Page 86 of Violet

“Okay.” It feels like my insides are quivering, but the medicine Iris gave me is making things float through me instead of weighing me down. I can feel the nerves, the pangs in my stomach, but only simmering under the surface.

I follow him outside to the garden that’s ablaze with big, full blooms and beautiful bright colors. The sun is starting to sink below the horizon and fireflies blink around us. We’re alone out here and drift farther away from the noise of the party inside.

He turns to me. “Princess. Violet,” he corrects, andthen frowns. Uncertainty swims in his gaze. “I want you to know that I…I don’t regret marking you.”

My breath hitches. “You don’t?”

“No. Our relationship may have started out as fake, but there’s always been something there drawing me to you.”

“Then why do you look like you’re about to go to the gallows instead of our mating ceremony?”

He rubs his lips together. “Because I can’t give you what you want.”

I study him, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Children. I can’t give you children. A proper pack.”

I’m suddenly struck with a chill.

“I’ve tried to let you find an Alpha who could give you everything you want,” he says, “but I’m also a selfish bastard. Just the thought of you with someone else makes me want to tear out throats.”

He closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them again, they shine with a level of truth I’ve never seen from him before. “It’s selfish for me to ask you to go through with the mating ceremony, for you to give up another dream just to be my mate. You’ve already given up so much for your family, and I don’t want to take anything else from you.”

My heart breaks. This is clearly a struggle for him, to confess to me something he’s been worried about telling me for some time. But he does care about me. At least enough to give me a choice.

“It won’t be pretty, but I had come up with a plan before the maze situation happened. I was going to get so caught up in a scandal that it would leave the Monarch no choice but to give you an out,” he says.

“But then what would happen to you?”

“She’d most likely banish me.”

I gasp. “Banishment? But your career?—”

“I would figure something out. Now that I’ve marked you, it makes things a little more complicated, but maybe if?—”

“I don’t want an out,” I say. “I don’t.”

He stares at me and his brow wrinkles. “Did you hear me? I can’t ever give you kids.”

“I heard you. And there are other ways to become a mother or have a pack.” I shrug, pretending as if it doesn’t bother me like it does. But I can’t have him sacrifice himself because of me. “We can adopt or foster. My sisters are bound to have a handful of kids. I’m sure our house will be full every weekend with nieces and nephews.”

“You’re…okay with this?”

I offer him a small smile. “We started this fake relationship together, and we’re going to see it through.”

He gently touches the edge of my bite mark. “As something real.”

My heartbeat races and excitement floods me. “Only if that’s what you want,” I say.

Laughing, he wraps his arms around my waist, hoists me into the air, and spins. “Who wouldn’t want a princess of their very own?”

And in that moment, with my feet off the ground and fireflies twinkling like earthly stars all around us, I think I can do this.

Because…because I’m pretty sure I’m falling for him.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

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