Prince of Wolves Chapter 2

Welcome back to my nightmare. It’s going to be a doozy. This is the one that made me want to do it. It made me stop, start over, then stop again. I had to listen to the particular part of the chapter over and over again. It was probably three times. Up until this very moment, I haven’t actually finished the chapter.

Let’s get into it.

If I have to let her stare into my soul every time I open my kindle, so do you.

For real, this gets slightly more disturbing the more I stare at it. I feel like she’s going to rip the skin off of my face and wear it as her face.

So we begin chapter 2 with Fane, our titular Prince of Wolves. We continue our amazing precedent of literally seeing the same scene again. This is the third time in two chapters. If you knew you were going to show the scene again, but from a different perspective, why spend the first chapter telling us about it twice?

This chapter continues the amazing tendency of characters having internal monologues through the narrator and then answering the monologue out loud. It wouldn’t be such a weird thing if the thoughts were theirs, but they’re not. They’re the narrators, and you’ll figure out why I make that distinction very quickly.

Well, it could be because he was more than a thousand miles away from home, he knew absolutely no one, it was his senior year in high school, and he was going to be spending it in a country he had never been to before. “Yes, I imagine that might make a person tense,” Fane said to himself.

Yes, I’m someone who talks to myself out loud frequently, but I’m responding to my thoughts, not the narrator. If he was answering his own thoughts it would have been marked as a thought. This is clearly not. He’s talking to no one.

Anyway, we describe the house, and he hopes that this is just a normal house. Why does he hope that this is a normal house?

Fane hoped this was the case because normal was not usually in his vocabulary. He was, after all, from a family of werewolves, specifically a Grey wolf—a Canis lupus. Not only that, but he just happened to be the son of the current Alpha. Wait it gets worse. His name, Fane Lupei, literally meant “Crown Wolf” How fitting for the prince of the Romanian Greys. What could possibly be normal about your family being able to change into wolves, or being a prince of wolves as well? Nothing in that scenario could ever be normal.

Then he talks to himself again about how he has to get out of the car.

We learn he has no idea why he even wanted to be a foreign exchange student, he just did it. He was called to this podunk city in Texas despite the fact that there are no wolves here. He explains the following to us.

There are other places that Canis lupus hold as territories like Ireland, the Balkans and Poland, Italy, and Spain. Even other parts of the United States have some Grey wolves. One would think that a Grey would go to another territory where Greys were, but the problem is wolves are extremely territorial, and unless a wolf, especially a male, wanted a fight, you didn’t wander into another’s territory without making yourself known to the Alpha of that territory.

Let me read that again. I must have been mistaken.

There are other places that Canis lupus hold as territories like Ireland, the Balkans and Poland, Italy, and Spain. Even other parts of the United States have some Grey wolves. One would think that a Grey would go to another territory where Greys were, but the problem is wolves are extremely territorial, and unless a wolf, especially a male, wanted a fight, you didn’t wander into another’s territory without making yourself known to the Alpha of that territory.

Okay, maybe it was just a flub. There’s no way that this could be a thing. This author couldn’t possibly think it’s okay to just start writing in the present tense in the middle of this previously past tense book, right?

Right?

We meet Sorin, guard/driver for Mr. Princy. They’ve known each other since Fane was a kid, and since there are no other wolves, Sorin is going to be going home instead of staying in Texas.

Sorin bowed only slightly, a show of respect and love for the prince, and then broke formality and hugged him. Wolves take great comfort in touch; it is as much in their nature as breathing, and even in human form they tend to touch more than other humans. Fane patted Sorin on the back and stepped away.

You can’t be serious. You just really can’t be serious.

Yup. Okay. In the middle of a 3rd person past tense paragraph Loftis stops dead to speak to us David Attenborough style about the nature of wolves. Yes, this is really going to be a thing.

Fane hears Jock’s thought, wondering if the two are related, and looks up towards her window. Then we are greeted with… this

Since the belief by humans that men “change” into werewolves is false, Fane can do what the Canis lupus call phasing. The wolf and the man are one; there is no changing from one to the other. A change would mean that once a man is in wolf form he is no longer a man but fully wolf, and when in human form he is fully human. This is not the case, a Canis lupus is always aware of his wolf, and the wolf is always aware of the man. They exist together—usually harmoniously. When Fane is in his wolf form he can still think and reason as if he was in his human form. When he is in his human form he can call on his wolf to phase only the parts he needs to use instead of phasing his entire being.

Seriously. Seriously?! Seriously. I this is the part I had to listen to several times before I decided I had to pick this shit apart. You can’t do that. You pick a tense, and you stick with it. It’s so incredibly distracting. 3% into this book I’m ready to throw this into the garbage. Or less dramatically just delete it off my phone.

He phased just enough to use his wolf sight. Although the Grey wolf’s eyesight isn’t as good as its hearing, his night vision was the best of all the breeds of wolves. He found himself looking into deep green eyes the color of emeralds.

Again, in the same damn paragraph. How. Why?

Fane knew it was a better idea to not phase into his wolf and go pining at her window like a love-sick pup. He couldn’t get her scent, which would be unique to her and one only he would recognize, so her window must have been closed.
Reflexively, he sent her a thought as he picked her name out of her mind, “At last, my Jacquelyn.” It was so natural to claim what was his, and she was without a doubt his, whether she knew it yet or not.

Normally, I don’t have a huge issue with an author organically telling us things about their world as indirectly, and treating us like adults. But since when can werewolves read minds? Is this… something just Fane can do? Is it something he can do because he and Jock are fated mates?

Judging from the look on her face, she had heard him. Her eyes grew wide like an animal caught in headlights, and her mouth dropped open. Confirming even more that she was his mate, he could feel her distress and confusion, but he knew she would be fine because she was strong. She had to be because she was the mate of an Alpha, and she was to be his Luna. She was so named because she, like the moon, had a pull over many things, meaning she had power that other female Greys did not.

Okay… so… we do get that… but it just honestly makes me uncomfortable. He’s making all these assumptions and it just… there aren’t enough cringing gifs in the world for how I feel at this moment.

We meet the Henrys, some talk about getting a tour the next day, and showing him to his room. This room is appropriately themed for winter and with wolves, no real explanation given. I can’t tell if we are supposed to expect that the Henrys know that he’s a wolf, or not.

The explination about his room just kind of goes on and on, and after that we get the ingenious thought that the Henrys must have money. No, they’re clearly broke, why else would they offer to host a kid despite not having any of their own. Because poor people can just do that.

He showers, has a moment where he… talks to his wolf?

His wolf didn’t seem to care about the shower, all he was concerned about was the female across the street. Fane chuckled to himself, “Impatient, aren’t you?” His wolf ignored him. He was pouting, and Fane knew there was nothing he could do to ease his ire.

But didn’t you say that the wolf and the man are one? So how is it he’s talking to a separate entity if… they’re supposed to be one and the same?

You literally said,

The wolf and the man are one; there is no changing from one to the other.

If the “wolf and the man are one” how can he talk to it like it’s something different? This book is seriously going to just… make me lose my mind, up in here. Up in here.

Fane falls asleep and in a mirror of chapter 1, he’s thinking about Jock’s eyes as he passes out.

This is chapter 2. Really. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last. The cringe… is just far too much.