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)
“Hardly,” Cat scoffed. “Can you imagine how boring she’d be?”
Gayle snorted. “I hear you. That has to be it. She was fine to look at, but have a couple of dinners with her floating around being an earthbound angel and constantly exuding utter perfection, and it’d be an endless snoozefest. A shifter needs some fire. A shifter like Aleksei needs an inferno.”
And with that, not that I ever had a chance, I was out.
I was quiet. In certain situations, I could be shy. I was mostly an introvert, unless I was around people I knew, but even then, I was more of a listener than a talker. I didn’t like attention. And I preferred cooking at home, snuggling in to watch some display, reading a book or taking a hot bath and drinking a glass of wine to being out on the town or off on an adventure.
Even when I went on holiday, I found a cottage or cabin somewhere and did all the stuff I preferred to do at home. I just did it without it having to be interrupted by work.
I wasn’t ethereality and utter perfection.
I also wasn’t fire.
I was just…me.
“She’s probably been crying in her meditation studio or isolation aquarium for the past month,” Catla surmised gleefully, as a female was wont to do when another female, especially one born with more than you had, was brought down a peg.
I couldn’t say Princess Anna was more attractive than Cat. Their looks were very different.
But she was Princess Royal of a peaceful, affluent realm. She had magic (seeing as she was a witch) and natural beauty, nothing enhanced. She was rolling in family money. And she was, well…ethereality and utter perfection.
Hard not to hold some jealousy for a chick like that.
“Wouldn’t you be, if you lost all the lusciousness that is Prince Aleksei?” Gayliliel asked.
“She was picced cavorting with Dolph Windstalker on the beach on Tyball’s Gate. I saw the images on the social tapes this morning,” I told them. I then added, “Oh, and she decided against donning the top of her bikini. And yes, her breasts are as perfect as everything else about her.”
“She…what?” Cat was aghast.
“I’d say she isn’t utter perfection, considering how richly petty that is,” I declared, loyal, as ever, to the prince. “Aleksei has barely been seen in public since the break. And she’s topless, on the beach on a party island off Land’s End with a hunky screen star who usually dates shifters who are barely majority. Blech.”
Cat’s eyes narrowed on me. “Have you met Windstalker?”
Like I wouldn’t tell her if I met Dolph Windstalker while working one of my gigs.
I shook my head. “Never. But I haven’t heard good things.”
“Men that handsome tend not to promote people hearing good things about them,” Cat muttered.
“Well, if Anna ever thought they’d make up, she killed that fantasy,” Gayle noted. “Not that Aleksei’s the kind of guy to change his mind. Outside realizing the female he asked to marry him wasn’t the female for him, that is.”
“That was so out of character,” Cat put in. “I think I was more surprised he changed his mind at all, much less that he changed it about her.”
“Seems he dodged a bullet,” Gayle remarked.
“He totally did,” I declared. “It’s obvious, as he got to know her, as it came closer to the wedding actually happening and her hooks were sinking deeper into him, she thought he couldn’t get away, or at least not change his mind, since that’s not his style. And both realms would want to avoid the scandal. Maybe because of all that, she let the mask drop. Maybe who she pretended to be was all about the Starknight and Dayrise houses unifying, and once that seemed a foregone conclusion, he got a sense of the real her and wanted nothing to do with it. You should have seen the comments on those pics with Windstalker. She was not faring well,” I shared.
“That’s pretty out of character too,” Gayle mumbled.
“Or maybe it’s not,” I stated.
“Well, Aleksei isn’t a waffler,” Cat said. “This is a PR fiasco for Anna, and it was before those pics were put on the tapes. This means the stupidity of the Windstalker move is undeniable. Everyone was already speculating it was something about her or something she did that made Aleksei beg off. Now, they’ll be certain of it.”
“It’s always the female’s fault,” Gayle griped.
“Yeah, so I either champion her for saying, ‘fuck it, instead of licking my wounds, I’m gonna lick this hot wolf shifter,’ or I think she’s an idiot, for the same reason,” Cat replied.
The craft stopped, and we all turned our heads to peer out the window.
What we saw was the glistening black façade, including the equally glistening black double doors, and a line of people down the pavement, queued along a black velvet rope attached to shiny black posts.