Byron
“So...” Wyatt was up and pacing restlessly back and forth across the room. “You survived the car crash somehow... and then... you were brought to White Pines as an orphan. Nobody knew who you were? Nobody recognized you?” I could see by the expression on his face that he didn't believe it. The royals were well known... although we were three hours from the Canadian border, they were familiar to us.
Bella wrung her hands together with anxiety. “I... I don’t know. I don’t remember.” She shook her head. "I don’t really remember anything from before White Pines... just, you know... some images... I think I remember my mother’s face.” She shook her head. “And then... just living at White Pines. At first I had a room, but then the twins were born... and I was moved under the stairs.”
“But even if you were just an orphan, even if your parents had been omegas or rogues... why? Why would anyone treat a child so cruelly?” I traced my fingers over the scars that crisscrossed her back. I couldn’t imagine anyone hating a little kid so much that they would hurt her over and over, even to the point of death.
“Unless,” Wyatt stopped pacing. “Unless she hated you because she knew exactly who you were. A royal. A princess. From the very beginning she knew you were important... and jealousy drove her to mistreat you.”
Bella only shrugged. “Does it really matter... why she did what she did?”
“If the Luna of White Pines knew who she was... and then she lost her... do you think she was the one who hired a hitman to take her out?” I suggested uneasily.
“Possibly.” Wyatt considered the possibility. “Except we know they are broke. White Pines is in debt up to their eyebrows. How could they afford it?”
“Unless there was a price on her head. A reward.” I also slipped off the bed so I could burn nervous energy. I went to the window and looked out at nothing.
“But who would want her dead? Who would benefit the most if the lost princess was never found?”
Standing on opposite sides of the bed, I met Wyatt’s eyes... and I know we were having the same thought, although we didn’t voice it out loud.
The brother. The bastard half-brother to King Louis, who had been in charge of the entire kingdom since the Queen died and the king went mad. If there was no princess, there was no heir... and when the king died, the brother would take the throne. I ran my hands through my hair and stood it on end again. “I think we need to pay a visit to White Pines.”
Bella blanched. “Oh no. Please no.”
“We have to know the truth, Bella.” I tried to convince her.
She crawled off the bed, her long black-red hair falling over her shoulders and obscuring her small breasts. She came to me and wrapped her hands around my neck. “There is only one truth that matters now. Whether I was an orphaned slave girl, or a lost princess before... that is not who I am now.” She looked deeply, and intensely into my eyes. “Now I am yours. I am the Luna of Valiant Mountain, and your fated mate. We are marked and bound to each other.”
Before I could argue with her, if even I had anything to argue with, she had climbed my torso and fused our mouths together.
Bella
It was difficult to put into words, but what I needed in that moment was to feel secure in my identity. I needed to know that I was not a lost princess, nor was I a repulsive slave girl. No one was ever going to lock me in a dark, dank basement again. I was the fated mate of two handsome, strong men. In their arms, I was home. I knew where I belonged. And it wasn’t in a closet under the stairs, nor was it in some unknown palace that I couldn’t remember, with people who were strangers to me. I’d never put a great deal of faith in the goddess or fate... I’d always felt like the universe had screwed me over. But I had cause to rethink my beliefs. Everything in my life, all the bad, all the pain, all of it had brought me to this present moment.
I curled myself around Byron and lost myself in every sensation, his hard body, his warm soft lips, his rough hands. His sweet scent assaulted my nose, made heavier and muskier by his arousal. Before long, my pleasure was doubled, as a second set of hands began to caress my body. I moaned and twisted in their arms to get at Wyatt. My mouth found his mark and bit down on the scar, sending pangs of pleasure through all of us. Like an earthquake, Wyatt was the epicenter, but the aftershocks ran through Byron and I, shaking us to our core. Wyatt’s hands were in my hair, tipping my head back so that he could bend and capture my mouth. I was more than willing to surrender to his ravaging. We were already naked from our recent shower, so there was nothing between us to hold us back or slow us down. My hands wandered freely, tracing the hard lines of taut muscles, my nails were digging into someone’s butt cheeks as I pressed wantonly against them. I slid around the front and circled Byron's hard member with my hand.
“Bella...” Byron groaned next to my neck. “Who will you take?” I could feel the desperation wafting off from them. It was a palpable tension in the air. They needed me, both of them. And I needed them.
Both of them.