The hosts claps her hands. “Piper, I hear you have a new single inspired by your prince?”
Piper casually leans into Kellen’s side. “I do! It’s called ‘Not the Only One.’” She winks.
Laughter and applause zip through the audience. In the control room, I spot the producer crossing herself.
The host releases an excited squeal. “We’re all dying to hear it. The stage is yours!”
Piper is whisked away to the performance space where her band is already queued up. I stand just out of camera view with Kellen and Elliot, close enough to intervene if a stray light falls or an audience member charges the stage.
Piper lifts the mic. For a heartbeat, she’s just a small woman in a giant room. And then she sings.
I’ve heard her at her worst—drunk at three a.m., crooning into a hotel showerhead. I’ve heard her at her best—sold-out stadium, forty thousand phones in the air. But here, now, something is different. It’s less polished. Raw, almost. Every word of the song is a confession, and the longer she sings, the more it becomes clear that yes, she’s singing for Kellen, but also for me and Elliot too.
Elliot, beside me, is visibly fighting a smile. He catches my eye and shrugs as if to say, “What did you expect?”
Piper kills the bridge, her voice going raw and a little bit jagged, like she’s ripping the words out of her chest. The room is dead silent except for her. By the time she hits the final chorus, even Kellen is blinking too fast.
The studio explodes into noise—hands clapping so hard they must sting, whistles piercing the air. A camera flash catches Piper’s profile, then another, creating a strobe effect that burns her silhouette into my vision. In the wings, her publicist presses manicured fingertips against trembling lips, mascara already bleeding at the corners of her eyes.
Piper curtsies and then, as the credits on the interview show roll, there’s a hasty shuffle. In under a minute, I have Piper’s hand in mine, guiding her back to the greenroom.
She falls onto the couch while laughing. “So, what do you guys think?”
“That should be your lead single,” Elliot says.
Kellen nods in agreement. “I hope Raelynn agrees with that.”
“Probably not, but thank you. I agree though, for the record.”
We sit together until Elliot and I get the all-clear to move Kellen and Piper to the cars. Then it’s back to the manor estate where, behind walls the queen can’t look into, we can go back to being the pack that’s developed, and not this act that Raelynn and Royal PR want.
It’s impossible for me to let down my guard in public like that, especially after the crowd rush at Reverie Rest. Kellen and Piper don’t seem to have that problem. Even Elliot seems far morerelaxed the second we’re behind the safe walls of Kellen’s manor estate.
I take a long, slow inventory of the house. The gates are locked. The staff is gone for the night, their buy-off easy when you tip triple and say, “it’s a matter of royal discretion.” I count five possible entry points, all secured, and a sixth if you count the cellar, which generally goes unused. Satisfied, I snag a beer and join the celebration.
Kellen twirls Piper under his arm, her pink hair catching the light as she spins back against his chest with a breathless laugh. The bass thrums through the floorboards while ice cubes clink dangerously close to the rims of their glasses, amber liquid sloshing with each swaying step they take.
Kellen dips Piper, one arm perfectly bracing her, and she squeals in delight. He’s in rare form tonight, all traces of royal reserve melted away by the post-show adrenaline. He sets her upright and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“We were promised a celebration, weren’t we?” He turns to me, an unspoken challenge in his eyes.
I roll my eyes and gesture at the stocked bar. “Help yourself, prince.”
Piper grabs the bottle of champagne from the counter and pops it. A froth of bubbles sprays across the marble. She fills four glasses, then hands them out. When she passes mine over, she leans in, conspiratorial. “You did well today.”
“It’s my job.”
She cocks her head. “That’s not what I meant. You took care of me. Of all of us.”
I can’t decide if it’s the alcohol or her voice, but it hits me somewhere deep. I raise my glass.
Kellen, of course, doesn’t need to be prompted. “To us.” He clinks his glass with Piper’s, then mine, then Elliot’s. “And to the best damn pack anyone could ask for.”
Piper’s eyes get shiny, but she swallows it down with a gulp of champagne.
Music filters through the sound system—something low with a beat thuds slowly in my chest. Piper slides out of Kellen’s grasp and shimmies over to me, planting herself at my side.
She tucks her hand around my waist, almost possessive. “Dance with me?”
