Page 61 of His Impossible Elf Mate
“Welcome to Sweetwater, Ellgar. I fear you have wasted your journey.”
“Wasted?”
“Were you not privy to the terms of the bargain? I am to have a year with the shifters.”
“Lies!”
“Those were the terms.” Queen Alyalsha’s voice was heard from the speaker of the phone. Kelda had reached the queen’s side quickly. “All of the parliament signed the document. I am looking at your signature here. So it leaves me wondering what you thought you could accomplish by traveling to Sweetwater in order to renege on our bargain just days after it had been agreed. Surely your memory has not faltered since then?”
“Forgive me, my queen. There are some of us who believe it is necessary for your son to begin procuring an heir right away.”
“Now? When no young have been born for over fifty years? You think it will magically happen for my son where others have failed? He is there to find the reason.”
“Yet, he has not. Instead, he has had a dalliance with a shifter far below his station. He talks of making him consort!” Ellgar spat.
Huh. Word sure got around about that. Though, I guess we hadn’t been particularly stealthy over our relationship, or T wanting to make it permanent.
“No, he has not. Yet. Though there has been a breakthrough which needs more investigation. My son is keeping his side of the bargain thus far. We will keep our side or suffer the consequences. You remember the goddess was invoked, correct?”
Ellgar sputtered out a denial, then an apology. Without a further confrontation, he got into the carriage and the elves left.
Queen Alyalsha was still on the phone. “May I keep this device? I shall share it with Kelda so that she can provide you with updates.” She looked so hopeful.
“Of course, Mother. I was not very good at keeping track of it. The phone will be safer in your hands.”
“Thank you, Teárlach. I am concerned by this pattern Kelda has found. This should be a priority. I feel it is important.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Ívarr said. “The shifters can continue with their testing, and I can look into this more with Teagan and Kelda.”
“It will not upset the shifters to take people from their project?” The queen looked genuinely concerned.
“No,” I said. “As Second-in-command to my brother, I can confirm we would prefer resources were given to this instead. This could be the breakthrough needed to find the cause, and hopefully the solution to the fertility crisis your people face.”
“Thank you, Axel. You and my son have a year to find a way out of this bargain or to find the reason our goddesses put you two together. Fate is at play here. I did not wish to tempt it by tearing you apart, but I was given no choice. One year is all I could get you. Make it count.”
Transition
Teárlach
As I had expected, Blake was understanding and supportive of the elves’ need to concentrate on the troubling information Kelda had uncovered. Despite not having a scientific background, he recognized the magnitude of the problem.
If all elves were truly too closely related to have further generations of elves, what did that mean for our species? How did the shifters fit into this?
Our goddess had sent us to them for a reason, that I believed with my heart. I just wondered sometimes, when my faith slipped, if she had done it as a form of punishment. Here we were in our time of need watching the shifters flourish with this gift their goddess had given them. Were we no longer worthy of her love? Had we forgotten her?
When I was avoiding sleep, I had found myself with too much time to contemplate not only the situation with Axel, but my faith and life.
Aldrin had been right when he gave me the sleeping tonics. More of a restful type of sleep workedwonders for my health and general wellbeing. I was still troubled with odd dreams, except the tone of them had changed. Owls were a constant companion, though they no longer felt like a threat.
There were times when I wondered if I was being tested, especially when I discovered many of our people were refusing the genetic testing. They did not want to believe the problem was them. Some wanted to blame the fae, others the shifters, particularly because they were having lots of babies compared to before. A faction wanted to believe our goddess was the issue. They thought we had slipped too far from what our goddess wanted us to be. We weren’t following their rigid social structure, worshiping frequently enough, being pious appropriately.
Of course, they blamed my mother, and me by extension, for a lot of it. Her recent truce with the fae was a mistake. She was a weak leader in their minds. She had not done enough to secure our future. Her husband should not have gone to war leaving us behind when I was too young to really remember him. My mother should have remarried, even if it was just a political alliance. A donor should have been found sooner to give her a female child.
I had heard a lot of criticism of my mother and her rule over my time in the army, so I had grown somewhat immune to it. Around the pack compound, there was some dissent, however these elves had spent time with the shifters and knew their goddesshad tested them. They seemed to think this was our test and our goddess would arrive with the solution and renew their faith.
It was a nice thought. I planned to be more realistic. If it was time for elves to die out as a species, we would fade knowing we had done our best. As long as I got some time with Axel first, that was all that mattered to me.
A few weeks had passed since the healing with Hiroshi, who had announced his pregnancy. Other elves had been reluctant to combine their magic with shifters since, though they had been given a sanitized version of my story. All who had been involved believed something else had happened to me during my recovery. I would have awoken after a couple of days had it not been for the strange malady that came over me.
