“You stop right there,” Tina said. She put my coffee down on the table in front of me, a little too hard. A blob of whipped cream slid off the top and started melting down the side.

“Peter, you are not going to sell our daughter to settle a debt,” she said, staring daggers at him.

“It’s okay,” I said, and I reached out to Tina. She pulled away.

“It’s not okay,” Evan snapped.

I already had the gold business card, and my cell phone, in my hand.

“It’s actually my choice, alright?” I said. That got them to quiet down.

I made the call.

While it rang I took a few shallow breaths and tried to prepare what I was going to say. I didn’t plan to, but when the line picked up I just started talking before the prince could answer. The words just rushed out.

“Hello Nolan — I mean, Your Highness — I changed my mind and I’m so sorry about what I said last night. If you’ll still have me, I’ll marry you, but I’ll need your help with something first and I just have to get it out, I need ten million dollars. Today.”

I ran out of breath and gulped for air. I pressed the phone to my ear and waited. My brain ran through a bunch of different ways he might respond to that, all in the span of about two seconds.

But it wasn’t Nolan’s voice that answered. It was his secretary.

“Hello,” the man said, all business. “The prince is occupied at the present moment. But I will convey your message to him later today.”

“Ah,” I said, both relieved and mortified I’d just said all that to someone other than Nolan. “Okay. Thank you.”

I hung up. I couldn’t imagine how the prince would receive this message.

Tina was standing behind me with her arms crossed, still glaring at Peter. Peter looked exhausted and a bit more gray than usual, like he’d aged ten years in the past twelve hours. Evan was back in the corner of the kitchen, leaning on the counter, sullen and silent.

I set the phone down on the kitchen table, drank my coffee, and waited.

NOLAN

The prince was holding a lot inside. Even more than usual.

He was lying to everyone, including himself. The story he had prepared to explain this very unexpected decision… it had nothing to do with the truth. But he kept telling it.

First to the crowd at the Full Moon Ball. Then to the girl alone.

And again, over and over, to himself.

His wolf, Kent, had been speaking to him lately for the first time in years.

Nolan’s father, the king, told him long ago that young Lycans heard the voices of their wolves, loud and clear in their minds, when they were first getting used to turning. The wolf’s voice faded with time, as the two sides of the soul intertwined. But it could come back… if it had something important to say.

Nolan was not yet able to acknowledge the message he was hearing. He was trying to block it out of his mind. Distract himself.

The fact was, he didn’t really want to get married at all, but it was something he had to do. And soon.

And then… Yena.

The girl came to him like a miracle and brought him back from the dead.

She had done something to him. Something unexplainable.

The sex was not only hot… it also actually healed his injuries. That was the first incredible thing.

But that part, amazing as it was, did have an explanation. It was a kind of magic… one the prince had heard of, but thought was extinct. An ancient sort of sexual power, something only wolves descended from a very rare noble bloodline were capable of.

Kent was hungry for that power. He wanted to smell her again. Taste her.

And Kent insisted that this wolf was his fated mate. She was destined to be his Luna.

Nolan had years of practice controlling Kent. Unrestrained, the wolf was a savage beast. The great work of the prince’s entire life so far had been taming this animal inside of him, keeping it at bay and trying to live the life of a good man, a good prince who would someday be a good king.

Yena was too young, anyway, to recognize a fated mate to the public. Nolan used this fact to justify denying the truth of it himself.

But if keeping Kent’s impulses under control was the only thing at issue, maybe Nolan could have forgotten about Yena.

But it was not just his wolf that craved hers. Despite trying very, very hard not to, the prince actually liked the girl. And when he was around her… she drew him to her like a magnet.

He tried not to let his thoughts to linger on this topic for long. He did not like it.

He felt powerless around Yena, and it made no sense. She was not the type of girl he usually found attractive.

His ex, Gina… that was his type. Thin, athletic, conventionally pretty. And submissive.

But everything about Yena was… surprising. And she might have been the only woman he had ever met, aside from his own mother, who did not seem to fear him at all. He could not intimidate her.

It was annoying, actually.

And the couple times he had been near her. It was odd… he tried to keep his hands off her. But he kept reaching out and touching her without thinking, like a reflex.

“I’ll see you next time, My Lord,” Leo called out as he headed out of the fencing room.

Nolan nodded at him. Fencing had kept his mind off Yena for a little while. But thoughts of her were just rushing back now.

Yena did not know yet that Nolan was her fated mate. The girl hardly knew anything about being a werewolf at all. He certainly did not plan on trying to talk to her about this.

She had made it quite clear that she was not interested in him.

That was hard to swallow. Rejection like that… bold, unapologetic, and personal… was a new experience for Nolan. It gave him a strange discomfort in his chest as he thought about it.

He pulled off his fencing jacket and started to strip down, unbuttoning a sweaty undershirt and peeling it off his muscular chest. He wiped his face with a dry spot on the hem, slicking off a film of sweat.

A maid entered with a pitcher of cool water and poured him a glass. He became aware that she was staring at his body. He politely pretended not to notice.

His secretary came in after her.

“Your Highness, I just received a call from Miss Yena,” he reported. “She says she needs your help.”

“How much does she want?” Nolan asked. He sipped his water.

“She asked for the same amount we had already prepared after our initial investigation into the adoptive father,” the secretary said. “Ten million dollars. The total sum of his company’s debt.”

“Write the check,” the prince said, “and get the car ready.”