Sinking into the leather wingback chair that had stood next to the front door for as long as she could remember, she looked around the house that had always been much more a prison to her than it had ever been a comfort. It was beautiful, pristine, elegant to the extreme. The colors were understated but rich—golds and browns with accents of ivory and rich, dark green. Thick rugs covered gleaming wood floors, and heavy tapestries hung on the walls, side by side with original paintings by famous French Impressionists in ornately gilded frames.
It was a showplace, a modern-day castle with twin purposes: to boast and to intimidate. God knew it had fulfilled those purposes well—at least in her case. She’d been intimidated by this house practically from the time she was old enough to walk. Certainly from the time her mother had died. Everything here had a place, from the furniture to the dishes to her father and brother. She was the lone outsider, the one possession of her father’s that had never quite been able to fit in.
Was it any wonder, then, that months after his death she still hadn’t found her bearings?
Her shoulders slumped and Cecily buried her head in her hands as she tried to ignore the doubts that were crowding in on her from every side. Maybe she really was making an ass out of herself with her crusade to bring peace to the Wyvernmoons. Maybe she was as naive, as stupid, as the members of the
Conseil
seemed to think she was.
But whatever she was, whatever she knew or didn’t know, she was certain that things couldn’t go on this way. They just couldn’t. If the clan was strong, if business as usual was moving along on a fairly even keel, maybe she could fight this fight. Maybe she could even win it. But time was a luxury that was not on her side, a luxury that wouldn’t be on her side until she found a way to control the different factions all vying to take over.
And since they obviously weren’t going to unite under her, there really was only one answer. She would have to take a husband. She would have to provide the clan with a king.
The thought of how badly she had failed—and how much she was going to have to give up because of that failure—grated and burned until she was half-mad with pain and sorrow. Everything she had, everything she was, longed to escape from her duty and all the agony and uncertainty and responsibility that came with it.
Maybe I could
. The thought crept inside her slowly, so slowly that it took her a minute or two to really register it. When she did, she froze. Her mind flooded with what her life would be like if she simply took herself out of the game. If she just flat-out refused to play anymore.
Excitement welled up inside her at the thought of such freedom, and instantly Logan’s face popped into her head. He was rogue, completely free from responsibility to a clan. Master of his own fate. And he was happy—she could see that in his smile, see the joy shining from his eyes when he spoke to her. She wanted to be like him, without a care in the world. And, after her fantasy last night, wanted to be with him, as well. So much so that she had reached for the door handle before the idea had fully formed in her head.
No more would she do what they wanted her to do just because they wanted her to do it.
No more would she be moved around just to make their lives easier.
From now on, she would do what
she
wanted to do, and to hell with the consequences.
Why shouldn’t I?
she wondered fiercely. She hadn’t been brought up for this. Her father had not once looked at her and told her that she needed to be ready to rule in case something ever happened to Jacob and him. In fact, if he had a grave, the old man would be rolling in it at the very thought.
And yet . . . and yet, really, what alternative was there for her? Did she really want Logan’s life? Did she really want to go rogue? Have nowhere to fit in, nowhere to call home? She might hate this house and everything it stood for, but it was still her home. A place where she could go when she wanted to get away from the prying eyes for a little while.
What would she do if she no longer had it?
What would she do, really, if she no longer had
anywhere
to belong?
Besides, who did the clan need more than its princess?
She thought back to the encounter she had had the week before, the one that had lit the fire under her desire to be a true queen. A civilian woman had come up to her to beg her pardon for her husband. She had pardoned him—of course she had, he’d done nothing wrong but take things into his own hands when the clan had failed him and his wife—but neither her father nor the
factionnaires
had cared about him or his family when the case had come up for trial. They had ignored them, tossed them aside like they were little more than garbage.
Like they were nothing more than pawns who existed for the
Conseil
’s amusement and abuse.
It had bothered her, angered her, made her determined to be more than an ineffectual figurehead for her people. Little had she known that, within days, the
Conseil
would have turned her into a pawn for much the same purpose.
The horror of that dawning knowledge hit her hard and she slid off the chair, not even noticing when she hit the ground hard. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she started to rock. And let the idea, the dream of being free, go before it had a chance to take root.
She wasn’t going to turn rogue today or ever. Wasn’t going to give up her clan or her position. Not because she needed or wanted the life of luxury provided to her by her birth and last name, but because as much as she tried to pretend otherwise, her people needed her.
Which meant that she was going to take the only road open to her. She was going to get married. She was going to pick a
factionnaire
, elevate him to king and spend the rest of her life working behind the scenes to make her people’s lives better. The dream she’d had of ruling as queen, of one day finding a man who would rule alongside her equally, was just that: a childish pipe dream. It would never have worked out, and it was better that she realize it now, before she’d completely alienated every man on the
Conseil
.
Too bad she hadn’t realized it before every single one of
them
had alienated
her
.
The idea of taking one of them for a husband physically hurt her, made her ache in a hundred different ways. It also begged the question—whom should she choose?
Not Julian, obviously, as he would rule the clan, and her, with an iron fist.
Not Acel and Remy, who were both too old for her, not to mention too mean.
Not Thierren, who was already drunk on the power of being her friend. His abuses of the position might be different from Julian’s or Acel’s or Remy’s, but they would occur nonetheless.
Wyatt, she wondered, with his good looks and charm, both of which hid a wicked temper and a dark past?
Dash, who made almost everything a joke but who hadn’t seen the need to stick around and back her up that afternoon?
Or Gage? She shuddered at the thought of being married to the man who had been a combination big brother/father figure for her entire life. Just the idea of the intimacy required of such an arrangement made her queasy—especially since she would be required to provide the next heir to the throne.
