Kenna
The ballroom at the temple has been totally transformed since the last time I came here just a few days ago. Dim, blue-hued lighting highlights the silver streamers falling from the ceiling, shimmering like starlight. Fresh flowers cover every surface, and string music whispers through the air over the rising voices all around us as I stand with my cousins toward the back of the room.
The dress I borrowed from my aunt Maddy hugs every curve like a glove. It’s a little long for me, but a pair of heels keep the hem from dragging on the floor. The sage green silk makes my sun-tanned skin glow.
Again, I feel very pretty tonight. I pinned my hair away from my face and let it fall loose in thick, bouncing curls down my back. A mask of sage and gold covers the top half of my face as I look around the ballroom.
A few formal dances take place. Young men and women twirl in tight circles, smiling and laughing. Others congregate near punch bowls or over flutes of champagne.
But no one stands near us, or even so much as takes a step in our direction.
Ryan shrugs beside me, trying to get comfortable in his impressive suit jacket that hugs his muscles.
“Stop fidgeting,” I tell him, looking up into the navy blue mask covering his upper face. “You’re scaring away people who might want to come talk to me.”
“It’s not me scaring anyone away,” he grumbles, jabbing a thumb in Sydney’s direction.
I sigh heavily, knitting my gloved fingers together. The gloves match the dress, and I feel incredibly fancy wearing them. “What’s his problem?”
“You,” Ryan says honestly, nabbing a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.
“Me?”
“Haven’t you been wondering why we’ve been here for two hours and no one has approached us?”
I frown and look around, catching a few people staring at us, at me. They glance at Sydney before turning away.
“What exactly did Sydney do?” I ask, whirling toward Ryan to face him fully.
“Well, there was the whole Markus thing.”
Ah, that. I heard the Alpha of Emerald Shore got assaulted after the last ball, but Sydney and Ryan swore they had nothing to do with it. At least, that’s what they told my uncle. I’m not sure I believe him.
“Rumors spread fast,” Ryan sighs, “and Sydney didn’t even attempt to tell the other Alphas and Betas that he had nothing to do with the attack. He simply… let them believe that anyone who so much as looks in your direction has to answer to him first.”
“Are people that afraid of Sydney?” I glance at Sydney, who’s talking to a group of stale looking men a few feet away.
“He’s the heir of this kingdom.” Ryan shrugs again, mumbling a curse before handing me the flute of champagne and taking off his jacket to reveal a white dress shirt. “Look, I’ll take care of him, okay? I’ll distract him so you can have a good time.”
“I came here to find someone,” I tell him, desperation creeping into my voice. “It’s not his responsibility to–to protect me, or whatever it is he thinks he’s doing!”
“I know,” Ryan hisses over the music, which is growing louder as the formal part of the ball draws to a close. Soon, a band will start up, and the night will shift into something new. Something more intimate and fun. “I’ll work on it, okay?”
I sip from Ryan’s champagne glass and look down at my dress. What a waste of an outfit.
Sydney steps up to us again with a severe expression drawn across his mouth. His eyes are visible behind his mask, and honestly, it’s obvious who the twins are despite the camouflaged theme of the night. If they’d been a little shorter, or carried themselves a different way, maybe I’d have a chance tonight, but because of them, I stick out like a sore thumb.
Everyone in the kingdom knows who I am and who I’m connected to now.
I drain the rest of the champagne and narrow my eyes at Sydney, preparing to give him a piece of my mind, but Ryan ropes an arm over his brother’s shoulder. “You said you’d try to enjoy yourself at one of the balls. You haven’t done that yet.”
“I had business to attend to–”
“Dude, come on!” Ryan groans, gripping Sydney’s shoulders. “Lighten the fuck up. Let’s get some drinks.”
A group of women walk by. One of them slows and looks at Sydney, her long platinum blonde hair bouncing down to her waist as she gives him a smile that could light up the ballroom. She coyly looks away as she follows her friends through a break in the crowd but looks over her shoulder again before disappearing from view.
I look at Sydney and notice him watching her, wide eyed.
“Ah, there we go. See, Ken? I told you I’d keep him distracted. All right, Syd, let’s go hunting.”
“No–”
Too late for Sydney. Ryan yanks him away, and Sydney knows better than to make a scene. I watch my cousins move through the swelling crowd as the final song played by a string quartet comes to a close.
I exhale deeply. Finally, I’m alone.
I proceed to watch the crowd as I slowly sip a second glass of champagne. A band starts up, and the ball turns into more of a party than before. Ten minutes pass, then twenty, then thirty.
And, I’m still alone.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I know I can’t feel the mate bond. I knew, even before planning this trip, that I wasn’t going to find my mate across the borders of Eastonia.
At least in Eastonia, when I visited the various mating balls during the spring season, I had fun. I had friends to be with and people to talk to. Eastonians couldn’t care less about their status when it comes to approaching people like me–people with titles. It’s an easier, more open kind of communication.
Crescent Falls is entirely different… and no one will speak to me because I’m a princess, and Sydney is my cousin.
Apparently, they need his permission to approach me now, and he’s unwilling to give it, or they're too scared to skirt his boundaries.
