Keeping Secret (Secret McQueen) - By Sierra Dean Page 0,3

was the power of wealth that made him so indomitable. It wasn’t. He was royalty.

And soon I would be too.

My mouth felt dry, like I’d swallowed a shot of sand.

Lucas sensed my unease and took one of my hands in his, squeezing gently. Once upon a time being this close to him would have filled my mouth with a burst of cinnamon. Now, with our mate bond sealed, the connection was deeper, but the comforting flavor was gone. The only cinnamon in the room was the strong waft of it coming from Kimberly’s mouth as she caught Lucas up on what he’d missed.

“Well, Miss McQueen,” she said, switching to an unnatural-sounding formal address, then she caught herself doing it and giggled. “Oh goodness, I guess pretty soon you won’t be hearing that anymore.”

I wrinkled my nose and stared at her as though she were a duck who had learned to knit. “Why the hell not?”

Her attention darted back and forth between me and Lucas, and I knew she wasn’t sure where she’d made the mistake. “I just meant…with you getting married…well, your name would be—”

I waved a hand at her, trying to erase the 1950s logic she was trying to weave into sensible reasoning. Sure, I’d wear a white dress. I’d force my scant collection of girlfriends to dress up in matching gowns and fawn over me while eyeing Lucas’s groomsmen for prospects. But I would be damned if she thought I’d be changing my last name.

“Kimberly,” I cut her off. “I appreciate that Lucas’s name has a lot of heft in the financial world and in…other arenas. However, my name is ridiculous enough as it is. If I changed it to Secret Rain, people would assume I was a stripper. Or a yacht.”

I figured Lucas would chide me for my impropriety. He was a big fan of pointing out how I always chose the most inopportune times to be snarky. However, in this case, he attempted to fight off his laughter, and it ended up bubbling out as a loud snort.

Kimberly looked appalled, but her veneer restored quickly, and she was back in ass-kissing mode in no time. A true professional. The first rule of being a New York City wedding planner—do everything your client wants, and never ask them why they want it. Never ask. Never correct. Especially if your client is worth over a billion dollars and has insisted you “spare no expense” in planning his big day in less than a month.

The average bride spends over a year planning her wedding.

Well, let’s be honest, the average woman starts planning her wedding the day she learns what one is. The actual bridal planning, however, cannot begin until the ring is firmly on finger and the husband-to-be has made the big commitment.

I was not an average bride.

Lucas’s proposal, though it had been a grand and romantic public gesture, hadn’t been made because he was crazy in love with me. He could profess his love all he wanted, but we both knew the truth. The werewolf king had proposed because having a queen would solidify his throne. Bonus points if his new queen happened to be from royal werewolf lineage.

That’s where I came in. Southern werewolf princess, bonded soul mate, and the on-paper perfect queen. On-paper being the operative term. Lucas had come to realize over the last year I wasn’t at all the perfect-princess type, and it had started to wear on our relationship. It didn’t help that I was also soul-bonded to another werewolf, Lucas’s lieutenant Desmond Alvarez.

And it certainly didn’t help that I loved Desmond more than I loved Lucas.

Yet here we were. There was a massive diamond on my finger and a wedding planner with dollar signs in her eyes waiting to yield to my every wedding whim.

Lucas took my hand and kissed it, his lips lingering a few seconds too long as he looked up at me and winked, which sent another thrill down to my toes. Love was such a complicated bitch, more so when the supernatural got thrown into the mix. On a logical level, I knew Lucas was wrong for me. On a metaphysical level, though, a part of me needed him as much as I needed oxygen. Now that our mate bond was complete, we were connected on a level that defied explanation.

I knew he needed this from me, and I couldn’t deny him something as simple as a wedding.

“Let’s talk about bridesmaid dresses,” I said, giving Kimberly my most