Chapter 7 The Moon Goddess Was Wrong!

• *Kieran*
• I can smell her. I don’t open my eyes yet as flashes of memories from the night before wash over me. I haven’t seen her yet, but it doesn’t matter. I feel her warm body pressed against me, her flat stomach beneath my palm, her small hips situated so that her perfect, round ass cradles my hardening cock.
• She tasted like strawberries, like a warm summer’s day. The way she’d moved beneath me was perfection, even though I quickly discovered I was her first. This makes me smile because I never want anyone else to claim her. She’s mine.
• My mate.
• In a moment, I’ll open my eyes and look upon her beautiful face, maybe for the first time. I wonder who she is. Maybe a princess from a distant land or the daughter of a noble. I’m the Crown Prince of Dun’s Crossing, so she must be someone majestic. Someone important.
• It doesn’t matter, though. She could be the lowest scullery maid, and I would protect her to my last breath.
• I feel her stirring beneath me, breaking me from my reverie. I imagine her long white hair fanning out all around her on the pillow we share and slowly open my eyes.
• What I see has me shouting in shock as I scurry away from her, her black eyes staring at me in the same terror I feel now.
• “What the actual fuck?” I grab hold of the blanket we’d been tangled in and try to cover myself, but she’s doing the same, and it’s a tug of war that rips the blanket in two. She takes her half and snaps it in place over her body, one arm wrapped around her breasts. I take my part and slap it over my lap. Over my dick.
• “Oh my Goddess!” Blanca screams. “What the actual hell?”
• “No!” My mind can’t catch up with what’s happening around me as I fight to put this all together. This is not possible. How the actual fuck did this happen? The Moon Goddess knows everything, right? Well, how did She not know that this woman staring at me like she wants to die, feeling the same horror I’m feeling now, cannot possibly be my mate?
• Blanca shakes her head. “This… this is some kind of a sick nightmare. There’s no fucking way.”
• I agree with her. This has to be a bad dream. The woman I was with last night… She was everything I ever wanted in a mate, and even though I never saw her, I knew we were meant to be together.
• This? This is something out of a sick story someone from the backhills must’ve written just to get a rise out of people.
• I’m not sure what to say or what to do, but I want to boil my entire body to get every trace of her off me.
• Unless… “Did someone switch us in the middle of the night?” I ask. “Is it possible that we didn’t…”
• Blanca shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Goddess. I think I’m going to vomit.” I see her fighting the urge to spew the bile rising up in her throat, the same way I am.
• My mind flies through the events of the night before, how I’d felt the urge to leave the castle as soon as the moon rose above the horizon. I’d shifted, taken off running through the dense fog, guided by my wolf. My thoughts are hazy after that. I’d been running totally on instincts, letting the Moon Goddess lead me to my mate.
• We’d definitely had sex.
• How the fuck is this possible?
• Only one answer comes to mind.
• “You’re some sort of fucking witch!” I yell at her. She’s reaching for the clothes that had been left in the tent for happy couples to wear on their way out to make the announcement to their friends and family that they’d found their fated mate.
• She pauses with a dress in her hand. “What? You think I did this?”
• “That’s right! First, there was that fucking bird in the dungeon, then that demonic cat.” I grab a shirt off the tent floor and shove my arms into it, pushing my head through the neck hole. “You’re so fucking greedy for the throne, you’d do anything to get a hold of it, even something as sick and twisted as this.”
• She drops the dress on over her head without moving her scrap of blanket away and speaks to me in a tone I’ve never heard from her before. “Are you insane? I’m not a witch. How could I be? I’m your own–”
• “Don’t fucking say it!” I warn her, reaching for the pants next to me. “Not now.”
• “Well, you know I can’t be a Goddess-damn witch. I’m just as disgusted as you are.” She grabs a pair of shoes and thrusts her feet in them. Thankfully, she’s turned away from me while she does this, so I manage to get the pants on without her seeing me naked. Goddess! The thought of where my skin has been. “I don’t want the stupid throne either, Keiran!”
• “Like hell you don’t.” I shove on another pair of shoes, which are too tight, but I don’t care. “Father told me you were after it. I just never thought you were capable of doing something like this.”
• “I’m not! No one is. Only the Moon Goddess can control the Haze.” She doesn’t turn to look at me, and I don’t know if it’s because she’s afraid I’m still getting dressed or because it’s easier for her to lie when she’s not looking right into my face.
• “All I fucking know at this point is that we aren’t breathing a word of this to anyone. Whatever the hell you did, we’ll find a way to undo it. I’m going to walk out of this tent and head back to the castle. You’ll wait at least a half an hour and then follow. You don’t even so much as look at me for the rest of your days, or I’ll kill you.” I spew all of that at her through gritted teeth. “Goddess! To think you’d do all of this just to be queen.”
• “I don’t want to be queen.” She turns and looks at me now, her eyes overflowing with tears. “I just want to leave this Goddess forsaken place and never come back.”
• I see sincerity in her eyes when she speaks and know she means it–at least the part about leaving. I don’t understand why anyone would want to leave Dun’s Crossing. We are the most powerful kingdom in the world. Yet, when Blanca says she doesn’t want to be here, I believe her.
• “So you thought doing something this sadistic would get you banished?”
• “I. Didn’t. Do This.” Her eyes are narrowed, her lips pressed in a thin line.
• I want to believe that’s the truth, too, but the only thing that makes sense in my mind at the moment is that she tricked me.
• I shake my head. “Don’t follow me.”
• She says nothing. I pull myself up off the ground and move to the tent, listening for a moment before I unzip it. I pray that no one else is up and about, that no one is close enough to hear us, and that no one sees me. If anyone else finds out about this, who knows what will happen? Who could possibly hear a story about siblings–twins, no less–doing what we did and not think they were absolutely fucked in the head?
• No, I’ve got to do everything I can to make sure that no one in the world ever finds out about this.
• I hear a few birds singing in the trees, but that’s it. Not another sound. I hope that means we are alone. We were shouting at each other pretty loudly, so if there were other tents nearby, we would’ve had to wake the inhabitants up.
• I yank the zipper down and stick my head out. I do see a few tents littered around us, but I don’t hear anyone, and I don’t see movement from anyone stirring about inside.
• Still being cautious, I pull myself out of the tent and stand, breathing a sigh of relief.
• Then, a rustling in the bushes in front of me catches my attention. A familiar giggle hits my ear, and I freeze.
• This is my worst nightmare come true.
• Scratch that–second worse.
• “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
• I take a deep breath and shake my head. Goddess. I’m absolutely one hundred percent fucked.
• “Looks like someone is in a bit of a pickle,” she says. “Thankfully, I have an offer. One you can’t refuse.”
• I brace myself and ask Nessa, “What the fuck do you want?”