Page 35 of Wedlock

“I don’t wantanyvampire, Falco. I want you. I’ve always wanted you. We’re meant for each other; the Falcon and the Raven.”

“I’m already married, Princess, or has that slipped your mind? Your own dear aunt,myQueen, ordered me to do so.”

“Oh, that’s easily fixed,” she smiles, moving to sit beside me. “She told me herself that you’d never follow orders and actually settle down. She knows you and I are destined, but she was quite determined to punish you for jilting me at the altar.”

I turn to stare at her incredulously. There’s a lot to unpack in what she’s just said.

‘The altar?’

“We were never formally engaged, Revna.”

“Don’t lie to me, Falco. You were going to ask me, I just know you were, but then something changed, I don’t know what, and you left. You left the one woman who would have, could have, and still wants to, give you the world.”

I nod, my brain spinning with her revelation about the Queen.

“Are you saying that Queen Cunt expected my marriage to Angie to go to shit?”

“Expected? She positivelybeton it,” she laughs. “She just wanted to bring you down a peg or two. She also knew you were ridiculously attached to your family honour and didn’t want the title to go to your disgusting little brother, so she thought getting you hitched and producing an heir would satisfy all your concerns.”

“The Games? But that was Spider’s idea.”

“Was it? Oh, I don’t know, but he and my aunt do spend a great deal of time together. He might have mooted it. Anyhow, she thought you needed a little hurry-up so you could head back my way, and his idea suited that perfectly. So you see, there’s noimpediment to our union. Your little heir will take on your title, and you can marry me and enjoy at least a century of fun and freedom before we sit on the thrones.”

‘My heir? That’s just it. I don’t have an heir. Not one that I know of, anyway.’

“And my wife?” I frown. “The Queen has made a big show and dance of me parading her and our ‘happily ever after’ fairy tale for the humans.”

“Yes, well,” she pouts, “you ought not to have slaughtered the whole cast on the first show, not on live television anyway. If you’d just married the one Aunt selected everything would be as it should.”

‘Selected?’

“Revna,” I place my hand upon her knee and squeeze gently, “are you saying the Queen has a hand in the selections?”

She stills for a moment, and I run my hand up the inside of her knee towards her thigh, as she shakes her head.

“I’m sworn to secrecy.”

“But if we’re to be married…” I murmur, my hand running up a little further, “there should be no secrets.”

“Yes,” she nods. “You and I will be one.”

“Exactly.”

“Very well,” she sighs. “Aunty has always selected the women she wants the bachelors to choose. Generally they do, not always, but usually.”

“Why on earth would she bother?” I murmur, stroking her pussy through her panties with my thumb to encourage her to keep talking.

“Falco, we can’t have justanyonebecoming a royal,” she breathes, pressing into my hand.

I frown and withdraw my hand, ostensibly to pick up my drink.

“Fortunes are won and lost on the bets placed on that game, Princess.”

“Of course,” she pouts, adjusting her dress, “so it wouldn’t do for anyone to know it’s rigged, now would it?”

‘And the bachelors who found their wives on the show would be pissed off no end if they knew the Queen of England was selecting the future royals of every other country. Something like this could bring down a house. This could even be the catalyst for another world war, if houses aligned to remove her. Christ, no wonder Mother wanted it kept quiet that she was also fiddling the books. She was playing a deadly game trying to thwart the will of the monarch.’

“So, I gather you and your aunt had someone specific in mind for me?”