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)
This brought to mind that Aleksei and I had few things in common.
Sure, we both liked quiet and being at home, reading, cooking, yadda, yadda.
We also liked having sex.
But was that a basis for a relationship?
He was wealthy. Titled. He had an intact family, which had some dysfunction, but there was love, care, support.
I had none of that.
He had a drive to make something more of himself, doing this making scads of money.
I liked nice things, and I didn’t mind working for them, but I’d never been ambitious that way.
He was business minded.
I was creative minded.
He was determined to find balance in doing what he wanted with his life and performing the duty he was born into.
I was struggling mightily with that, and I honestly didn’t know if I could take on another job and do it to my exacting standards, at the same time fret about all the appearances I was going to have to make, but I had to make them anyway because that was expected of me, and I couldn’t demur.
Truth be told, if we were not mates, we would never have found each other.
Like the article suggested, had the gods got it wrong?
Was that why Aleksei was behaving like this, because with all that was going on, he was realizing it?
It couldn’t be denied, even if it wasn’t my fault, I was trouble, a weakness that was not his own, one he didn’t really need.
All of this messing up my head, I searched Male Shifter Dragon Fated Mate Reaction to Female Mate Vulnerability.
And the results rendered much the same but included spontaneous or uncontrolled shifting to their creature.
Nothing about picking fights, remoteness, coolness, or overall dickish behavior.
I tapped my fingernail on the edge of the tablet until I got a brainstorm.
True Heir Reaction to True Bride Vulnerability.
There were a number of panes about the history of the True Heir and his Bride, but the only ones about any reaction harked back to general information about shifter mates.
But on the third pane of search results, there was an article about Prince Aerin and his True Bride, Princess Iphelia.
There was a famous play about Aerin and Iphelia. We’d put on a production of it when I was in school (and my costumes for it rocked).
The reason they were famous was that Aerin’s and Iphelia’s love affair was known as being explosive. She was a warrior herself, which didn’t help things in their relationship, because he was big on wanting to make her stay at Spikeback Castle and go off to battle on his own, and she wasn’t so hot on that. They clashed, she won and was eventually wounded at the Battle of Peak Neige, which made Aerin lose his mind.
They shocked realms by separating. But during this, they were both miserable.
The legend went, they eventually couldn’t deal with being apart and set out from their respective castles at the same time, met in the middle, and their activities there created the next True Heir.
I called up the article to read it just as a bubble drifted down from the top of the screen.
It announced a vid comm from Cat.
I took it. “Hey.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m in the Princess Retreat,” I told her. “Where are you?”
“I just got back from the gallery.”
Thank gods.
“The Princess Retreat?” she queried.
“We’re having drinks in here ASAP. Seeing as I’ll be princess, I decree it, but we also have all sorts of stuff to talk about.”
“I’m in,” she replied. Then asked, “Did you know Prince Tanyn is here?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Have you met him?” she asked.
“No,” I answered.
“Well, I just did. In the hall. And he’s a massive asshole.”
I felt my eyes get wide. “Really?”
“He thinks the Truelocks are demon traitors.”
I sat up and asked angrily, “He said that?”
“Not in so many words. But when I introduced myself, his lip curled.”
I sat back.
This was not a new thing. In the past (the way past), demons of the Edge made it known their feelings about the First Families of Night’s Fall.
And yes, it was that they thought they were demon traitors.
But that was way past.
That said, how that was made known was so ugly, I knew Cat, as well as Mr. Truelock and all the First Families, had some sensitivity around it.
“It was five hundred years ago. He needs to get over it,” she groused.
“Aleksei says he’s broody,” I told her.
“I’ll say,” she replied. “Why are we doing drinks there?”
“Because I need a drink, and I also need to suss out stuff with my gals.”
She knew me, so she knew what I was saying, and she proved this by mumbling, “Uh-oh, trouble in paradise.”
Absolutely.
“Just come when you’re ready,” I bid. “I’m going to text Gayle and Monique. This is about Aleksei, and Aleece knows him better than I do, but even though she’ll give good insights, I don’t know if it’s wise to invite her.”