after my son waskilled.
Ana gave birth to three children though, who kept the line of bear shifters going. I can’t believe that the men Isla has assembled around herself are all descendants of my son and mygranddaughter.
And myself, in a way, but I refuse to think of them in thatway.
When Arcas was killed, I wished that I could die as well. I cursed this half-existence I was leading, this state between life and death that I couldn’t leave. Raoul helped me through it all, but it took decades until I was brave enough to look at how Ana and her children were doing. From then on, I kept an eye on the bear shifters, watching them from afar, remembering Arcas in this smallway.
Arcas. The bear who turned into a human and became King. Myson.
He died and lived, and now he may have to die again to save the future of hisdescendants.
I know he’s in the same room with me just now, and if only I was brave enough to open my eyes I could seehim.
But I am afraid to look him into the eyes and tell him what needs to bedone.
For the first time in a long time, I’mscared.
Fourteen
Isla, can you hearme?”
“Don’t shout,” I mutter, pushing back the headache making itself at home in myskull.
I blink open my eyes and smile when the first thing I see is Finn’s lips hovering inches away from myown.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he whispers and I frown inconfusion.
“Why wouldn’t Ibe?”
“You don’tremember?”
I think back to what happened in Canada. We were running… Alis collapsed… thebites…
“Did we get injured?” I ask, suddenly wide awake. I scan my body for pain but the only thing that hurts is myhead.
“They hurt your hind legs pretty bad,” Finn explains. “We dragged you through the Portal but Alis took ages to shift and was losing a lot ofblood.”
He points at a large brown stain on the white floor I’m lying on. We’re back in the room I arrived in when I took the Portal from Inchbrach. Correction, when we were lured through the Portal. It wasn’t a voluntarything.
I inspect my naked legs – someone’s put me into the same white robe again as before – but there’s not even a scratch. Shifting must have healed myinjuries.
“Is everybody else alright?” I ask and am relieved when Finnnods.
“They’re next door with Van Deen. Kindof.”
I frown again. “How can they kind of be in aroom?”
He shakes his head. “No, not kind of in a room. Kind of Van Deen. It’s not really him… you’ll see. Think you can standup?”
He pulls me to my feet and I follow him out of the room and into the one around thecorner.
