The Alpha’s Wild Princess

14

She was soft and pliant in my arms; I felt one of her palms on my chest. I took it as encouragement to deepen the kiss, and she moaned softly her lips parting. She tasted so good that I didn’t want to stop. Our tongues danced together like we had done this a thousand times before. She felt familiar and new all at once. And then her hands moved up and slipped into my hair, a soft caress that elicited a soft growl from me.

I heard the loud whistle of Ryland a few feet away in the background,, but still I didn’t stop. Instead, with one hand cupping the back of her head I turned her head and deepened the kiss even more. I felt her teeth against mine and bit her lower lip, making her moan.

“Get a room!”

The sound of another one of my friends yelling those words felt like cold water had been thrown over me. I slowly pulled away from her. Her lipstick was nonexistent and her hair was askew. She looked just as shocked as I felt. I could smell her arousal, a deep, heady scent that drove me crazy. Crazy enough to have thoughts of ditching this whole thing and taking her straight to my bed.

But we were separated from each other as my friends and the elders congratulated me. The minister who had gotten a front-row seat to the kiss looked as red as a lobster though he congratulated me as well.

I took her hand in mine before long and walked back down the aisle before she was pulled away by the wedding planner to fix her hair and makeup for the reception.

The next time I saw her was when they called for our first dance.

“Hey,” I said, not sure of what to say to her. The reception was in the banquet hall, another wide room inside Alexander’s mansion, and it was packed full of well-wishers.

“Hey.” She answered back. An old Celine Dion song played in the background. I barely noticed anything because I could not stop looking at her. Her makeup had been fixed and her lipstick was back in place. I felt the urge to mess it up again.

“You look beautiful,” I finally said. She looked surprised as if she had not expected the compliment.

“You look pretty good yourself,” she said smiling. It didn’t last long, but I made a mental note to get her to smile again—it would be my life’s mission.

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” she said, looking away shyly, shocking me since I did not think of her as shy.

“It really was.”

“You know, we didn’t have to do all this right? We could have just gone to the Were court to sign a few papers, and call it official,” she said dryly.

There was the Prairie I’d gotten to know over the past few weeks. It made me smile.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked, and I chuckled at her suspicious tone, “You’re doing this intentionally? Being nice to me so I would fall for you?”

I laughed again, and this time, she smiled, too. I hoped it would last longer, but it didn’t.

“I don’t know if you just insulted me or complimented me,” I said to her. She answered flippantly, “Both,” which made me laugh again.

“To answer your question, no, we could not have just gone to Were court and signed a few documents. This is as much a statement as it is a wedding. We’re showing the pack how united we can be despite our past differences -

“You mean like you killing my father and exiling my brother?”

“I did not exile your brother, he fled, after killing a number of my men.”

Whatever rapport we had established the past few seconds disintegrated, and her frown had returned.

“You killed a number of his men too,” she replied.

Before I could reply, I felt a shift in the air and then the sound of a knife whooshing straight for me.

Without thinking, I dove down with her and pulled her out of the way shielding her with my body.

For a second, there was utter silence in the hall and then chaos broke out.

Ryland and most of the men sought out the perpetrator. It was an ordinary young man, but before they could get to him, he slashed his own throat and lay there dying in a pool of his own blood.

Fiona rushed to my side, and I ordered her to take Prairie back to her room. Two guards did as I asked and ignored her protests.

“Who is he?” I asked Ryland as we stared down at the dying boy who could not be more than nineteen or twenty.

“One of the ushers. He must have snuck in to execute you by the outborder Weres.”

“It has to be Phoenix,” Douglas said, echoing my thoughts.

“Clean this place up. I need to know how he got in without our intelligence knowing about him,” I ordered and they jumped into action.

I guess that was the end of my wedding day. Calling for Douglas to follow me, I left the hall and headed to my study.