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He still remembered going into his father’s bedroom the night he’d returned to Therisos. Alexandros had barely been able to speak, but Galen had understood him well enough: the media storm that had erupted after Galen had been at a party with under-age girls had been the last straw. That had proved he was unfit to take the crown of Kalithera and so he was being disowned in favour of Kostas, his uncle.
Galen had always known his father had hated him, the old man had made it quite clear throughout the entirety of his childhood, and even though he’d tried to tell Alexandros that he’d had nothing to do with those girls, Alexandros hadn’t listened.
And then Galen had promptly forgotten all about the girls, because then Alexandros had dealt his second, more devasting blow: Galen’s mother, who’d died not long after having him, had had an affair with a palace servant nine months before Galen was born. Galen might not be Alexandros’s son after all.
The shock had rendered him mute. His entire childhood had been a constant battle to please a man who’d never been satisfied with anything Galen had done, who’d punished him for the smallest infractions and for no reason. Who’d constantly seemed furious with him... It all now made sense.
Not that knowing the truth made any difference. Not when in the end Galen had given up. Given up trying to be good, given up trying to obey Alexandros’s seemingly pointless rules. Given up wanting to follow in the footsteps of a man who’d loathed the very sight of him. He’d even given up wanting to be Alexandros’s heir...
All that trying had been for nothing. He might be another man’s son.
Galen would have found it a relief in its way, if his father hadn’t named his brother, Galen’s uncle, as the new heir. Kostas had always been a moral vacuum, constantly pandering to his big-business cronies, and had spent years trying to get Alexandros to make Kalithera a tax haven. He’d already influenced Alexandros to pass policies that favoured the rich, ignoring the very real poverty of some of the Kalitheran people.
Alexandros had made no secret of the fact that he thought his so-called son would make an unfit king, and since Galen had found his father’s training for the role...difficult, he’d sometimes wondered if there wasn’t some truth to that.
Yet even so, he couldn’t let Kostas take the crown. It was wrong to take a throne that might not be his, but there was no other heir, and no one else to protect Kalithera.
There was only him.
An imperfect king he might be, but Galen hadn’t seen another choice. So when his father had died before he could change the succession, Galen had claimed the throne. Of course, one DNA test would have proven conclusively who he was once and for all, but he couldn’t take the risk. If it turned out he wasn’t Alexandros’s son, he would have to abdicate in favour of Kostas, who would then run Kalithera into the ground.
His uncle hadn’t known all of Alexandros’s plans to name him the heir, but he’d always been a suspicious man and had known Alexandros hadn’t thought much of Galen, and every so often there had been mutterings about Galen’s past and how he was unfit to rule. And while Galen had cemented his role as King over the past ten years, he couldn’t allow Kostas’s mutterings to take hold and foster doubt.
He had to be careful. To behave in such a way as to not draw attention, not put a foot out of line, not to remind his uncle of past behaviour that he’d left behind. Not remind anyone—especially not the media—of the Wicked Prince he’d once been.
And he’d been very successful so far. He’d managed to keep himself and Kalithera out of the headlines for the past ten years. Until that mistake he’d made last year with that woman, that exceptional, lovely woman with clear, piercing grey eyes and the gut punch of a chemistry that he hadn’t been able to resist.
It was a flaw of his, one of his greatest, that he found controlling his baser urges so difficult. Which was why he had to try even harder not to fall prey to them.
Yet a similar chemistry was hitting him now, crackling over his skin as he watched her, along with a growing need to stride over to where she stood and take that interloper by the scruff of his neck and jerk him away from her.
As the man leaned further in towards her, she glanced away, turning her head in Galen’s direction. Their eyes met and, as he had up on that catwalk, he felt the shock of desire right down low inside him, raw and primal, and he was moving in her direction before he even knew what he was doing.
She saw him before the man standing in front of her did, her eyes going wide. Her partner, obviously picking up on her shift in attention, looked in Galen’s direction too, but after seeing who it was coming towards them he went pale and took a step away from her before disappearing into the crowd.
Galen should have stopped then. He should have turned around and left himself.
But he didn’t.
The woman didn’t move. She drew him in like a magnet, watching him come closer, her eyes dark and wide. He could see the pulse at the base of her throat beating hard and fast, the light shimmering over the fabric of her dress betraying her quickened breathing. She wasn’t exactly beautiful—her nose was too long, and her mouth was too wide—yet there was something mesmerising about her face, something that caught his attention and held it. She seemed familiar in some way, though he couldn’t put his finger on why. He’d never met her before, he was sure.
She didn’t say anything as he came to a stop in front of her, only looked up at him. Her mouth was full and lovely, her lashes thick and blonde, a startling contrast to her dark eyes. And in those dark eyes a fire burned.
A fire that found an answering spark inside him.
He didn’t know what had made him come over to her and he didn’t know why he was standing in front of her now, when what he’d fully intended was to leave. This was a mistake, and he knew it, yet he stayed where he was, feeling the flames inside him start to leap.
‘Did you want something?’ she asked in English. Her voice had a pleasing husk to it that shivered over his skin like a caress. ‘I mean, you frightened off that guy for a reason, I presume?’ She didn’t sound as if she minded her prospective partner being frightened off in the least.
Anger coiled inside him, at himself and what he was doing, and his apparent inability to walk away, and at that tantalising hint of familiarity that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. But anger was an emotion he didn’t allow himself, so he crushed it. Hard.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
Her gaze flickered yet she didn’t move. She was leaning back against the wall, almost as if she was trying to put distance between them, yet he wasn’t standing that close. She could have moved away if she’d chosen.
‘That depends.’ The pulse at the base of her throat was beating faster now. He wanted to put his mouth there and taste it. ‘Who wants to know?’
Galen ignored the question, taking a step closer as he searched her lovely face, caught in the grip of a compulsion he could hardly explain even to himself. ‘You are familiar,’ he murmured. ‘Have we met?’
