by Jayme Morse
“How many is ‘many, many’?” I questioned.
“Princess Fallyn,” my mother said under her breath. I knew she was afraid that I would mess this up.
But if we were being honest, I probably would mess it up.
“I’m just looking for a roundabout number, Mother. I think it’s only fair that I should get to know how many of Lord Santorini’s children I would be expected to bear if I choose to become his wife.”
“It’s certainly fine with me,” Milos replied. “I want many children. Ten, maybe twenty. My bloodline is far too good to not pass my genes onto numerous Pups.”
“Ten or twenty children?” I stared back at him through wide eyes. “You are joking, right?”
“You’re a werewolf of good breeding, Fallyn. You can handle having ten or more children,” my mom intercepted.
“And who, may I ask, will raise them? Because I certainly have no interest in raising ten or more children.”
“We will have the best childcare possible,” Milos replied.
“I’m sorry. I’m uninterested in this marriage. You should probably find someone who will be more interested in this idea of giving birth to an entire army of children. It was nice to meet you, but it is obvious this isn’t a good match.” Then, without saying anything else, I rose to my feet.
I was about halfway down the hallway when I heard the sound of feet following after me.
“Mother, please—” I began, but when I glanced over my shoulder, it wasn’t my mother who had come after me.
It was Milos.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Princess Fallyn, please. I beg you to reconsider.” His black eyes met mine. “We can have as many children as you would like. You are to be the future Queen, after all. This is your kingdom that we would be ruling over. You should have some say over your own body.”
“How quickly your mind has changed on something you seemed to be so firm about,” I commented.
“It was a test, Fallyn. I wanted to see how headstrong you were. You are very headstrong, and that is the number one quality I am seeking in a wife. I want someone who I will rule with—a life partner and a partner in crime. What do you say?” His eyes locked on mine.
“I don’t know you well enough to make a decision yet,” I replied.
I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but there was something about Milos that I didn’t entirely trust. I still wasn’t sure if he really did want all of those children or if this truly had been a test. Either way, I preferred werewolves who were upfront about their intentions. Like Nicholas…
“Princess Fallyn, I feel that, together, we could be very powerful. Just a single kiss from you would make me so much more powerful. I can already tell that much,” Milos said. His eyes found mine again, and he moved closer to me, placing his hands on my cheeks. “May I kiss you?”
“Kiss me? I hardly know you,” I replied.
“Ah, but isn’t that one of the best ways to get to know someone?” Milos questioned. “Is it not important to find out if we have chemistry? Aren’t you curious to know if we could be mates?”
I let out a little laugh. “I am quite certain that you are not my mate, Lord Santorini.”
“Please call me Milos,” he replied. “And how can you be so certain about that? Maybe we are mates.”
“Fate would not be so cruel to mate me with someone like you,” I murmured, remembering the story about his sister and the other horrible stories I’d heard about him over the years. I had never heard of a single story that cast him in a positive light, and why?
Because there was nothing good about Milos Santorini. Of that, I was certain.
“Why don’t you allow me to kiss you so we can prove it?” Milos asked.
“If I’m not your mate, does that mean you will take back your proposal?” I asked him.
“Of course not. You are the Princess of the Werewolves. Why wouldn’t I want to marry you?” Milos looked surprised by my question.
“For love? Real love? With your mate,” I replied. “I know I want to my find my own mate.”
“If you are not my mate, then I suspect one of my future mistresses will be my mate,” Milos replied.
“So, what you’re saying is that you wouldn’t be loyal to me, even if I do choose to marry you,” I said.
“All kings have mistresses,” Milos replied. “That might be the biggest benefit of being a king.”
“I would want to be with someone who would always remain loyal to me,” I replied, shaking my head. “I don’t want a marriage that’s just for show or to build alliances or any other fake reason. I want to be in a marriage with someone because I am in love with my king, and because he is in love with me.”
“I can love you but still be with others,” Milos said.
I shook my head. “I have no interest in this marriage. I’m sorry.”
“First let me kiss you to find out if we are mates,” he said. “Don’t you want to find out before you shut this whole thing down completely?”
I sighed. “I am certain you are not my mate, but I will allow you to kiss me if it will make you shut up about kissing me,”
“Perfect. You have no idea how badly I wish to kiss you,” Milos said.
“Then do it,” I replied with an eye roll.
Milos moved forward, placing his arms around my waist and pulling me in closer to him.
As his lips brushed against mine, they were frantic.
Desperate.
There was this sense of urgency, unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
The odd thing was that, as much as I didn’t want to kiss him, I actually did feel something—something I definitely didn’t want to feel for him.
Because as far as I was concerned, he was a monster.
So, I was relieved when nothing changed because of our kiss. There was no spark, no magic moment. Sure, I felt chemistry, but nothing out of the ordinary.
“Can you hear my thoughts?” Milos asked, his black eyes meeting mine.
“No, I don’t hear anything,” I replied honestly, breathing a huge sigh of relief.
