The Royal Mark-Chapter 388: Baby Wolf

Elsa awoke to the sound of whining and howling, a pitiful noise that pierced the early morning silence. Groggy and disoriented, she blinked against the dim light filtering through the curtains. For a moment, she thought she heard her son.

"Rocco?" she mumbled, sitting up in bed.

But something felt off. As she became more alert, she realized the sound wasn’t coming from her son’s room. It was too high-pitched, too animalistic. Elsa shook her head, feeling foolish for even considering the possibility of her son howling like a wolf.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, shivering slightly in the cool morning air. The whining persisted, accompanied now by a faint scratching at the back door. Elsa frowned and hurried to the window, pushing aside the curtains.

Down below, on the porch, was a small, fluffy black puppy, its tiny tail wagging despite the plaintive sounds it made. Elsa’s heart melted a little at the sight, but then she heard the unmistakable cries of her children from inside the house.

She quickly grabbed her robe and tied it around her waist before rushing out of her bedroom. The stairs creaked under her weight as she descended, the sound mingling with the increasing volume of her children’s cries.

"Mommy’s coming!" she called out, trying to keep her voice steady despite the knot of anxiety tightening in her chest.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she found her twins, Daisy and Rosey, standing in the living room, both with tear-streaked faces and trembling lips.

"What’s wrong, my loves?" Elsa asked, gathering them into her arms.

The two cried louder and threw their little arms around their mother’s neck, embracing her.

"Why are you two crying? Where is your brother?" Elsa asked once more.

"Your son is in front trying to drive Jai out of your property by throwing things at him," Marina said casually as she held her cup of coffee.

"What?! Why is he doing that?" Elsa voiced out loudly, utterly surprised by Rocco’s behavior as she tried to remove the little arms of her twins around her neck so she could stop her son.

"Well, Jai wanted to throw away the puppy but Rocco wanted to keep it. Jai is saying that it’s black and looks dangerous that’s why you screamed last night. He said to Rocco that it attacked you that’s why you fainted. When we found you unconscious in the woods last night, the little puppy was licking your face and it followed you here." Marina explained.

"Attacked me? A puppy? I’m not even wounded. I was so drunk last night and it startled me when its eyes glowed when the light reflected... Now that you mentioned it. I think I bumped my head that’s why I passed out," Elas said while rubbing the painful lump on her head.

"Well, you know Jai," Marina uttered before gently pulling the twins close to her, "Come here, darlings, let go of Mommy, so she could go to your brother."

"We want to keep the puppy, Mommy..."

"Please, please, please, Mommy!" the twins begged. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Elsa smiled and opened the back door in the kitchen that the puppy was scratching. She saw it tied to one of the posts. She carefully picked it up and removed the heavy metal chain around its neck.

"Oh, you poor pup. Who put this around your neck?" Elsa asked the puppy as if it would talk back.

"Uncle Jai did!"

"He is a bad person, Mommy!"

Elsa chuckled at what the twins said. Like Rocco, her girls never liked her friend. But she thought that it was because they were jealous whenever Jai would show his affection to her.

"You two stay with Aunt Marina. I’ll get your brother." Elsa headed to where Rocco and Jai were while still holding the little pup who kept on licking her face.

"Rocco, stop throwing those rocks at me! That is not nice!" Elsa heard Jai.

"You are the one who is not nice, mister! You should get out of our house before my mommy wakes up and before my wolf eats you alive!" Rocco yelled back.

Elsa heard Jai laugh scornfully, making her frown. She didn’t like how he sounded as if he was making fun of Rocco.

"That little thing won’t even scratch my skin, what more of eating me alive. I’m telling you, you shouldn’t keep that mutt! Look what it did to your mother, it wanted to eat her last night!" Jai said.

"Excuse me?" Elsa retorted, catching their attention.

"Mommy!" Rocco shrieked and ran to her.

"This is not a mutt and it’s not going to hurt me. It likes me and it is super cute! From the looks of it, it’s a baby wolf and not a dog. Perhaps it got separated from its mother," Elsa remarked.

"A wolf?! Then it is really dangerous, you should get rid of that right now!" Jai urged.

"No! You go away!" Rocco roared. "Mommy we are keeping him, right? Please say yes! I promise I will take care of him."

"Of course, we can keep him. He wouldn’t survive on his own. But I wonder where is his mom? She will be looking for her."

"No, she won’t. I just came from the station and the chief said that the locals found a dead female wolf in the mountains this morning. That must be its mother."

Everyone turned to Ambros upon hearing his voice.

"So we can really keep him right?" Rocco pleaded with twinkling eyes.

"Elsa, you can’t. That will hurt your children when it grows up. It’s not a dog, it’s a freaking wolf! A big black bad wolf!" Jai commented once again.

Elsa glanced at Jai with wide eyes, signaling to him that he should stop. "Yes, we will keep it. I cannot let a puppy roam on its own. You heard my dad, its mother had died. And we are its family now. Right, Rocco?"

"Yes, Mommy! We are his family. It’s a boy puppy, Mommy!"

Elsa chuckled seeing her son so happy and excited. "You should give our new family member a name then."

Rocco scrunched his face and looked up, seriously thinking of a good name for his pup. "Yakobo... His name is Yakobo."

"That’s a good name," Ambros said while squinting his eyes. "Where did you get that name?"

"He told me. Last night when you carried Mommy to her room. I went to the kitchen to drink water and saw him. He said to me that his name is Yakobo. And he is here to protect us.

He also protected Mommy last night, but he was too small and too slow so Mommy bumped her head before he could use his body to be Mommy’s pillow when she fell down," Rocco casually pointed out while petting the wolf pup’s head.

Elsa crossed her arms and tilted her head. "How did you know that? Did you sneak out last night, when I thought you were already sleeping?"

Rocco laughed hard when Elsa started tickling his sides. "No, I didn’t sneak out. I just told you, Yakobo told me."

"Come on, let’s get inside. We should all eat before you leave for the city. Your puppy looks hungry too. Here, take this. I bought some goat’s milk for your pup," Ambros said before gently pulling Rocco’s hand and heading inside.

"Are you seriously going to keep that baby wolf?" Jai asked with worry and annoyance in his voice.

"And why not? Don’t you forget that I used to have four huskies? One wolf is perhaps equivalent to four of them. Don’t worry I will train it, I will tell him to not eat you alive if that’s what you’re worried about," Elsa jested and chuckled as she walked away from Jai.

Jai shook his head while he watched her nuzzle her nose against the baby wolf’s face as it licked her. The baby wolf glanced at him and he quickly staggered back. For a second he thought that he saw the puppy’s eyes turned red and showed it fangs to him before licking Elsa once again.