Being the intended mate of a royal is the duty of a lifetime.
To Princess Peregrine duty is everything. From the day she was born she was groomed to save her realm from extinction. With a lineage like hers, she was destined for one thing and that is...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
We danced and drank all evening, celebrating my impending union to King Raven. He was ever the gentleman, not at all what I had been originally expecting. I had been told he was a fierce ruler, vicious in a way. From what I had experienced this evening, he was nothing of the sort. He was almost too kind to me for being a king.
I had only seen King Raven a handful of times before, all of which when I was much younger. I had remembered him being tall and dark-haired, not much else. I was not at all prepared for the man that I had met this evening. He was intimidating in more ways than one. His mere aura demanded authority and the rumors of his attractiveness had been a gross understatement.
King Raven was all sharp, carved features with piercing blue eyes and pitch-black hair. He was taller than any man I had ever encountered, made of solid muscle too. The immediate attraction I had to him was almost frightening. I had never experienced meeting a male quite like him.
When he had spoken I felt like I was being hypnotized. His voice was melodic and deep, smooth as cream. He had introduced himself and so had I. We spoke for a bit, telling one another a few small facts about ourselves. It was surprisingly comfortable between the two of us, even with such a large age gap between us.
It was only when we had walked out into court that I had felt an automatic discomfort. I scanned the room for Timber, knowing he was there among the royals, probably angry and brooding. King Raven had begun to give his speech and right in the middle of it I found him.
I looked into those grey depths and immediately thought of the kiss we had shared this evening. His hands had run all over my body, awakening feelings inside of me that I did not know existed. His tongue had swept itself inside of my mouth and it was such a foreign, forbidden feeling, one I had never experienced before. It had warmed me to my core and I could sense that he was thinking of the exact same thing.
I could tell it took everything in him to stand there and watch another male claim me as his own. When King Raven had begun scenting me I had turned my head to the side. I watched as Timber's body trembled in the way it does right before a shift. He was trying not to turn with everything he had and Gregory was doing his best to calm him.
Timber is a creature of the land, making his instincts primal and feral. Watching another male claim with the intent to mate someone he perceived as his own, I know must have nearly killed him. If he had shifted during the ceremony it just might have. He was in the Sky Realm, after all, and it was forbade for any other creature to shift unless given explicit permission from the king.
Directly after, we had all danced and I had to watch Timber with his intended as well. He and Princess Alaska spent the entire evening together, just as King Raven and I had. It was a bittersweet reminder of how our future will be now. There will be no more shifting in the woods together. Our friendship will slowly dwindle away the day we both are officially wed and mated to whom we are destined to be with.
