His Drakon Runaway Bride Read online

  Found—his long-lost bride!

  Ariana Sakis walked out on Crown Prince Andreas Drakos, knowing her feelings were unrequited. For ten years she has hidden herself away, determined to never be made vulnerable by passion again...and believing herself divorced. Until her new wedding day is interrupted by Andreas himself, declaring them still married!

  Furious at her betrayal, Andreas won’t let Ariana escape him again. He’ll take his revenge by claiming Ariana for his throne—and his bed! But their passionate reunion threatens to undo dark-hearted Andreas, and he soon realizes that desire is even more binding than duty...

  A smile curved Andreas’s mouth, rendering him starkly beautiful. “You and my father missed one small detail in your plan. If I had never discovered you were alive it wouldn’t have mattered so much. But I did.”

  “What detail?” Ariana was shouting now, her voice lost in the gray bleakness around her.

  Everything about those few days was still jumbled in her head. She’d been acting on pure animal instincts—fear the overriding one—and listening to King Theos had been the worst kind of mistake.

  All she’d wanted was to escape Drakon before Andreas came back from his summit. Before she was caught in the web of her own love for him.

  Her leaving him was a betrayal to a man who didn’t break the rules for anyone—an unforgivable mistake to a man whose word meant everything.

  She clasped his jaw, forcing him to look at her. “What detail, Andreas?”

  He still didn’t hold her. Didn’t touch her in any way. Those eyes trapped her again, until even breathing was a chore. Those eyes betrayed all his emotions—fury, shock, and the cold enjoyment of her fate now.

  “You are still my wife.”

  The Drakon Royals

  Royalty never looked this scandalous!

  To the outside world, the Drakon Royals have the world at their feet. Yet beneath the surface black-hearted Crown Prince Andreas, his daredevil younger brother Prince Nikandros and their illegitimate sister Princess Eleni hide the secrets of their family name...

  Until one brush with desire, and then all the Drakons find themselves at the heart of their very own scandal!

  Crowned for the Drakon Legacy

  April 2017

  The Drakon Baby Bargain

  June 2017

  His Drakon Runaway Bride

  September 2017

  You won’t want to miss this outrageously scandalous new trilogy from Tara Pammi!

  His Drakon Runaway Bride

  Tara Pammi

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook at school. Years later, Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!

  Books by Tara Pammi

  Mills & Boon Modern Romance

  The Sheikh’s Pregnant Prisoner

  The Man to Be Reckoned With

  A Deal with Demakis

  The Drakon Royals

  Crowned for the Drakon Legacy

  The Drakon Baby Bargain

  Brides for Billionaires

  Married for the Sheikh’s Duty

  The Legendary Conti Brothers

  The Surprise Conti Child

  The Unwanted Conti Bride

  Greek Tycoons Tamed

  Claimed for His Duty

  Bought for Her Innocence

  Society Weddings

  The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife

  Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

  Contents

  Cover

  Back Cover Text

  Introduction

  The Drakon Royals

  Title Page

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Extract

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  “IS THIS A coup to overthrow me?” Crown Prince Andreas Drakos of Drakon joked as he walked into his study to find his family staring at him with a spectrum of emotions—concern in his sister Eleni’s eyes, stubborn resolve in Mia’s, something he couldn’t define in his brother Nikandros’s and pure frost in Gabriel’s.

  “None of us want your job, your popularity rating or your life, Andreas,” replied Nikandros, the financial genius who had set Drakon on its path of recovery after the mess their father had made in the last decade.

  Nik was right. The state of his life currently—utter chaos with the Crown Council breathing down his neck for the announcement of his choice for the next Queen of Drakon, the questions the media was raising about his mental health, his frequent disappearances from Drakon in the last year, sometimes even his sexuality—would have usually had the effect of fire ants crawling all over his skin.

  But he didn’t have any mental energy left beyond the hunt he’d been on for two years now. He was getting close, he knew it in his blood.

  He settled down next to Mia. The smell of baby powder drifting from her was strangely calming. “How are you, Mia?”

  Mia took his hands in hers. He tried not to flinch. Physical contact made him twitchy and now Mia knew it. But somewhere in the last few months, his sister-in-law and he had become strangely close.

  “You didn’t come to see the twins, Andreas. After all the hullabaloo you raised about heirs for Drakon, I’m feeling neglected.”

  He smiled. “I have just this hour returned to Drakon.”

  “Which nicely segues to why we are all here. Andreas, what is going on?”

  “You let her leave Tia and Alexio’s side to ask me this question?” Nik glared at him in response. Dark shadows bruised Mia’s eyes. “You look awful.”

  “Stop posturing, Nik. You know he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.” She smiled and her eyes lit up with that same incandescent joy he’d seen in Nik’s of late. “I have two very good reasons for my ghoulish look, Your Highness,” she said, her gaze tracing the angles of his face. “You however do not.

