Clyde assured me he’d been checking in on the YMWs every week of the school year, making sure that anyone who was out absent wasn’t being restricted from school and also keeping an eye for new she-wolves who’d been brought here against their will. He told me the YMWs had been surprisingly respectful during the check-ins, with no signs of foul play to be found. But still, the gatehouse project stuck in my craw, and I’d been planning to figure out a way to defund it as soon as I got my crown.
I’ve got my crown now. It’s still resting, heavy and golden on top of my head.
But instead of sitting in my kingdom office, allocating the money we pay Kirk to some much worthier program, I’m sitting in the back of a car, looking up at the brand spanking new gatehouse for the first time.
What the Fenrir wolf? Why are we here at the gatehouse?
The answers to those questions hit me like a drone nuke.
I had been right about Damianos taking me somewhere my family would never know to look. Someplace they would never find me. But I was wrong about how he’d get me there.
Our final destination wasn’t the drone. It’s the cabin.
My kingdom’s own fucking gatehouse.
“Sonovabitch…” I whisper.
Chapter Nine
This night seriously couldn’t get any worse, I think.
Then I immediately regret issuing that challenge, when Kirk Waters comes bounding down the cabin’s front steps. Like this shitty night is saying, “I’ll see your creepy kidnapping and raise you a misogynist, tobacco-spitting gatekeeper!
But he surprises me by bending down to greet me with a huge grin through the car’s window. “There you are, Queen Ola! I was expecting you over an hour ago. I was afraid Colby got lost, even though I was sure the directions I wrote down for him were good enough to get him here without a hitch.”
“They were,” Colby assures him from the front seat. “But Master wished to see her dance.”
“Oh, I bet that was a fun time!” Kirk says, throwing Colby a quick grin. He then turns back to me. “Here, let me help you out of the car. We had a terrible bad rainstorm yesterday and it’s still pretty muddy. Wouldn’t want you to slip!”
Wouldn’t want me to slip? This prepper had looked like he was dying for me to slip earlier tonight at my coronation. Preferably off the stage, with a noose around my neck.
I stare at him, confused until suddenly I realize. “He got to you. He’s hypnotized you or whatever he did to my boyfriend to make him do whatever he said.”
“He wasn’t truly your boyfriend, Ola.”
I glance over my shoulder at Damianos, who’s adjusting his cuff links. Like he couldn’t be any more bored as he informs me, “He was merely a thrall I put in place to ensure you were exactly where you needed to be when I was ready to make my claim. You may divest your mind of him now. I assure you; you won’t be seeing him again.”
Even more unsettling than the idea that my first mate potential boyfriend had been hypnotized into dating me was the word “claim.”
“You must be tired after that big coronation party and the long drive,” Kirk says before I can ask Damianos what the hell he meant by claim. “Master, is it okay for me to open the car door for her? I’ve got her room ready with her bed all turned down, just like you asked.”
“Yes, fine,” Damianos answers, shaking out his sleeves.
Let’s get me inside…the newly renovated house that’s at least a mile or two away from where my party took place. Where…no one…and I mean absolutely no one from my current kingdom town would ever think to look for me.
Shit, shit, shit, Could Damianos Drákon be any more diabolical? I wonder as Kirk opens the door and holds out his hand to me.
Then instead of taking Kirk’s hand, I punch him in the nuts.
I run, run like my life depends on it. Because guess what? I’m pretty sure it does.
But dammit, Kirk was right about the mud. I don’t even make it ten steps in my high heels. The crown I’ve been so proudly wearing all night tumbles from my head as I slip and fall like a skinny white girl in a horror film.
But unlike those ever-fallin girls, I kick off my shoes and immediately push back up to my feet. No time for recovery. I grab back my crown, tuck it under my arm and take off again, determined to get away.
Unfortunately, the fall gives the trillionaire’s English boy servant enough time to catch up with me, even with his relatively slow speed.
Lucky for me, dude’s still a human and there’s a three-quarter’s moon hanging overhead. A quick football shove sends his gangly body flying into the closest tree as I continue running down the mountain. I’ve got to get back to the road Colby drove up to get here—