I could handle anything if it meant I could keep Anastasia at my side. My heart gave an extra thud in my chest. She could be mine forever.
None of that plan was fair to her. She didn’t even know who or what I truly was.
An arse is what I was for keeping it all a secret from her. A secret it would remain. She’d be far more upset if she found out my true identity and we never got to see each other again, especially with her adorable obsession with all things royal. No, it was better if she could look back fondly on her one night, if we were lucky two, with the strange British exchange student.
She’d likely be hurt when I disappeared, but less so than if my family and our army of lawyers got involved. They’d offer her money to keep quiet or destroy her. I couldn’t let her be hurt that way. I loved her, and for that I would make this sacrifice, even if it made me a miserable sod the rest of my days.
It came back in a rush then. I’d bitten her. I’d marked Stacia, claimed her. I hadn’t planned it, hadn’t even meant to do it at all, but with her beneath me, so sweet and lush and clinging, my wolf had surged forward, and the next thing I knew my teethwere in her sweet pale pink skin, and she’d been like liquid fire around me.
I hadn’t needed the pressure of the knot forming inside her body to prove to me that she was my mate, but I winced at the tug. We were going to be stuck together for a while yet. Luckily, she was sleepy, dozing against me, because I was going to need all the time I could get to figure out how the bloody hell I was going to explain all of it.
In a few hours, the bite would fade, but the mark would form, like a tattoo. Hard to miss, that. I was going to have to think fast.
Though part of me wished I could just… tell her. Everything. About me, about supernatural wolves, about Bashkiria. She’d probably be fine with the royal bit. It was the wolf shifter thing I was worried about.
She was mine, my mate. If my wolf scared her, if she ran from me, I didn’t know what I would do. Just the thought of it left me cold.
I grabbed the borrowed sweatshirt to drape over us. It was a good thing I did too.
“Ruslan Bashkir. Get up and put your clothes on immediately, young man.” The voice of the Queen of Bashkiria rang through the dirty little bar like a trumpet.
“Fuck.”
“Bash?” Stacia looked at me, over at my mother, back at me, and then hid her eyes behind her hand. “Oh my god. Oh. My. God.”
“Stacia, I can explain.” I reached for her hand, but was yanked off the table by the exact royal guards I had escaped less than forty-eight hours ago. One of them grabbed my pants and threw them at me, hurrying me away from the table. It was a damn good thing that my knot had gone down, or that would have been as painful as it was humiliating.
“Wait, stop. I’m not leaving her like this.” I pushed against the guards, but they were easily twice as big as I was and there was no getting through. “Stacia, Anastasia, I love you. No matter what happens, I love you.”
I had no idea if she even heard me because I was whisked out through the kitchen and into a waiting limo.
“Put your pants on before your mother returns, your majesty.” The captain of the royal guard of Bashkiria rolled his eyes and sighed at me.
Fucking hell. If my family had sent over the captain, I was in a shit ton more trouble than I thought. I yanked my pants on and grabbed a bottle of water from the in-car bar. I was not saying another word until I got to see Stacia again.
I was fully prepared to stick to my guns until my mother got into the limo. She looked me up and down and then waved the captain to get out of the car. Nobody argued with the queen.
I felt like I was six years old and about to be told off for pulling the girl’s pigtails. She waited only until the door shut before she laid into me.
“What the hell, Ruslan?” The shake in her voice belied her fear more than her anger. “I was worried out of my mind. I thought you were dead.”
“Sorry, Mother.” The look on her face had me feeling like a total piece of shite. I hadn’t thought about her as my mum in a long time, but she was, even if she put the country first. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just needed some time.”
“To sow your wild oats, I see. You know how your father and I feel about sex before mating.” Ah, there was the queen again. Now that she knew I was safe and sound, I’d get the tongue lashing I knew was coming all along.
“I do.” That’s all I had to say about that. I did not want to discuss what had happened between me and Stacia. That was something special for only the two of us.
Best to derail the conversation. “There’s been a lot of one-blood activity on campus. I was never going to get close to it as Prince Ruslan, but I’ve been following the rumors as Bash. They’re getting bolder, making challenges.”
“All the better to have your guards with you, Ruslan,” Mother said, giving me a withering look. “You can’t just go haring off to fight those degenerates. If you’d told me, we could have arranged something. What would Bashkiria do if you got hurt?”
What would I do?That was what she didn’t say. I stayed quiet, looking out the window of the limo, thinking hard.
“And what are you going to do about this girl then? Pay her off? Leave her to tell her story to the tabloids?” She folded her arms in her usual manner.
“Not this time, mumsie. I think, instead, I’ll mate her.” It was going to take some sweeping reforms to the culture that ruled the wolves of Bashkiria, but it was time we shook things up, and I was the man to do it. I hadn’t known that before this exact moment. I wasn’t a mama’s boy who always did as he was told, and with this trip to America, the world got to find that out.
I was the future alpha and King of Bashkiria. I would always do what was best for my country and my people, and that meant allowing everyone to choose who they wanted to mate, who made them happy, not stifled by antiquated rules that were really at the root of the miseries we’d suffered. If we weren’t free to love and marry the one person right for us, how could we be expected to care about anything else? I was about to change all that.