And yet Gage was truly the only one who had not spoken against her. The only one who had held his tongue as she had bumbled through the motions of trying to take over the clan. And he had been the last one to leave the room that afternoon.
He hadn’t helped her, but he hadn’t actively sabotaged her, either.
She snorted at the thought. What a way to pick a husband—not based on mutual affection or attraction or even common goals, but on who had not actively tried to hurt her in the last week. God, her life had deteriorated even more than she’d thought.
If it was to be Gage, then . . . If it was to be Gage . . . Her stomach twisted, threatened to revolt, but she breathed through her mouth until the nausea passed. If it was to be Gage, then she would have to reconcile herself to the idea of him touching her, kissing her, making love to her. If he was to take control of the warring factions of the clan, theirs would have to be a real marriage in every way.
But how could it be when the idea of being with him left her not just cold, but physically ill? Oh, he was good-looking, smart, even charming when he wanted to be. But he was also a man she had considered family for far too long.
Is this how it’s going to be, then?
she wondered feverishly. Would she have to give up any chance of experiencing passion or lust or truly magnificent sex? She had dreamed of finding a mate for decades, had dreamed of finding a man with whom she could willingly, openly share her body and her heart.
Now, however, she was going to be forced to settle for a man who desired her even less than she desired him.
She tilted her head back. Rested it against the wall and closed her eyes. Unbidden, an image of Logan rose behind her closed lids—huge and warm and so sexy that he made her toes curl and her mouth water. It had been amazing to be touched by him, held by him, kissed by him. Amazing and wonderful and so hot that it had sparked a fantasy unlike any she had ever experienced before.
A tingling started in her lower abdomen at the reminder of how she had spent a large portion of the previous night, and then the sensation spread through her breasts and her sex until she was all but squirming with the need it evoked. The idea that she was going to have to give up all that passion, that she was going to have to live the rest of her life without ever finding out what it meant to be made love to by him—
No, damn it! Just no!
She sprang to her feet, stormed out of the house before she was even conscious that she had moved. But as she shifted—her clothes falling away as the dragon emerged—she knew exactly what she wanted to do. What she was
going
to do.
She took to the sky in a headlong flight, speeding through the starry night with renewed strength and purpose and focus. She would mortgage her future, settle for a passionless marriage and an empty crown, all in an effort to save her clan. But she would be damned if she was going to do any of that before she’d found out what it was like to truly touch someone and be touched by him. And not anyone, either. It was Logan her body burned for, and Logan she would have, at least once, before she had to lock herself and her passions away forever.
“I have to admit, I expected better progress from you,” Shawn said seconds after he flashed into existence about five feet away from where Logan was sitting, trying to get a grip on the anger working its way through him.
“Keep doing that, asshole, and you’re going to end up getting gutted,” Logan growled. But he relaxed his fingers, slid the dagger that was never far from him back into its sheath. As he did, he forced his mental patterns back to normal. It took a few seconds, as he’d been prepared to dig into the enemy’s brain and rip it to shreds at the first sign of trouble.
“Geez, you’re losing your touch. Usually you know I’m coming to see you before I do.”
“So sue me. It’s not exactly easy to keep up the mental connection across a thousand miles.”
“Yeah, but I’ve seen you do it over much longer distances before. You must be getting old.”
Logan ignored him. Hoped if he didn’t talk to him, his friend would go away.
But Shawn had always been notoriously thick-skinned, and this was no exception. Settling down on the ground next to where Logan crouched, he stretched out his legs in front of him before flashing in two bottles of beer. He held one out to Logan.
Logan looked at the bottle for a minute, then shook his head before taking it. “Should I ask where these came from?”
“My refrigerator,” his friend replied with an affronted look. “I’m not a thief.”
“You don’t think it’s going to look funny—two beers out here in the middle of nowhere, floating in midair, since we’re currently invisible?”
“Jesus, what put that stick up your ass today? I’m shielding them, so relax.”
Logan popped off the top, then took a long swig of beer, wondering how long it was going to take Shawn to spit out whatever it was he had come to talk about. He figured less than a minute.
But a few minutes passed with Shawn doing nothing more than companionably drinking his beer. So Logan turned his attention back to the asshole who had just made Cecily a proposal she had damn well better refuse. He figured she would, despite what she’d said when she’d shown him the door. The vibes rolling off her had been absolutely frigid. She’d been polite to the bastard, but she’d seemed upset by what he had to say, and Logan hoped that meant that she had seen through that whole smarmy act of his.
He’d wanted to delve inside her head and see what she was thinking, but the shields of that guy—Thierren—had been almost impenetrable. It had taken all of Logan’s considerable talent to eavesdrop on his thoughts and the conversation, and he didn’t have enough power left over to tap into her thoughts.
Thierren’s thoughts hadn’t been all that illuminating, at least not in terms of helping out the Dragonstars. They had, however, given Logan insight into how the
factionnaires
viewed Cecily. Within two minutes of being in Thierren’s head, he’d wanted to beat him, and everyone else on the
Conseil
, into unconsciousness. Men who treated women like these guys did—who thought that badly of them—deserved to have their asses handed to them.
Logan scanned the areas around Cecily’s house, then widened his search, but the bastard had disappeared. Either he wasn’t thinking about anything, which Logan could believe, as he hadn’t exactly seemed like the sharpest tool in the shed, or he was deliberately shielding.
Despite his opinions on Thierren’s intelligence, Logan had the feeling it was probably the latter. Which meant he’d either felt Logan’s scan, which he really hoped wasn’t the case, or he was with someone who had enough psychic talent that he’d felt the need to completely block himself.