I close my eyes, wondering if I should try to find a third glass of champagne before giving up and planning an early trip back home, when someone bumps into my shoulder. I stumble forward, my ankles no more than limp noodles in the impossibly high heels, and nearly fall over when I’m caught around the waist and steadied.
I gasp out a breath as a man in a pale blue mask quickly hauls me upright and steps away, giving me an apologetic bow. “I am so sorry,” he says, only his mouth visible beyond the mask.
In the dim light, I can just make out a gleam of soft, light brown hair, but that’s it.
“It’s all right. It’s these–these damn shoes. I can barely walk in them, let alone stand,” I reply, giving him a wobbly smile. How embarrassing! I need to get myself together, but the two glasses of champagne I’ve ingested aren’t helping. “Thank you for saving my life.”
He chuckles. “I wouldn’t consider that a lifesaving act, Your Highness. It was my fault. I bumped into you.”
“I was likely standing in the way.”
He looks over the top of my head at the wall behind me. I wasn’t in the way. I’ve been glued to the wall for the better part of an hour at this point wondering if it’s time to throw in the towel and be alone for the rest of my life.
“You have a nice view of the party from here,” he remarks.
I eye him, watching the way his mouth moves. “You have a Tarsian accent.”
“Is it that easy to pick up?”
“You’re from Eastonia, then?”
“Guilty as charged.” He brings a glass of scotch to his lips.
“Are you here to find your mate?” It’s such a forward question, but I haven’t run into anyone from Eastonia yet.
“Oh, no,” he laughs. “I'm here with my sister.”
“Oh,” I reply, trying not to sound disappointed. Am I really this desperate for attention? Goddess above.
“Well, again, my apologies, Princess.” He bows low and is gone as quickly as he came.
“You’re a desperate idiot,” I say to myself, toying with my gloves. I could be home right now, enjoying my last few months of freedom with my friends in Eastonia. I could be with my parents, helping Mom and the mystics with the upcoming Rite, that religious festival that takes place every decade or so during a full lunar ellipse. There hasn’t been one in twenty-one years, and one will take place at the very end of summer this year, but I’m here doing… this.
Tears prickle along my lower lash line. I quickly and discreetly brush them away, trying to maintain the makeup I plastered on my face.
Why is this so hard? And why is it so hard to explain to everyone why I feel the need to find my partner, even if it’s not my mate?
I’m not cut out to be an Alpha. A Luna, ruling beside my husband, sure. I need someone to fill in the gaps, to be the hard, dominating force beside me because I cannot be that.
I want other things. I want children. I want a warm, sunny home. I want to cook meals and sit by a fire with the love of my life after we tuck our children into bed.
I want to be a midwife. It’s the only thing I’ve ever truly wanted.
But I want to make my parents proud. I need to be the queen I was born to be. One day, my mom and dad will be gone, and it will be me on the Firestone Throne, ruling over an entire kingdom full of magic and danger and….
A tear works its way down my cheek before I can wipe it away.
I close my eyes tight, stifling a sob.
I feel a touch on my arm; it brushes up to my elbow. I open one eye and find a tall man dressed in all black standing before me, his face almost entirely hidden by a jet-black mask.
In the dim lighting, I can’t make out any of his facial features beside a sharp, clean jaw. His shirt is halfway unbuttoned, the promise of the hard, sculpted muscles beneath just visible to the naked eye.
“What?” I ask rudely, sniffling.
“Would you like to dance?” he asks. His voice is low and rasping, and it does something to my insides that I can’t explain. There’s a familiarity to the way he speaks–somewhat slow, as if he ponders every word that leaves his lips before he says them.
“No.”
“Are you sure?” He reaches up and swipes the tear from my cheek. He’s wearing gloves–black leather. I wonder why, but his touch on my skin brings me back to the moment, to the ballroom, to the reason I’m here.
“I don’t know,” I reply, but he takes my hand and starts to lead me away from the wall, and I let him.
He guides us to the very center of the ballroom where a crowd is swaying to the music coming from the stage. It’s a deep, rumbling, ethereal kind of noise that works its way into every muscle, down to the very marrow of my bones. I’ve always loved music, and this song does something to my brain that eases the tangled web of emotions threatening to drag me under.
I sway, closing my eyes, as the stranger wraps an arm around my waist to keep me flush against his chest. My head fits perfectly in the crook of his shoulder. He smells divine–like leather and sweat and something deeper… sandalwood and the vanilla candles I hoard in my room back in Eastonia.
It’s comforting. I feel instantly, wholly at peace in this man’s arms and I…
A shout rings through the crowd. He stiffens, but the music continues to play. Another shriek, and then more shouting, and suddenly the man snaps into action and picks me up like I weigh nothing at all.
“Wait!” I cry out, but he places a hand on my back and rushes through the panicking crowd. The muted lights overhead flicker before going out completely, and the entire room is consumed by near pitch-black darkness.
Howls pierce the air, and people are bumping into us, some crying and screaming in their haste to find an exit.
And this man is still running with me in his arms.
“Wait! My cousins!” I cry out again, trying to push him away, but the sounds of the ballroom grow distant as he darts into what I think is a corridor of some kind and then steps into an alcove.
“Do not make a sound,” he pants, lowering me to the ground and caging me against the wall. My hand is on his chest. I can feel his heart thundering.
Another howl, somewhere distant, makes my entire body lock up.