Werewolf Academy Year Three - Jayme Morse Page 0,42

be now, thanks to you.” I rose to my feet, brushing off my bare knees. “I can never repay you.”

“Actually, you can repay me,” he replied as he rose to his feet, too, and I realized how high he towered over me. I wasn’t sure that I had ever seen someone as tall as him.

“Okay. Are you going to tell me what this favor is or are you going to forever let it be a mystery?” I questioned. Based on how I felt when I looked at him, it was hard to imagine me saying no to anything he was about to ask of me.

“I need you to marry me.”

“You can’t be serious.” I thought he was joking at first, but there was a look of seriousness behind his emerald green eyes as he stared back at me. “You are serious.”

“I am more serious than I have ever been about anything in my life, Princess,” he said matter-of-factly.

“This is quite a commitment you’re asking of me,” I murmured.

“It was quite a favor I did you,” he replied pointedly.

“But this is a long-term commitment.” I swallowed hard, my cheeks flushing at the thought. He was absolutely gorgeous. Stunning. If I could build a dream man, it would have been it.

But I also didn’t like that he was asking me to marry him as a favor.

The only thing I really wanted in life was to marry for love. I didn’t want to be forced into a marriage with anyone. And even though he was certainly nice to look at, he was trying to force me into a marriage, too—the same way the King and Queen who I had just escaped had.

“If I was going to be forced into a marriage, I may as well have stayed in the castle.” Except I knew full well that I would have been happier with this stranger who stood before me than I ever would have been with Milos Santorini.

I didn’t believe that Milos had a single good bone in his body. But this stranger who stood before me seemed like he did. He had helped me escape, after all… even if it was for his own selfish gain.

Still, why was he so insistent on a random stranger marrying him?

Oh. Correction: why was he so insistent on a princess marrying him?

I realized that I must have solved the mystery. This random stranger had helped me escaped merely so he could marry a princess.

“Why do you wish to marry me?” I asked him, mostly curious about whether or not he would tell me the truth.

“If you marry me, Princess, you will make me a King.”

Well, at least he was honest, I supposed.

“Actually, you are incorrect in your assumptions,” I informed him. “I am not yet a Queen. Marrying me will only make you a Prince.” I paused, thinking about it. “Now that I have run away from the palace, I guess I will never actually get to be a Queen, so therefore, you would never have the opportunity to become King, either.”

I wondered who would end up ascending the throne once my parents were no longer able to reign over the kingdom. I was an only child. There were no siblings who would have been the next heirs to the throne; it had only ever been me.

My entire life, I had thought my future would be as the next Queen of Nocturne Island. Now that I had run away, I could never show my face again.

If the King and Queen didn’t find me, that is. They had me found the last time I had run away, after all.

“Even though you’ve run away, you’re still a Royal. My plans for us go bigger than Nocturne Island,” the stranger explained. “We can start our own kingdom. We’ll build a fortress that’s all ours on another island, and we will reign over it completely, without a care in the world—just you and me. There’s another benefit of you marrying me,” he added. “Once you are mine, then you belong to me. No one could ever force you to marry anyone ever again. What do you say, Princess?” He got down on one knee then. Staring up into my eyes, he took my hand in his. “Will you marry me?”

Every ounce of my being knew this wasn’t a good idea. It would have been completely foolish of me to marry someone whose name I didn’t even know, someone whose intentions couldn’t have been entirely pure if he was asking me to