Betrothed to a Prince, In Love With My Bodyguard

Graduation

Rowan's POV

I want to invite Red to stay over. I want to hold her through the night again, to smell all the smells I fell in love with and all new ones I get to smell when I make love to her, to see her sleepy eyes open in the morning and look up at me, to engage all over again in that impossibly steamy morning s*x. I don’t just want it tonight; I want it every night. I want it forever.

I hate that I can’t. I hate Dom Gibbous. I hate King William. I hate the world that doesn’t allow her to truly be mine.

I am yours, she would tell me if I said these thoughts out loud to her. Dom doesn’t matter.

She’d mean it, I know. I trust her as much as I love her. But she’d be wrong. She can’t truly be mine when the entire kingdom, him included, believes she belongs to him.

So I ask her to leave.

It saddens her, but she’s too smart to take it personally. She knows I want her to stay; she understands the situation. She fights me less than I’d like, covering her ridiculously sexy body with her robe and giving me a frustratingly short kiss before leaving me.

- - - - -

I expect the next week to be even harder than the last few. Any hope I might have once had of accepting Dom’s place in her life is long gone now that I’ve made love to her. Even the mere thought of him sends me into a blind rage so angry, I nearly shift right there at the kitchen table.

“Rough night?” Corrin asks me.

My eyes bulge as I correctly infer the meaning behind her question. Thankfully, she laughs. “I put earplugs in the moment I heard your door open. Please do not give me any of the details I was spared from by my quick thinking.”

I laugh out loud, relieved to hear it. “Trust me, I won’t.”

Corrin and I are the first two in the limo, as usual. Aurora steps in a few minutes later, and Eli about five minutes after her. True to her usual tendencies, Red stumbles in last.

I open my mouth to make fun of her for being late, like I always do, but stop when I see her.

She’s wearing makeup, I notice instantly. Not a lot, but Red never wears any makeup. And she’s brushed her hair. And she’s wearing… something besides a black tank and ratty jeans.

Okay, she’s still wearing ratty jeans. But her shirt isn’t black; it’s a pretty, baby blue, and it’s made of some sort of silk, and it hugs her in all the right places—

“So,” Eli says. “I’ve got a big math final today.”

I look from Eli to Corrin to Aurora, eyes wide. Do they really not notice?

“We’ve got one in bio,” Corrin tells Eli. “Counts for half our grade.”

My eyes turn back to Red, who is looking right at me with an irresistible expression on her face.

Something the matter? she links to me.

I love hearing her voice in my head. You’re all dressed up. Why?

I’m not all dressed up. I put on a real shirt, is all.

You put on makeup. You brushed your hair.

Is this your way of telling me I look pretty?

I don’t understand why she’s avoiding the question, and it starts to frustrate me. Is something scheduled today between her and Dom she’s trying to spare me from? Does she have some sort of event to attend that she hasn’t told me about?

So much for being mine, I growl, turning away from her.

She says nothing back to me for the rest of the ride, and it’s absolutely agonizing. When the limo finally pulls up to the school, she dives out of it so fast, I can’t help but redden with anger. She’s avoiding me. She’s avoiding telling me the truth.

I dive out after her, grabbing her arm harder than I should. “Red,” I say sharply. “Tell me. Tell me who you dressed up for.”

She takes a step toward me. Her eyes are equal parts sad and angry, and I instantly want to hit myself for making her feel that way, no matter how bad she’s making me feel.

“You,” she snarls. “I wanted to look nice for you.”

- - - - -

The first four hours of the day tick by at a glacial pace. I try to engage her in mind link conversation at least twenty times, but she ignores me.

I’m sorry, Red, I tell her. I was an i***t. Please talk to me.

Nothing.

I can’t blame her, I suppose. I know her well enough to know that what she’s really upset about isn’t what happened this morning, but what will happen when we move to Castle Gibbous together. If I lose my mind on her over a little makeup and a nice shirt intended to please me, how the hell am I supposed to handle seeing her get dressed up to court and marry another wolf?

When the lunch bell rings, I dive for the classroom door so quickly, I almost forget that I’m supposed to walk with Eli at all times. I look impatiently back at him as he gathers his things, then urge him into a speed walk as we make our way to the dining hall. But just before we reach it, we reach them. Red and Dom.

She’s telling him about a party. 

What?

