Secret Princess: The Beast's Captive Mate

al bedchamber. A bitter draft slithered through the microscopic cracks in the ancien

al sword drills, unfastened the heavy brass buttons of her cold-blue royal military jacket. She s

long shadows across her face. The reflection staring back at her was striking, yet entirely androgynous-a sharp, aristocratic j

was no

g the edges of the dark undershirt she still w

, flattening her anatomy into the hard, unassuming lines of a male soldier. After a grueling fourteen-hour day of mil

ayed end of the bandage. With a brutal, uncomp

rr

fabric tearing away from raw

A cold sweat instantly broke out across her forehead as fresh, br

key, violently unlocking a memory she ha

a dying world. Twenty-one years ago, the Wither Virus had swept across the continent like a reaper's scythe. I

dered human beings. They were reduced to livestock. They became walking incubators, breeding currency traded among desperate human

She saw her mother's pale, sweat-drenched face on her deat

r mother's freezing, skeletal f

ying. "You are a boy. You will be the Prince of Navia. If they discover what you are, they will chain

ined linen clutched in her fist. Her blue eyes darkened, swimming with a he

s. The long strips of fabric pooled

e pale and full, a stark, undeniable testament to her true gender, marred by a network

he considered a curse. She picked up a clean linen cloth, preparing to dip it int

r. The cloth slipped from her numb f

onal surge of heat ignited d

ssively pulsing warmth that felt entirely foreign. It bloomed from her

ng emptiness accompanied the heat-a deep,

is?" she whispered,

oom no longer registered on her skin. An unnatural, feverish flush rapidly spre

now she possessed the genes of the Syren-the ultimate, extinct apex females whose pheromones could drive entire

ckward, her bare heels slipping on the wooden floorboards unti

ron will, producing a cloying, shameful weakness that

ight fists, driving her short, blunt fingernails so deeply into her calloused palms that the skin broke. She used t

cede into the marrow of her bones, a

me

pping with terror, echoing from the roy

a. Her

hed. The cold, lethal Prince of Navia snapped back into existen

h brutal, punishing speed, she wrapped the fabric around her chest. She pulled it so tight her bruised ribs groaned in prote

served its purpose, temporarily numbin

military jacket off the floor. She buttoned it rapidly all the way up t

on her nightstand. Her thumb traced the worn leat

he heavy oak door open and stepped out into