Page 28 of Wedlock (Vampire Bachelor Games #3)

My study door swings open and I look up from the paperwork covering my desk, thankful, truth be told, for any respite from reading the mountains of letters from well-wishers piled high before me.

They’d all been dutifully filed for posterity, as I’d expected, but Viper, true to form, hadn’t even opened half of them.

The slack little prick had clearly just shoved them off into a box and gone on his merry way.

This is making the task much longer than it needs to be because I’m having to record those who didn’t receive an acknowledgement to ensure that occurs, albeit belatedly.

Vampires have long memories, and even a perceived slight like this can have ramifications years down the track.

And so, I must wade through the lot. If there’s a note in here from Angelina to my mother, I’ll find it.

But the process is making me want to poke my eyes out.

Mother had offered, of course, to undertake the task, but I can’t leave this to anyone else.

I need to see this letter, if it exists, with my own eyes.

I can’t leave anything to chance. The future of my title, my family, rests on whether Jag’s assertion is correct.

Everything else pales into insignificance.

This paper trail is just the start of either a very long, very painful trail of death and destruction, or a short, bloody fight with a man I once trusted with my life.

The interruption to my tedious chore is not so welcome when I see who stands at my door.

“Revna.”

“Falco,” she shakes her finger at me as she sashays to my desk and perches on the edge of it, leaning forward to kiss me on the forehead. “You left without a word.”

I sigh heavily and lean back in my chair. I’d meant to send her an attractive meal and jewels as an apology, but it had slipped my mind.

“Princess, now isn’t the time. I apologise for leaving without letting you know, but urgent business drew me home.”

“So urgent that you sit here now at your desk flipping through,” she flicks some of the cards before me with her long, red fingernails, “greeting cards?”

I clench my teeth at her disregard for my privacy and the fact that she’s messed up my piles of letters and cards, those I’d scrutinised and those I’d yet to go through, with her ass and her indifferent swat.

Rising, I walk around to her side of the desk.

I know Revna, know her well, and I can see her ire is raised. She’s a very controlled woman, and she’ll punish me in a myriad of tiny ways for a long, long time if I don’t mollify her. The only problem is, I’m in no mood to play.

“Revna,” I growl, pulling her roughly into my arms and pinning her own behind her, “I know you’re angry, but I can’t give you what you need right now.”

“What I need?” She pouts, her eyes drifting from mine to my lips, “is for you to know that you can’t show up after two centuries, fuck me and then leave like I’m a two-bit whore at a roadside tavern.”

“Princess,” I shake my head and release her hands, running my own up her back and into the hair at the back of her neck, pulling her head back so she can’t avoid my eyes, “you’re tending towards the dramatic again. I was coming back, I am coming back, but I have urgent business to attend to.”

‘Business that I can’t and won’t tell you about.

A wife I can’t stop thinking about, a lost brother, or two, another plot against my title, a pretend heir, a woman I left in the clutches of Spider who might be carrying my child, and a heart as heavy as the world no matter what, or who, I do, to try and alleviate the weight. ’

“La!” she huffs, pulling away and pushing against my chest to force me to step back from her. “What’s going on with you? What could be so urgent that it keeps you from my bed? Is it your suicidal human wife?”

I sigh and turn from her to pour us both a drink.

Clearly she still has the ear of my Queen if she’s heard the story I’d fed the monarch about Angie’s post-natal depression.

But the last thing I need right now is any other news getting to the Queen that I’d rather be kept in-house.

I consider my next words carefully as I turn back to her.

“I can’t find my brother.”

She rolls her eyes and accepts the dirty martini I’ve poured for her, throwing the olive garnish into the empty fireplace and frowning as she takes a sip before setting the glass aside.

I raise an eyebrow, but say nothing. Last I knew, she liked olives.

“I’ve switched to classic,” she shrugs, answering my unasked question.

“And since when did your brother’s whereabouts concern you.

He was always a tear-away, surrounded by sycophants and prone to disappearing for months.

I can’t believe he’s changed in such a short time. Why should you care where he is?”

“Two centuries bring a great deal of change,” I murmur, my eyes still on the martini she’s perched precariously on top of the pile of cards on my desk.

‘For fuck’s sake!’

“Indeed?” She snorts, clicking her fingers and pointing to the bar. “I said classic.”

I narrow my eyes at her as she cocks her head to the side, studying me, before sighing and flouncing to the bar to make her own drink.

