Here is a special treat for Everyone. MaryJanice Davidson’s Second Book in her Alaskan Royal Family Series The Royal Pain. Heather got me started on this series and it’s Non stop laughter. Thanks So much Heather.
The Sitka Palace
2:32 A.M.
“Nicky,get down !” Alexandria’s father roared, and her little brother dropped like a rock and rolled
away. There was no mistaking the command in that yell; she nearly fell to the carpet herself.
There was a sound, some odd sound she should have recognized but did not, and suddenly her father
was staring at the two small, feathered darts sticking out of his chest. He stared…
(What story tonight, Alex?)
… they all stared…
(No, hon, that one gives you nightmares.)
… it was all happening so fast…
(There’s nothing to be afraid of.)
… and then her father…
(We’re going to be all right now.)
… her father…
(There’s no such thing as monsters.)
… slowly folded to the floor.
She heard another sound—the flat, smacking sound of metal hitting flesh—but she was too busy looking
around, looking around for…
There.
“Not’s’fast without y’r pea shooter, eh?” she heard someone, Kurt? David? slur.
“Y—you have to come with me, Prince Nicholas,” the monster said. He was reaching for her little
brother, actuallydaring toreach for her brother after the gross assault upon her father. “Your place is
with us.”
“Get the hell out of here, you traitorous piece of shit,” her older brother David ordered. Alexandria
agreed wholeheartedly… to a point. “If you leave now, our security team might not blow your head off.”
Stay a while. Just a minute longer. I’ll give you something to remember the Baranovs by, you
prick.
“Us, sir?” her little brother, Nicholas, asked. As always in response to stress, he was overly polite.
She slipped out of one of her shoes. There was more talking, but it was background noise, it was how
the ocean sounded to a starfish. Huge and irrelevant.
“My father is the true king,” Nicholas said, and that she did hear. Nicholas was a child, a brave and
honorable one, but too young to know it was useless to talk sense to an extremist.
“Devon!” her sister-in-law Christina shouted, and Alexandria heard that, too, like the crack of a whip,
again and again:Devon. Devon. Devon . “You’ll never get out of here.”
Never.
She caught Nicholas’s gaze, saw him glance at the gun, Kurt’s gun, on the floor. She shook her head but
he ignored her and bent for it. Thank God, Devon was distracted by Princess Christina.
“You’ve fucked up, it’s done.”
Yes, its done.
of the trigger guard.
Yes, you shot my daddy.
“You shot my king and my sovereign, and you hurt my friend.”
Dad.
“So I’m thinking, it’s only fair if I shoot you.”
Don’t worry, Nicky. You won’t have to. I’m going to fix him. I’m going to fix everything.
“Your High—”
The last thing Devon said. Fitting that it should be proper use of a title. Part of one, anyway. Her hands
had closed over the banquet chair. Wood, not metal—but she would make do. Her grip was firm, not
sweaty. (The night sweats would come later, and stay forever.) She levered the chair up off the ground; it
went easy, lighter than feathers.
She swung the chair sidearm
(“Honey, not like that. You’re throwing like a girl. Yeah, yeah, don’t go all PC on me. Do it like
this.”)
putting every ounce of her one-fifty behind it.
The monster did not fall; he slammed against the wall. It wasn’t what she was expecting at all; it was
nothing like TV. Her hands and arms absorbed most of the shock of the blow and it would be days
before she could raise her wrists above her shoulder.
The chair, as she had calculated, did not shatter. It was good wood, it held. But force had to go
somewhere. She had been counting on it, and from the blood coming out the monster’s ears, the force
had gone exactly where she intended.
“There!” she said, her arms still vibrating. “That’s—” Then he got up. The monster actually got up off the
floor, blood dripping down his sideburns, moving steadily, not noticing he was mortally wounded. In her
head, Alex screamed and screamed.
Devon brushed cake from his uniform and took the gun from Nicholas’s nerveless fingers, shot her
brother David…
(this is wrong)
shot her other brother Nicky, shot her sister-in-law Christina. Took the chair away…
(it’s not like this)
swung…
(it didn’t happen like this)
and the last thing she saw was the chair, descending. The last thing she knew was that she had failed.
Everyone was dead and she failed.
In a world nearly identical to ours, the North won the Civil War, Ben and JLo got married, and everyone dresses well to attend the Grammy’s. Oh, and Russia never sold Alaska to the U.S. Instead, Alaska is a rough, beautiful country ruled by a famously eccentric royal family, including oldest daughter, Princess Alexandria, whose acid wit and bad case of insomnia have turned her into a tabloid darling, a palace problem, and overall…Marine biologist Dr. Shel (“Never Sheldon”) Rivers has a problem. Some princess expects him to wait on her, hand and dimpled foot. His boss is taken with the royal redhead – brunette, whatever, it’s not like he keeps track of that stuff – and nobody realizes that he just wants to be left alone in his lab. All alone. All the time. Weekends, holidays…it’s all good. Now, here’s Miss Royal pants, insisting that he escort her around the marine institute, explain what he’s doing, kiss her until her toes curl…no, wait, that was his idea. She’s not even apologetic about being born into a royal family! Says it’s his problem to overcome, not hers. Which leaves him with one option: to kiss her again. And again. And…So she’s nothing like he expected. In fact, Dr. Rivers can see that this fantastic, exasperating woman has problems no princess should ever have to deal with. And he has an idea to help her get some much-needed sleep. Of course, it involves getting very, very tired beforehand, but if she’s up to it, then so is he…