“It’s just a small thing,” she says. “Inner-pack. For Corrin’s birthday. But, unfortunately, it’s at the same time.”

“Totally get it,” Dom says easily. “Don’t sweat it. We’ll have loads of time to get to know each other when you move in.”

“Gross,” Eli mutters, pulling me past them. 

Red falls in behind us after only a few seconds, avoiding my gaze.

“Where’s Corrin?” Eli asks her. “And why did you tell Dom Gibbous we’re throwing her a birthday party?”

“Because we are,” she says, and then frowns. “And because I don’t want to go to Dom Gibbous’ graduation party, which happens to fall at the same time we’ve planned Corrin’s soiree.”

I’m suddenly able to breathe again. I’m more than able to breathe. She doesn’t want Dom. She wants me.

Well, she wanted me. I may have already ruined it.

“Corrin asked Professor Montgomery for an extra half-hour to finish the final,” she adds, answering Eli’s other question. “It was a doozy.”

“How’d you do?” I ask her.

She looks at me for the first time since that morning, squinting as she seems to debate whether she’s forgiven me enough to talk to me.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” she finally asks. “I don’t need to know biology to raise pups and boss around Omegas.”

Her words overwhelm me with sadness. More than anyone, I know how much she wants her life to be more than she’s describing.

But she pushes past me before I can respond, reaching for an apple and taking it to our table.

- - - - -

We form the plan for Corrin’s birthday party for the rest of lunch, though Red makes a point of not speaking directly to me again. We agree that is should be small and simple, like Red’s was, but we realize as we jot out the guest list that Corrin has more in-pack close friends than any of us thought. We manage to cap the guest list at thirty and agree to throw the event at the Bull’s Horn, the dive bar owned by Kipling Rogers, a retired Hunter in our pack and friend of my father’s, who has always had a soft spot for me and Corrin.  

I think about Red and my own stupidity for the rest of the school day. I stay out of her head, hoping all she needs is a little distance and quiet to forgive me. 

But she doesn’t say a word to me on the ride home, either.

I make it about two hours back at the castle before I link to her again.

Red, please. I shouldn’t have come to that conclusion. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around you… loving me. I shouldn’t have assumed you were dressing up for someone else, I just… never imagined it could possibly be for me. Please don’t be mad at me anymore. I’m so sorry.

She takes so long to respond that I assume she’s still ignoring me. When I finally hear her voice in my head, it’s dark and distant.

I’m not mad at you, Rowan.

That’s it. No further explanation. 

Another two hours, and then another. Nothing.

I don’t understand. Last night, she was begging me to take her. This morning, she dressed up for me. What changed since then? If she isn’t mad at me, what is she?

By ten o’clock, I can’t take it anymore. I power-walk down the hall to her room and pound on her door.

She opens it quickly. She doesn’t seem to have settled into bed yet, though she’s already showered and changed into a small, sexy, white nightgown that I’ll never be able to erase from my memory as long as I live. Its material is so paper-thin and translucent that I can make out the exact outlines of both of her breasts and n*****s in the moonlight.

Fuck, I want her so bad. It was a bad idea to come here.

“I have to know what’s wrong,” I tell her, forcing my erection back with sheer willpower. “If you’re not mad at me, why are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not avoiding you, Row. You clearly don’t want us spending every night together. Shouldn’t you be happy I’m establishing some distance?”

I curse the version of me from last night that tried to stop her from coming to my room. “Of course I want to spend every night with you, Red,” I tell her, reaching out to touch her cheek. “I want to spend every second with you. I was just… trying to be smart.”

She bites her lip. It’s so f*****g sexy when she does that. “You lost it on me,” she says softly. “Over something so utterly trivial.”

“I said I was sorry.” I sound like a moron. “You said you weren’t mad.”

“I’m not. But doesn’t it scare you? It scares me. If you can’t even handle the thought of me putting makeup for him…”

I shake my head. She’s right, of course, but I won’t let her think it. She leaves in less than two weeks, and I’ll be damned if I let her go without me.

“I can handle it,” I insist. “I swear to you, Red, I can handle it. Don’t you dare leave me behind.”

In her eyes is that same blend of elation and devastation that seems to overtake both of us far too often. She reaches out to touch my face this time, and as always, I melt at her touch. “I don’t think I could if I wanted to,” she admits. “But the thought of causing you all that pain is getting harder and harder for me to bear.”