  “You look like hell,” she said with that forthrightness he’d come to expect from her, “and whether Nik and Gabriel will agree to put it like that or not, we’re all...very worried about you.”

  He frowned, looked up and, with a strange knot in his gut, realized it was true. “It’s not necessary.”

  “There’s talk from the Crown Council about asking you to step down. Your popularity level is at its lowest,” Nik said in a deceptively calm voice. “Some political pundits have dared say Father’s madness has already begun to manifest in you. You leave Drakon for days, not one of your aides knows your schedule, you refuse to see even Ellie and me...”

  “That’s why you’re all worried?” Andreas asked with a laugh. “That Theos gave me his madness in addition to everything else?”

  Eleni spoke up. “Of course not. But we do think you’ve been acting strange. Andreas, the House of Tharius is waiting for your word to release news of your engagement. The coronation is in two months and you—”

  His phone pinged and every nerve in him went on high alert. He knew even before he switched on his phone’s screen what the news was going to be. His fingers shook when he swiped the screen.

  Found the target. Sendin g location specs now.

  His breath balled up in his chest, and he had to force himself to exhale.

  Anticipation bubbled in his blood, coupled with savage satisfaction. “Let the House of Tharius know it’s off.”

  The shock that spread through the huge room made the hairs on his neck rise. Nik and Eleni looked at him with such concern in their eyes that for the first time in months Andreas felt a little guilt. “I apologize for leaving you both in the lurch these past few months. I needed—”

  “Thee mou, Andreas!” Nik burst out. “We don’t care that for the first time in thirty-six years, you took a few months for yourself.”

  “Not the first time,” he said automatically. “I took a free year just when your health improved. Almost ten years ago.”

  Nikandros frowned. “When Theos tried to make me his leashed dog?”

  “A few months before that happened, yes.” When Andreas had, in a fit of madness, threatened Theo that he would walk out on Drakon if he didn’t give him some time off.

  “Andreas.” Eleni reached him, her voice wavering. “You can’t be crowned King without a wife. That’s one of the oldest Drakonite laws. No member of the Crown Council will let you defy it. Are you...are you giving up the crown?”

  Nikandros cursed so filthily that he had to laugh.

  Andreas patted his sister’s hand awkwardly. “I’m not doing any such thing, Eleni. I will be crowned as scheduled.”

  “You need a wife for that.” Nik again. Only Gabriel stood silent, staring at him from those steel-grey eyes. Gabriel, his brother-in-law, who had figured out the truth.

  “Whatever you’re considering—” Eleni was close to tears now “—please tell us. Nik and I would never judge you for what—”

  “I can’t marry Maria Tharius because I already have a wife. For two years, I’ve been trying to locate her.”

  You are like me, Andreas, in every way. The same taste for power and control runs in your blood. Why do you think your little wife ran?

  Those words had haunted him for two years now. But he didn’t give a damn.

  He would willingly be a monster if that meant she was back in his life.

  “You’re married? To whom? When? Why didn’t you ever...” Eleni faintly shook with the force of her questions, until Gabriel put his hands on her shoulders and absorbed her petite form into his.

  “She was Father’s ward. I married her during that sabbatical year in a secret civil ceremony.”

  “Father had a ward?” Another curse from Nikandros, for he knew that meant another life his father would have played games with.

  “Your pity is wasted on her, Nik,” Andreas said stonily. “Turns out Father and she understood each other perfectly well.”

  “Ariana Sakis.” Eleni pronounced the name that had become so much a part of his own makeup that Andreas couldn’t remember a day before her life tangled with his. “She was shy of eighteen by a few months.”

  Utter shock was etched on their faces now.

  He’d been twenty-six and he’d married a barely legal eighteen-year-old in a secret ceremony... He could have grown two horns and a tail and it would have been less shocking.

  “Her parents...died in a car accident. There were rumors that they’d been arguing, that her mother had driven it into the tree on purpose,” Eleni explained to Nik. “Her father...was a military general, a close friend of Father.

  “There was a lot of talk about what an abusive husband he was and Father immediately severed the connection between the House of Drakos and him.

  “Only a handful of people knew he had her custody and he sent her off to...no one knew where. I don’t think she even set foot in the palace.”

  “To a fishing village off the coast,” Andreas finished. “Having met Father a couple of times, she’d been more than willing to go.”

  “That’s where you met her?” asked Nikandros.

  Andreas nodded. “I... I demanded Father give me a year to do as I wanted, to research a book I wanted to write. He agreed, after a lot of ranting.

  “Little did he know that I would end up at the same little village that summer.”

  Crisp mountain air, blue ponds surrounded by lush woods, a remote cabin, a single coffee shop...and a girl with copper-colored hair and a wide, impish smile.

  Andreas swayed as the past reached into him with a clawed hand. Those months in that village with Ariana had been the most glorious of his life.

  Too good to last, he realized now with a bitterness that choked him.

