Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
“I still need to learn that there might be larger ramifications for my decisions.”
“No you don’t. You already understand that. We should have told Germaine. That was my mistake. I mostly operate on my own, without her being involved. With you by my side, that has to change. But other than that, we can only be who we are, and if we’re good beings, it will work. Does what we do reflect on an entire realm? Yes. But as good beings, the decisions we make will reflect positively. Like today. Not everyone agrees what we did was right, but we were there, we know what it meant to the people who mattered. And for the most part, the rest of them understood. But bottom line, in a day or two, no one will be talking about this. They’ll find something else to be upset about.”
This was true.
Moving on.
“I’m kinda confused about what just happened,” I told him.
“I assumed the mantle of the True Heir.”
No less confused.
“I thought you already were the True Heir,” I noted.
“Back in the day, once the change occurred, the True Heir became de facto king.”
Holy Hecate.
I knew this, of course. You learned it in history.
But that was what the ancients did.
“This proved ineffective,” Aleksei told me something I’d also learned in history. “No thirteen-year-old boy should sit a throne, regardless that he was chosen by a god. Stupid shit happened. Laws were enacted. And the king, or queen, would continue to reign until the True Heir reached majority. Civilization advanced. Wars became less frequent. The need for a True Heir reduced, he seldom emerged, and we haven’t had one for two hundred years.”
“Yes.” My word was breathless, because a good deal of heavy stuff was just occurring to me.
“I had no interest. And it’d been so long since the last Heir, people forgot,” Aleksei explained.
“Are you saying…did you…just become king?”
“No. I assumed the role of patriarch of my family.”
In these chambers.
Even if I was seated, and the path of the JetPanther was smooth, I felt shaky.
“Aleksei?”
“Yes, darling?”
“The True Bride…” I couldn’t finish.
He glanced at me. “Laura, I already told you that you outrank my mother. The True Heir’s mate, the minute he finds her, is known as the True Bride.”
“Is that my title?”
“It is, and will always be, though on marriage, you’ll earn another one, and on the sad day of my father’s passing, you’ll have another.”
“I hadn’t…remembered that,” I said haltingly. “About the True Bride, that is.”
“History hasn’t focused on females. They didn’t tend to start wars or order people guillotined, the juicy parts of history that are rabidly remembered.”
True, indeed.
“Aleksei,” I called again.
“I’m right here, bissi,” he said quietly.
“Do we…there has always been…” I cleared my throat. “Throughout history, there’s always been a need for a True Heir. War. Upheaval. Political strife. Tyrannical kings.”
He said nothing.
I tore my gaze from the skyscreen to look at him. “Do you think you’re True Heir because your father is a pushover, or he was, and your brothers are problematic?”
“We can hope so,” he murmured.
He hoped so.
I hoped so.
But someone had gone to the trouble and expense of finding a witch to track me down. They’d tried to take my beast.
And then they’d tried to take his.
“Aleksei,” I said again, shakily.
“Engage auto,” he told the craft and turned to me.
Taking my hand, he held it firm, caught my gaze, and I saw in his what was now occurring to me had already occurred to him.
In fact, maybe he’d lived with it from the minute his eyes changed from his mother’s melting brown to the color of the skies.
“We live our lives, Laura, and if there’s something to know, we will know, we will face it and we will best it. But until then, we’ll just live our lives and be happy. We have no other choice.”
What he meant was, he had lived his entire life like this.
And now I was doing it with him.
“Yes, darling?” he prompted.
Again, I had no choice.
I was his. He was mine.
And we were in this.
I nodded slowly.
He held my gaze.
Unfortunately, until I could process it further, that was all I had for him.
He kissed my knuckles, let me go, resumed control of the craft and five minutes later landed us smoothly on the pad of our penthouse.
Chapter 27
Struggling
“Shh.”
“You shh.”
“No, you shh.”
We all giggled.
And yes, we were all tipsy.
My gals had come for a gals’ night in. We’d stuffed our faces. Poorly played billiards. I lost a fortune in chocolate stars and corn nibbles at poker, because it would seem I seriously sucked at poker. Though, that might have had something to do with the fact, until that night, I’d never played it.
And we’d drank a lot.
Gayle, Cat and Monique had come to mine, because at the behest of Dr. Fearsome, backed by Aleksei, I was now under quarantine since my beast could emerge at any time.