Total pages in book: 230
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
“What are you doing, Benjamin?” I lowered my hand.
“Asher and I have a question that only you can answer,” he said, still speaking into the microphone. I bit my lip as he leaned down to include his son in on the speech, and then Ben said, “Will you marry me?” as Asher asked, “Will you marry my dad?”
I laughed, covering my face with both hands as I started to cry and nod, and cry and nod some more, and laugh.
Ben took out a box and got on one knee in front of me, giving the microphone to Asher so this part wasn’t publicized.
“I never thought I’d be the kind of man who would want to settle down with someone, and I know you had your reservations about me and the baggage I brought with me as well, but this last year with you has been the best of my entire life. I don’t want it to ever end. I will never stop being in love with you, Princess. Marry me. Please.” He smiled up at me. I nodded some more.
“Yes.”
He slid the ring onto my finger, a beautiful oval, diamond-encrusted ring that, like Ben, was so much more than I’d ever imagined. He stood up and hugged me, lifting me off the ground as I kissed him. Asher jumped up and down, cheering along with the crowd in the stadium. It was, by far, the most perfect moment I’d ever experienced.
THE PRINCE
A WICKED NOVELLA
By Jennifer L. Armentrout
CHAPTER 1
Did it make you a bad friend if you were completely, a hundred percent envious of that friend? Yes? No? Kind of?
I figured it was somewhere in between.
That’s what I was mulling over as I watched Ivy Morgan brush thick, red curls over her shoulder, laughing at something her boyfriend Ren Owens had said to her.
At least I wasn’t envious of that—their love. Okay, well, that wasn’t entirely true. Pretty sure anyone who was as single as me would be envious of all that warm and fuzzy that was passed back and forth with each long look or casual brush of skin. The two could barely tear their gazes away from one another to eat the dinner we’d grabbed at the cute little diner inside the shopping center on Prytania Street.
I honest to God couldn’t be happier for them. They’d been through so much—way more than two people should ever have to go through to be together, and here they were, stronger and more in love than ever, and they deserved that happiness.
But their epic love story wasn’t the source of a current case of the green-eye monster that was sitting on my shoulder.
Ivy was just such a… badass.
Even right now, relaxed in the chair, surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights with her hand in Ren’s and her belly full of a cheeseburger deluxe and crinkle fries and half of my tater tots, she could kick ass and take names along with addresses, telephone numbers, and social security numbers.
If the proverbial poo hit the fan, you called Ivy or Ren.
If you needed to know what streets Royal intersected with, you called… me. Or if you needed coffee or fresh beignets but were currently busy, you know, saving the world, you’d call me.
The three of us were all members of the Order, a widespread organization that was literally the only thing that stood between mankind and complete, utter enslavement and destruction by the fae. And not the super cute fae found in Disney movies or some crap like that. Humans thought they were on top of the food chain. They were wrong. The fae were.
The only thing pop culture got right about the fae was their slightly pointy ears. That was it. The fae were more than just beings from another world—the Otherworld—they were capable of glamouring their appearance to blend in with humans. But all Order members, even me, were warded at birth against the glamour. We saw through the human façade to the creature that lurked beneath.
No amount of imagination could capture their allure in their true form or how luminous their silvery skin was or how they were beautiful in the way a leopard stalking its prey was.
The fae preyed on humans—on the very life force that kept our hearts beating and brains working. Much like the mythical vampire feeding on blood or a succubus feasting on energy, the life force that they stole from humans fueled their abilities, which truly ran the gamut. They were faster and stronger than us, and nothing on Earth rivaled their predatory skills. Feeding off humans was also the way the fae slowed their aging process down to a lifespan that rivaled immortality. Without feeding, they aged and died like humans.
There were some of them who didn’t feed on humans, something we’d only discovered recently. The fae from the Summer Court chose not to. They lived and died like us, wanting nothing more than to be left alone and out of the crosshairs of their enemies, the Winter fae.