  “If you married her, how come none of us met her? We didn’t even know.”

  “Father and I decided to wait for a more opportune time to announce that I had wed. For the three months of our marriage, she stayed in an apartment ten miles from the palace.”

  “You’ve been looking for her...since Father’s decline began.” Eleni jerked her chin up. All the pieces were beginning to fall into place. “Where was she all these years, Andreas?”

  “Father told me she died in a boating accident after I returned from that oil summit in the Middle East that year.”

  “Instead?” Nik asked the question, tension filling his shoulders.

  “Instead, she took the ten million he offered, faked her death and disappeared under a new identity.”

  “That’s...horrible.” Eleni, always loyal to her brothers, had formed her opinion. “How could she make you think she was dead?”

  Mia frowned. “You’ve found this woman now, haven’t you?” Something almost like fear glittered in her tired gaze. “Andreas, what is it that you intend to do? Clearly, the woman has made her choice. All of Drakon’s eyes will be on her.”

  It was an edict he’d heard since before he’d even hit puberty. All of the media’s eyes would be on him and the woman he chose, Theos had whispered continuously.

  She must bring either incomparable wealth—Gabriel’s sister had met the first condition—or good breeding in her own blood—Maria Tharius had met both—or be a woman with powerful connections who would agree to become the perfectly ornamental Queen.

  Ariana had been none of the above.

  “You could divorce her.” Gabriel spoke for the first time.

  “Drakonite law mandates the couple wait for eighteen months after they file for divorce,” Eleni supplied, frowning. “With the coronation in two months, he can’t file for a divorce now.”

  Andreas smiled, uncaring what they all saw in his face. “Father, in his Machiavellian masterminding, assumed that her being officially dead was enough to terminate our marriage. But she’s alive. So, even if I wanted, I could not marry Maria Tharius now.

  “Ariana will be the next Queen of Drakon.” The declaration fell from his mouth, resonated in the very air that filled the King’s Palace.

  He found he liked the sound of it. An additional bonus was that his father would be rolling in his grave.

  * * *

  Ariana stared at the white stone building of the small, beautiful church in downtown Fort Collins and shivered from head to toe. The frigid October wind that stole through her flimsy wedding dress had nothing to do with it.

  The past would not leave her alone today. Didn’t matter that it was over ten years since she had married Andreas Drakos, the Crown Prince of Drakon, in a little forgotten church in a backwater fishing village near the mountains.

  Didn’t matter that in a few hours she was to marry Magnus.

  A vein of utter misery ran through her day and night.

  She was Anna to her friends, to her colleagues at the legal aid agency where she worked, and to the little community she belonged to amidst the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

  Anna was not an impulsive, reckless woman that self-destructed in the name of love. Anna was not a woman who gave in to the dangerous passion for a man who didn’t know how to love.

  Instead Anna was supposed to be married this evening to a nice, understanding man. Her friends must be thinking she’d lost her mind. But she had needed to get a way from the madness of it all. She’d barely eaten a morsel of food yesterday and nothing at the dinner their friends had arranged for her and Magnus.

  Against every better instinct, she pulled her phone out of her coat jacket and compulsively opened a browser. The page was still open to the same article she’d been reading for the last month.

  She perused it greedily, as if reading it for the hundredth time would somehow change the gist of it.

  Crown Prince Andreas Drakos of Drakon was to announce his choice for his Queen, before his coronation as the King of Drakon, a tiny principality in the Mediterranean again making its mark in the financial world.

  A woman who was regal and educated, a doyenne of charities, born to wealth and perfect bloodlines. A woman who would be soft and womanly, a perfect complement to his brooding, controlling masculinity.

  She had known that Andreas would one day take another woman, a woman far more suitable than her, to be his wife, to be the Queen of Drakon. That he had waited this long at all, when she knew of his devotion to Drakon, was a shock in itself.

  And yet, from the moment she’d seen the little article, her world had tilted on its axis.

  Was Anna really any better than the impulsive hothead she had been then? Was there any other reason except that her heart had broken a little again when she’d seen news of Andreas’s coronation and it had prompted her to accept Magnus’s proposal?

  Thee mou, was she willing to destroy Magnus’s life, too?

  Whatever sun had been shining this morning had receded under dark clouds, the weather resonating her own dark thoughts. She had to break it off. Before she hurt Magnus, before...

  The smooth swish of a finely tuned engine broke her focus.

  She looked up and froze, wishing with every cell inside of her that she could truly freeze, become invisible, blend into the gray, leaf-bare trees around her. Could become one of the statues that littered the lovely town.

  The pounding of her heart in her ears said she was far too alive.

  For she recognized the little black-and-gold flag fluttering in the harsh wind on the hood of the European luxury car idling not two steps away. She knew the symbol of the golden dragon with fires spewing out of its wide jaws. She knew the man inside and his body and he knew hers, better than she did her own.