Awaken - By Anya Richards

Dedication

To Phillip, with all my love. We’re not perfect, but we’re perfect for each other.

Chapter One

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a prince who, everyone agreed, lived a charmed life.

“So beautiful,” cooed his mother the queen, examining her winsome baby boy. And the prince grew ever more handsome as the years passed.

“So strong,” said the king with pride, watching his son approach adulthood, learn the knightly skills and excel in them all. Soon challengers were coming from other kingdoms, hoping to be the one to unseat the prince in the joust, best him at the royal tourneys. But none could.

“So fascinating,” whispered the ladies and their maids and all the women right down to the cook’s helper, who could only sigh with longing when the prince paused to speak to her.

“Such a lover,” thought the women the prince bedded, too tired to actually say anything after he was finished satisfying their every need—even ones they didn’t realise they had.

So it was that the prince, handsome and strong, witty and virile, began to believe all was right in his world—that he did, indeed, live a charmed life. And that enchantment, wherever it came from, whoever bestowed it, would protect him from all harm.

“No need to worry,” he told his mother with a smile when she remonstrated with him for practising his sword-craft without even a gambeson for protection.

“Do not fret,” he whispered to his latest conquest on hearing her father’s footsteps in the next room, just before swinging out of her bedroom window, three stories above the ground.

“Pish,” he retorted, albeit under his breath, when the king decreed it was too dangerous for the prince to go hunting without escort as he was wont to do.

Before anyone realised what was happening, the prince slipped away through the postern gate and strode out into the forest, bow and quiver slung across his back.

Bearing in mind his father’s decree—and even though past his twenty-fifth summer, still inclined to filial rebellion—the prince went deep into the woods to elude pursuers. Soon he was far away from the castle and paused to listen, holding perfectly still so as to catch even the faintest sound of hare or hart, bird or boar. As he stood there, shaded by the drooping branches of a mighty pine, there was a sudden scramble of sound, a flash of movement, and a white doe and red stag bounded across the path ahead.

“Tally-ho,” whispered the prince to himself, taking his bow to hand, excited by the stag’s massive antlers. “Tally-ho.”

Swiftly and silently he gave chase, following the beat of hooves, the bent branches and flattened brush giving testament to the animals’ flight. Once he glimpsed them ahead, the milk-white doe having hidden in a small copse, the stag pacing back and forth to scent her position. Then the doe broke from the trees, and the stag gave chase once more.

Finally the sounds of pursuit ceased, and the prince crept forward to see the doe standing in the underbrush at the side of a grassy hollow, wild bracken and vines tangled about her legs. Triumphant, the stag paced forward, lowering its head as it pawed the ground. When it proudly reared on its hind legs, the prince had to suppress a gasp, for the beast was in full rut.

Slowly, with the utmost care, the prince reached over his shoulder for an arrow. His fingers had just touched the fletch when a voice—sweet and sultry as a summer’s day, musical, rife with magic—said, “Well caught, my darling. What prize will you claim of me, although I believe I already know the answer?”

The prince’s gaze swung from the stag to the voice’s origin in astonishment. Where just moments before there had been a doe, now stood a woman of such rich and bountiful beauty the very breath was stolen from his lungs. Hair of moonlight hues waved around her perfect oval face, tumbling in a shining cloak to her waist. Full breasts, deliciously tipped with deep-peach nipples, peeked out from between the curls. Lower fell his avid gaze, devouring the curves of belly and hips, the plump mound between her thighs. Around her slender, shapely legs now twined flowering vines instead of bracken, the blossoms nodding and brushing against the pale, almost translucent flesh.

Entranced even through his shock, the prince lowered his hand to his side as his cock stirred, rising to press against the front of his breeches.

A deeper voice rang, filled with authority and lust combined.

“The chase