Good little Lexie Mills always did as she was told, right?
Wrong. Not anymore.
Her stomach churned, but there was no going back now. She had to do this for her own sanity.
Three sets of violet eyes stared expectantly at her.
Lexie’s gaze flitted around the opulent sitting room of Hawton Hall, the eighteenth-century Cotswold manor she felt privileged to call home, but it was also a gilded cage.
She blurted it out before she lost her nerve. “I want to get a job.” Now for the repercussions.
The room fell silent, as she’d predicted.
Scents of beeswax and decades-old fabrics mingled with the aromatic, seasoned oakwood that burned inside the huge Georgian fireplace. The antique clock ticked monotonously on the mantlepiece, like the calm before the storm.
“Over my dead body,” Drew declared, his sudden hostility taking her by surprise.
Her heart sank. She’d expected more from him, at least hoped he would be on her side.
From the moment she’d met Drew—when her mum learned of her alien heritage—he’d impressed her with his shape-shifting abilities. He’d become like a big brother and a best friend wrapped into one, her confidant, the person who made her laugh when everything had changed so rapidly, and he was usually so amicable. But not today, it seemed.
Drew folded his giant arms, drawing her attention to the striking tattoo of the naghari that snaked around his forearm, a fearsome creature he could morph into in three seconds if he wanted to. His jaw tightened, and his expression took on an arrogant stubbornness, evoking a sudden urge within to slap him across his handsome face.
What right does he have to tell me what I can and can’t do?
She looked to her parents, pleading they would understand her need for independence.
“You don’t need a job, love,” her mum, Bree, told her. “It’s not as if we need the money anymore.”
Yeah right, because her Evoxian royal heritage, and the numerous properties and land on Earth her family owned, meant she could buy anything and everything she could ever want.
Everything except her freedom.