“Then don’t think about it,” I tell her softly. “Think about this instead.”

- - - - -

After we make love, we come to the agreement that we need to have as much s*x as possible before we leave for Castle Gibbous, because once we’re there, it’s going to get a whole lot harder to do it.

“I like this plan,” she tells me when I rise to put my clothes back on. I never took the nightgown off her. If I could have it my way, she’d never wear anything else.

“Me, too,” I say as I lean in for a kiss before reluctantly leaving her.

True to our plan, we make love to each other every night for the rest of the week. Dom spends less time with her than he has been, probably due to his wounded ego after she rejected his invitation to his graduation party. We join Eli in planning Corrin’s birthday party whenever Corrin isn’t around. All in all, it shapes up to be a truly excellent week.

But then comes Saturday—graduation day.

I didn’t expect it to be hard for me. I love seeing Red grow up. I’d rather be with a woman than a schoolgirl, anyway. 

But her graduation is the end of an era, and I realize I’m not remotely ready for the next one to begin.

Well, you told her you were, I think angrily to myself as I stand next to the limousine, waiting for the others to join me.

It’s Aurora, not Corrin, who shows up first, which means Corrin must be helping Red with her makeup. I try to mentally prepare myself for the way seeing made-up Red will undoubtedly do me in as I offer Aurora a smile.

Aurora looks fantastic, of course, in her classic she-wolf way. She chose red lipstick to accentuate her already red lips, and bronzers and highlighters to shape her already well-sculpted face. Thick, charcoal black ink lines her eyes, but between her olive skin and her dark eyes, it doesn’t pop half as much as Red’s did when Corrin put it on her last time. I had never seen her in liner before that day, and I remember thinking it made her golden eyes glow even brighter, like the flames of the sun.

Appropriate, I think grimly as I look up to see her devastatingly sexy body stride toward me. Since she’s clearly set on sending me straight to the Sun’s Hell.

Her jet-black dress falls just above her knees, but it flares out as she walks, exposing those tight, athletic thighs of hers. The tall, strappy black heels on her feet seem to cause every muscle in her leg to tighten and flex as she walks. Her arms are hidden by the same black graduation gown that Corrin wears, but the curves of her cleavage are not. Corrin has blown Red’s hair completely straight, and without its waves, it’s even longer than usual. And the liner, of course, is back with a vengeance.

You’re trying to kill me, I tell her when she walks right past me and into the car with only a tiny, tantalizing grin.

It’s payback for last night.

The memory of the night before crashes into me like a tidal wave. She donned the nightgown again and used it to torture me in ways that I couldn’t help but punish her for. I brought her to the brink of orgasm and stopped at least three times before finally letting her finish, which was probably even harder for me than it was for her. I couldn’t help it. The power she had over me when she straddled me in that nightgown, giving me a lap dance the best-trained stripper in the kingdom couldn’t hope to compete with… well, I had to do something to compete.

She was mad at me, of course. She didn’t even swallow up my seed when I finished, a habit she’s formed that’s so maddeningly sexy, it almost makes up for the fact that I always have to pull out of her at the moment I want to be inside her most.

“You can clean it up yourself,” she told me with a sniff as she pulled her robe on over her nightgown.

She wasn’t really mad, though. Just before she left, she kissed me so deeply, she had me begging for another round.

Eli and Corrin step past me into the limo then, and I force my memories of our passionate night away as I climb in behind them.

It’s time for our girls to graduate.

- - - - -

I’ve never really cried before. Leaving my parents at age eleven to move into the Crescent Castle was the closest I’ve come to it. My mother was a wreck, of course, just like she is now. I think it was especially hard for her to part with Corrin, who was only ten at the time.

“They’re just children,” she said to my father. “They’re not bodyguards!”

It was the custom, though, and she knew that. For King William to send his children to school with adult, seasoned warriors for bodyguards would signal to his kingdom that he didn’t trust their children with his own. Sending two children roughly the same age as his own and equipping them with weapons that they wore in concealment was different. Everyone knew why we never left their sides, of course, but everyone also knew that we were best friends—that we were family.

I give my mother’s hand a squeeze, and I see my father do the same from her other side. I realize as we watch Corrin step up to receive her diploma that I haven’t really spoken to my mother in months. I speak to my father at the weekly pack meetings, but she never attends them. I should go and visit with her before we make the move.