“Huh, isn’t that peculiar?” Milos asked. “I really thought we would be mates.” His eyes met mine again. “I’ll be back again soon to discuss our marriage with you further.”
“You mean the marriage that won’t be taking place?” I asked him with a grin.
“Oh, but it will. Trust me. It will.” I could see the amusement in his eyes. He really believed this was some sort of challenge.
If only he knew it was the furthest thing from a challenge. I had no intentions of ever marrying Milos Santorini. Over my dead body.
“Raven, are you okay?” Maddie asked me then, snapping me out of the vision.
I glanced over at her with wide eyes. “I just had a flashback.”
“That makes sense. You were pretty much in a trance.”
“Sorry.”
“So, what was the flashback about?” Maddie asked.
“It was a vision of the first time I ever met Milos Santorini,” I explained. “My parents forced us to meet to discuss our arranged marriage. He told me he wanted to have a lot of children, which I was, unsurprisingly, not interested in. Then he kissed me to find out if we were mates.”
“I’m guessing you weren’t mates?” Maddie asked.
“No, thankfully,” I replied. “Milos is pretty horrible. I didn’t know it was possible for me to like him less than I already did, but I do after this vision.”
At that moment, the door to Maddie’s dorm room opened, and her roommate came inside the room. Since Maddie and I never spent a lot of time in her dorm room, this was my first time actually meeting her roommate.
The girl’s back was turned to us as she pulled her backpack off and tossed it to the floor. “Do you mind turning the TV down? I am so tired.”
As the girl moved to face us, my breath caught in my throat.
I had seen her before… just moments before.
&n
bsp; “Sarah?”
The girl met my eyes with what I could only describe as a look of recognition.
Not only had she responded to the name, but she also recognized me.
But instead of telling me that Sarah really was her name, she said, “No, I’m sorry. You must have me confused with somebody else. My name is Lydia.”
Lydia. That was the name of my mother, the Queen.
It only further confirmed one thing for me: Maddie’s roommate was definitely Sarah.
The only question was why was Sarah, my lady’s maid from ancient times, using the Queen’s name?
Was she only using that name to see if I would recognize it? Or had she really changed her name or chosen to go by this alias because the name had once belonged to the Queen of the Werewolves? Not that either of those theories boded well with me.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but something about this all just didn’t quite add up.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Why would she go by my mother… I mean, the Queen’s… name?” I asked Aiden as I sat across from him in the kitchen at the Darken house later that night.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But that part seems to be the least significant about this whole incident to me.”
“How do you figure? I think it’s really freaking creepy that she took on the Queen’s name,” I insisted.
“I’m not saying it’s not,” Aiden replied. “What’s stranger, though, is that she’s an ancient. Aside from you, she’s the only female ancient who I’ve heard of ever existing. The question is, how did she make it out alive? How has she managed to lay low under the radar, without ever getting discovered before now? I have so many questions about this that it isn’t even funny.”
“Well, I wish I could take you to her so you could ask everything you want, but she wouldn’t be honest about any of it anyway,” I replied with a sigh. “It was pretty obvious that she doesn’t want to be connected to me in any sort of way. I’m a little bit offended that my lady’s maid from the ancient times isn’t excited to see me, to be honest.”
Aiden snorted. “Are you really going to be that way?”
“Be what way?” I asked, raising my brows at him.
“All egotistical and shit. You have no idea if Sarah had a reason to be excited to see you.”
“Of course she did. She was my lady’s maid,” I replied.
“Yeah, but you don’t even know what happened between Sarah and Fallyn. For all you know, you might have done something horrible to her—something that made her want nothing to do with you,” Aiden replied.
“I don’t think Fallyn was a bad or evil princess,” I replied. “If she was mean to Sarah, I’m sure that she had a good reason.” I paused. “Sarah actually tried to encourage Fallyn to marry Milos, even knowing that he did some shady shit, like kill his sister.”
“I love how you talk about Fallyn in third person,” Aiden said with a chuckle.
“I feel so disconnected from her. It’s like we really are two different people.”
“I get it,” he replied with a nod.
I honestly wasn’t sure if he actually did get it, but I appreciated that he tried to understand, anyway.
“Anyway, do you have plans for the rest of the night?” Aiden asked me.
“Actually, I do. I plan to let my head hit the pillow and then sleep the night away,” I replied. Realizing that it had been a really long time since Aiden and I had spent a night together, I said, “Do you want to join me?”
“I would love to join you, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to let you sleep.” His honey brown eyes met mine.
He leaned in closer to me then and kissed me. His kiss tasted like chocolate and peppermint.
He scooped me up into his arms then. I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist as he carried me down the hallway to his bedroom, closing the door behind us.
As he dropped me onto the bed, he hovered above me. He began to kiss his way down my neck.
Lifting my tank top over my head, his hands found slid their way to my back. He unhooked my bra and tossed it to the side.
He dipped his head over my breast, taking one of my nipples into his mouth and sucking it hard. I gasped, arching my back from underneath him.
