The Dragon’s Pretend Marriage: Enemies to Lovers Paranormal Romance (Beaufort Creek Shifters Book 3) by Layla Silver

Author:Layla Silver [Silver, Layla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-31T18:30:00+00:00

***

The elevator spat me out at the door to my penthouse suite. After unlocking the door, I marched past the gaping fountain, the cushioned chairs, and the arcade room, making a beeline to the library doors. Gold inlaid with teal vines greeted my vision. I shoved them open, allowing them to hit the door stoppers on either side with a distinct thud.

Brandi wasn’t on the first floor.

Ivory carpet swept in either direction, parted only by plush burgundy chairs and espresso-stained wood tables. Rows of books cluttered the shelves lining the walls, interrupted every so often by a great window. Light spilled over the carpet. Drapes hung heavily in a perfect frame around the windows. Spiral staircases rose on either side of me.

She was likely on the second floor, tucked away on the balcony. That was her favorite spot. Hours would pass with her shoving her nose into various history books, many of them about different cultures. I had plenty of books on shifters, too, though Brandi had made it a point to use some of her allowance to order more.

Part of me felt proud of that. Most women would have run to boutiques for more clothes. But Brandi was different. She wanted knowledge more than she wanted power. And if I wasn’t mistaken, she might have wanted me, too.

But there wasn’t much evidence of that. Though she shared a bed with me, she stuck to her side, reading well into the night next to her tiny lamp. Mornings were normal, greeting each other and then eating breakfast on the terrace, weather permitting. We had something of a routine.

It was reassuring. It was sweet.

It was the scariest thing in the whole damn universe.

Books littered the ground the closer I drew to the balcony. A thump sounded followed by another thump. And then another. A soft, defeated sigh. The caving of a chair.

I rounded the corner, locating my fiancée melting into a brown loveseat. She didn’t see me yet. One of the books open on her lap slid from her knees. It, too, joined the pile at her feet.

My heart twisted in my chest. The way she slumped over conveyed exhaustion, something I had been feeling ever since Jermaine cornered me in the elevator. I thought it had just been from the morning’s activities. But now that I was near Brandi, I sensed that it wasn’t my exhaustion.

It was hers.

And I had been feeling it for hours.

I pushed one of the books with my wingtip shoe. “American mobs?”

She jumped up. “What?”

“You’re reading a lot about the mafia lately.” I swam through the books to get to her. “Are you planning on writing a thesis?”

“Shifter mafias,” she replied in a squeaky voice. She cleared her throat. “I think it’s just interesting how we tend to group together like that, you know?”

I narrowed my eyes at the pile of books to her right. Defense techniques—that was interesting. “Fighting styles, too.”

“We do all sorts of things.” She dropped to her knees and scrambled to pick up the books that surrounded my shoes.

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