One, single tear escapes me when Corrin shakes the headmaster’s hand and flashes a giant, toothy smile into the audience. I really am proud of her. She tried harder than most in school, despite knowing that she was destined to be a warrior, not a thinker, for the rest of her life.

I expected them to call Red before Corrin—they’re going alphabetically, and Crescent comes long before Oakshield—but I realize as I scan the line that they’ve saved their princess for last. I see Red glance backwards with a frown, crossing her arms. She doesn’t like being singled out.

“I am thrilled to present our final diploma to a strong, fiercely intelligent young she-wolf who I am proud to call my princess,” the headmaster announces. “I had the pleasure of teaching her mother, the late Queen Elianna—may she rest beneath the stars in peace—and I truly believe that her daughter is every inch the pure and divine soul that her mother was.”

Well, s**t. Now I’m bawling like a baby.

“She looks so radiant,” my mother whispers to me, which, of course, doesn’t help. “Like a queen.”

She really does. She’s glowing. Even from the other side of the field, I can see the emotion in Red’s eyes. His words mean everything to her, and so they mean everything to me.

This is it, I think. Things will never be the same again.

“I am sure I speak for everyone here,” the headmaster continues, “when I say that I couldn’t be more thrilled that she is forming an alliance by marriage between two of our kingdom’s strongest packs. I simply cannot wait to see all the good that comes of it. Without further ado, Princess Tempest Elianna Crescent!”

The tears leave me, and the rage overtakes me so sharply, I almost forget to stand up and clap.

You don’t speak for everyone here, you f*****g dog, I want to scream at him. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

What good, exactly, is going to come from this marriage? She won’t have any more power than she has now; in fact, she’ll almost certainly have less. Will the Gibbouses allow her the freedom her father does to visit with the townswolves, to volunteer at the hospital? Will Gaius Gibbous agree to take strays into his household when she brings them to him, the way William always does? 

Is it peace our dear headmaster is looking forward to? We already have peace. We’ve had peace for fifty years, thanks to the Crescents.

“Sweetheart,” my mother says to me. I look over to see her big, gray eyes scanning mine with concern. Corrin and I both get our eyes from our mother and our hair from our father, which is unlikely, since both are recessive colors. To inherit our mother’s dark hair and our father’s dark eyes would have been likelier. “Are you okay?”

The ceremony is over, I realize. The graduates have begun their mingling at the drink tables on the far side of the stage, and the audience has begun to filter out to join them. My eyes search for Red and widen when I see that she is talking to Sophie Gibbous. 

 “I’m fine,” I tell my mother, flashing her a lame smile. I kiss her on the cheek before standing up. “I’m going to catch up with the girls. Maybe I could come to the house for dinner before I leave?”

She looks more touched than I expected by that, and I instantly feel like a bad son for not coming over more often. “I’d like that. Monday?”

“It’s a date,” I tell her as I walk away.

I pass King William, Kat, Aurora, and Eli as I make my way to the drink tables. They’re surrounded by people congratulating them, which is funny, since Red, the one who should be congratulated, is nowhere near them. Eli looks miserable.

“…think we’re going to be really great friends,” Sophie is saying to Red when I reach them. Corrin is standing next to them, looking like she wants to puke. I’m sure my own face looks the same. “I’m counting the days now.”

“Me, too,” Red tells her, and I know that what she really means is that she’s counting them with dread, but I have to hand it to her civility.

The two future sisters-in-law share a strained, awkward hug before Sophie leaves. Red’s eyes find me, and I start to close the gap between us, but Dom seems to appear out of thin air, getting to her first.

“Congratulations, Princess,” he says, taking her hand and kissing it. “How do you feel?”

Like punching your f*****g face, I think as the hairs on my inner wolf’s back begin to prick up.

“Like I’m glad to be done with school,” she tells him easily. “You?”

“Like I’m ready for the next stage of my life.”

Don’t growl. Don’t growl. Don’t growl.

“Mind if we step away for a bit of privacy?” he asks her. 

So much for not growling. 

Corrin grabs me by the arm just as the sound begins to escape me, and she steers me away from them so quickly, they may not even have heard it.

“They’re going to be alone together a lot more when they live together,” she reminds me. “You have to get used to this, Row.”

“I know,” I say.

But I never will.