His body was pressed against me, and I felt his hard bulge.
He slid his hand between my thighs, slipping his hand beneath my lace panties, feeling my wetness.
A heat radiated through me, and a moan escaped my lips.
I wanted him so bad. But I knew I couldn’t.
Not yet, anyway.
“Wait,” I whispered as he began to pull my panties down. “I can’t.”
I sat up and pulled my clothes back on.
The last time I’d had sex with one of the Darken, it hadn’t turned out well. The last thing I wanted was to do something that both of us might potentially regret.
“I’m sorry,” I told Aiden.
“It’s okay. You have nothing to apologize for,” he replied.
“I just want to make my decision first.”
I wasn’t that girl. Even though I wanted all of them, I knew I had to wait until I decided on only one.
“I get it,” Aiden replied as we climbed into the bed. Pulling me close to him, he kissed me on the forehead.
We laid in silence together, his soft breaths against my ear. I knew what he was thinking; it was the same thing I was thinking, too.
As much as we wanted to be with each other, both sexually and otherwise, there was a chance that it might not ever happen.
Neither of us knew if he was who I would end up choosing in the end.
***
The next morning, Aiden and I were lying in bed cuddling when a thought occurred to me.
It entered my mind like lightning, quick and fast. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure why the thought hadn’t occurred to me before now.
“I just thought of something,” I told him.
“Yeah? What is it?” Aiden’s honey brown eyes searched mine.
“What if Javier wasn’t the whistleblower? What if Sarah is actually the one who tipped off the Winston Coven?” I asked.
“Hmm.” Aiden thought about it for a long moment. “I don’t know. That seems a little bit like a stretch, doesn’t it?”
“Or does it? I actually think it would make a lot of sense.” I sat up in bed, as I mentally pieced it all together. “She just so happens to be my best friend’s roommate. Okay, maybe we can chalk that up to coincidence. But she’s also one of the only ones on the entire Werewolf Academy campus—not to mention the entire world—who knows my real identity. If your theory last night about her not liking me is true, then maybe she tipped off the vampires because she actually wants them to get rid of me.”
“I mean, it makes sense, but you’re assuming that she’s even seen you around the Werewolf Academy campus before you bumped into her,” Aiden replied.
I shot him an unconvinced look. “Everyone knows who I am.”
“There you go with that cocky ego again.” A grin spread across his lips.
“It’s not cocky. It’s the truth,” I replied. “The things that I’ve done since I’ve been here… you know, like having a relationship with four of my professors”—I shot him a look—“has earned me a bit of a reputation. There are always rumors about me. People are always talking about me. It probably doesn’t help that I have this freakishly good control of magic—”
“Look at you being all cocky again,” Aiden interrupted.
I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, the point is that people heard of me—Raven Gallagher, that is—before I even arrived at Werewolf Academy. There’s no way that Sarah didn’t know I was here, too. I’m sure she’s probably seen me in the halls before. I’ve probably seen her, too, but I just didn’t recognize her until I had my flashback.” I paused. “It’s also completely possible that Sarah came to the Academy because she knew I was here.”
“And what, exactly, would be the p
oint in that?” Aiden questioned.
“I don’t know. All I know is that it’s really freaking weird that Sarah, an ancient, just so happens to be here at the same time as me, knowing she used to be my—err, Fallyn’s—lady’s maid. She must have some reason to be there. And I just think we can’t rule her out as the whistleblower.”
“You’re right. We can’t rule out anyone,” Aiden replied. “Who knows that you’re actually Princess Fallyn?”
“I mean, you guys, obviously.” I shrugged.
“Who else? I know you’ve told your friends.”
“Yeah, Maddie, Vince, and Iris know.”
“Have any of them told their mates?” Aiden asked.
“I don’t know. I can ask.”
“I just think it’s important for us to make a list of anyone who could potentially be the whistleblower.”
“Milos should also be on that list,” I said.
“Milos?” Aiden’s eyebrows lifted.
“He obviously knows that I’m Princess Fallyn. It actually surprises me that he never let anyone know that before now. For some reason, he kept up with the whole charade of my fake identity as Raven Gallagher.”
“Yeah, you know why, don’t you?” Aiden asked. “Milos wanted you to himself. If other people found out that Princess Fallyn was still alive, your life would have been in a lot more danger. By keeping it a secret, he was protecting you. Protecting you so that he could have you.”
“Well, it’s possible that he might have been the one to let the Winston Coven know the truth now,” I said with a shrug.
“I find that extremely unlikely,” Aiden replied, shaking his head. “Milos Santorini knows damn well that those ancient vampires would want your blood and to kill you. That’s the absolute last thing he wants. His number one goal is to marry you.”
At that moment, I saw Milos’s face appear in my mind.
There was a serious look on his face as he said, “If those vampires do anything to hurt you, I will have each and every one of them killed. I can assure you that I am not the whistleblower.”
As his face disappeared to the back of my mind, it was replaced by a migraine. “Ow,” I said aloud.