“You do vex me, Falco,” she laughs as she mixes her drink, “but I like that you won’t put up with any shit — in that, at least, you haven’t changed.”

“You wouldn’t have it any other way,” I shrug.

“Oh, I’d have you any way I could. Any which way,” she smirks, returning to stand close to me, placing her glass down again and running her hand down my chest to my belt buckle.

Snorting, I turn, picking up her discarded glass and placing it on the coffee table away from where it might spill on precious documentation.

Sitting on the firm, leather sofa, I look up at her and wait for her to get to the point. If I know Revna, and I do, since it appears she hasn’t changed one bit, she wants something, something more than just a roll in the hay with an old flame. She’s here for a reason.

“Surely someone as important as you didn’t fly all this way for a fuck, Revna?”

She rolls her eyes, shaking her head in annoyance as she sits opposite me before pursing her lips and meeting my gaze.

“I’ve had to face a hard fact, Falco. Being with you this past week made me realise that I’ve never really loved anyone else, and it’s time I admitted this and acted on it.

Mother and Father have given me an ultimatum.

I must marry within the next decade and take on the throne within the century.

I need my consort. I wanted to spend at least five hundred years enjoying my marriage before I had to become the Queen, but as the days tick by, time is dwindling.

I’ve already waited too long. Your life seems to be not as you once wished.

I think we could make each other happy, and I’m quite frankly sick and tired of waiting for you to recognise that we belong together. I want you to marry me.”

I frown and look down at my empty glass, swirling the whisky rocks around and listening to them clink as I consider what she’s said.

Finally, I look back up and meet her gaze. She’s supremely confident, I’ll give her that. But then, she always has been.

“Revna, any vampire would be over the moon to marry you and become your consort.”

“I don’t want any vampire, 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, my Queen, 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 positively bet on 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 no impediment 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 just anyone becoming 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?”

“The first game, yes,” she snorts. “The second also, but once again you did something absurd.”

“Who did you select?”

“Let’s just say she lost her head on the first night,” Revna laughs.

“I see,” I join in her laughter, but if she knew what I was really thinking, she’d run.

“Then, you went and chose the redhead,” she sighs.

“But…Angelina was never the strongest contender; she was the ordinary girl thrust into an extraordinary world. It’s a hard place for a small country mouse to try to fit into, and a lonely existence as a new mother.

And suicide is a terrible thing,” she whispers.

“Tragic, really,” she adds, a slow smile spreading across her beautiful face.

‘Ah, so you know I’ve lied about my wife’s condition. Of course you do. Which means the Queen knows I’m lying too…but by the sounds of it, she’s playing along because it neatly fits into her plan. I’ll bet she doesn’t know Mother was the one who chose Angelina for me though…’

“Yes, it is tragic,” I shake my head and return her smile, a quote coming unbidden to mind.

‘What a wicked web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.’

It reminds me that Mother always referred to the Princess as a spider.

“I’ll think on your proposition, Revna, but right now I have other pressing matters to attend to.”

“It isn’t a proposition, Lord Dragonspur, it’s a proposal.”

I nod.

“I’ll think on your proposal.”

‘Although it’s starting to seem more like a royal edict than anything, and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s being boxed into a corner.’

“Very well,” she sighs, rising. “I expect I’ll see you soon?”

“As soon as I can,” I promise, kissing her thoroughly before spinning her towards the door.

She turns back, her expression haughty at my dismissal.

“Surely I can at least stay the night?

“I wouldn’t let you go home without a thorough fucking,” I smirk. “You know where my suites are.”

She beams at me and leaves, and I shut the door behind her and lean my back wearily against the timber as my eyes fall, once again, to the piles of cards on my desk.

Her offer is tempting. She’s a healthy companion for a vampire, and I’m at no risk of losing my heart to her.

Certainly, being a king consort will keep me a vast distance from any humans, apart from those procured for my diet.

I wouldn’t ever even need to share the bed of a human again, because the Princess and I could have pure vampire babies.

Yet her insistence that the Queen had engineered for me to enter The Games as punishment for setting aside her niece, and that she supported me dispensing with Angelina and marrying into The Families, makes me uneasy.

The Queen has never been someone my mother or I trusted, and she’s shown herself to be the keeper of many secrets, not the least of which concern my family.

Scowling, I return to my desk.