The Crown’s Entrapment

At the arena, the officers handling the tournament were all busy with the preparations, including all the high officials such as Gideon and Bartos, not to mention the Great Constable Gilas who was personally supervising the tournament, making sure that things would go on smoothly. And so far, those things were doing fine for the first few batches of one-on-one combat.

It wasn’t a sight to behold, especially for the competitors who were willing to fight till the end. Gideon sighed as he saw another woman getting badly wounded before being carried out of the arena, moaning and crying as she wallowed in her failure.

Still, they were making decent time. They’ve put divisions in the wide center of the arena so that they could simultaneously run different tournament brackets and the same time, helping them save some more time than if they ran the tournament traditionally.

He sighed once more upon seeing how many women from his own pack participated. He even telepathically talked to them to make sure that none of his members would be foolish enough to fight till the end.

Shrugging, Gideon moved to the other side of the circular arena. There, he saw Commander Adah, who was starting to garner attention because of how in particular she was pulling her aunt down from the arena.

“Seriously! This is so embarrassing,” Commander Adah exasperatingly begged. “Come on Aunty, get down from the stage right now. Don’t do this. Father’s already angry as is. He told me to bring you back by any means.”

“And why should I? I’m still qualified for this tournament,” her aunt retorted. “Can you even see how much younger I look than you? We have no rules about the ages of whoever wants to join anyway as long as I look good and fit enough for the King’s age! Tell your father to not meddle with my affairs. I’m no longer his youngest sister whom he can order around.”

Witnessing the argument, Gideon couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly. This random scene was a breath of fresh air compared to the gruesome carnage that he had been seeing for a while now.

Some time later, Bartos walked towards him. “We should remind our king to revise the rules after this, if only for the sake of the next generation,” he sighed. “Really, this is a pain in the ass. There should’ve been an age limit put in place for this tournament to lessen the number of participants like this. Look at the mess we’re in. This is way harder than doing things on a real battlefield. It’s just too much work dealing with these women.”

Gideon chuckled, “They’re just old maidens who, you must admit, still look young and gorgeous despite their age.”

“That’s because we don’t really age that fast,” Bartos retorted.

“Speaking of…” Gideon trailed off, turning to look at Bartos as he continued, “I wonder how you’ll manage things in the future? Your mate is a human, and she will absolutely look older than you after some time. The same goes for His Majesty, although there’s a hint that Princess Xenia has some kind of special blood in her… I wonder if that special blood will give her a long lifespan like us…”

As was discussed, werewolves had longer lifespans than humans, thus they won’t look as old that quickly. In fact, they’re more likely to die only due to being slain in battle or contracting incurable diseases.

“Who cares? I will be with her till death…” Bartos answered with a dark expression.

“Do you have plans to turn her into a Lycan then? That will solve the problem…” Gideon commented.

“We haven’t talked about it yet,” Bartos voiced out.

“Yeah… It’s still early anyway,” Gideon nodded. You two have more than enough time to figure things out on your own.”

Gideon smiled as his thoughts went to Freya and how lucky he was to have her. Was he not lucky to have his mate be a werewolf like her?

Unfortunately, his smile quickly faded as he shook his head at the sight before him. Things were getting out of hand, and he was getting the urge to intervene and clear up the mess. “Tsk… commander Adah should simply let her Aunt do what she wanted,” he murmured. “It’s her right…”

Moving, he was about to approach the two women when Bartos suddenly spoke up. “I’ll handle them…”

And with that, Gideon was left alone on his spot as he watched Bartos move to mediate between the two women. With nothing better to do, he started checking in on the results from some of the packs.

“This is…” He could only shake his head as he saw Bella fighting another senior werewolf on the other side of the arena.

“Seriously?! Just yield, Lady Rea. Let’s spare ourselves the energy,” Bella halfway pleaded with the older woman. “You do know you can’t win against me, right? Do you really want scars on your face and skin? You will if you continue. Worse, maybe you’ll really die of old age if you’ll be this stubborn. You’re even older than my mother, and I respect you enough not to want to hurt you!”

“So what if I’m older than your mother?” Lady Rea proudly snorted. “What matters is that I’m still capable of bearing a child… an heir…”

“This tournament will kill me…” Gideon chuckled, trying hard not to burst into a fit of loud laughter. All of a sudden, he felt bad for the men that were currently acting as mediators. They kept their faces blank, but one could already see how much they were turning red as they pursed their lips.

“You do know that it’s not purely skill that you need. You also have to be lucky in this tournament, and I have a feeling that I have that luck,” Lady Rea confidently stated.

“Who cares about getting scars? It’ll be an honor to do so, just so that I won’t have any regrets in my life. This is a rare opportunity to fight for a man like this, not to mention the possibility of getting the throne! This event only comes once in a blue moon, so I won’t let this opportunity slide,” she barked with a frown as she positioned herself inside the mark.

“Now, come on, child. Just fight! Enough with the nonsense already. Whatever you might have to say, I will never yield!”

“Fine… Fine! Let’s get this over with then,” Bella hissed as she clicked her tongue. ” Don’t scold and blame me later if I end up beating you to unconsciousness!”

“Go, Lady Bella!” shouted one of the audience members near him. “Fight and show her what you’ve got! Just knock her down easily with one shot!”

Gideon turned and frowned at the lad cheering for Bella. “He awfully looks familiar…” he murmured, unknowingly staring intently at him.

‘Something feels weird,’ he inwardly thought. Before he knew it, he was already walking towards the lad, sitting amongst the audience on the bench.