Love isn’t real. Or even good for a person.

Ludwig von Kröenenberg had it proved to himself many times.

At his cynical thoughts, he gave himself a silent pep talk as he pinned the white mini-rose wedding buttonière on his tuxedo lapel, getting ready to be the best man in his best friend’s wedding. Tonight, is for celebrating.

Although Angus was the wealthy king of their small country, Ludwig wasn’t worried his friend was being played. But he did worry about a man getting married based on a relationship that started with love at first sight. He was not sure there was such a thing. In fact, he wasn’t sure there was such a thing as real love at all—first sight or otherwise. And he didn’t exclude love of family in his skepticism either.

The mirror showed a mane of blond hair framing a rugged face of harsh planes where electric icy-blue eyes sparkled. His Giorgio Armani tuxedo highlighted his broad shoulders and tall, solidly built body perfectly.

He knew he was a handsome, sought-after man even without being the seventh Grand Duke of Lektenstaten or without having the immense wealth associated with his name. Women vied for his attention. As a royal billionaire, he was no stranger to women attempting to seduce him physically and emotionally.  But he was immune to their ploys. He really could live without them, and it concerned him that Angus had fallen for someone so hard after just one night with her. All he could do though was hope for the best, and be there for his friend whenever he was needed.

He remembered the first time he had thought he was in love. He had just made his first billion when Ariel Macomber, a beautiful woman, a few years older than him, appeared in his life. She initiated him in the pleasures of sex and introduced him to delights he had never thought of before. But after a few months, the novelty wore off, and he realized what he felt for her was only lust.

After Ariel, the few times he had started to feel something special for a woman—and he had never gone as far as branding the emotion as love, having been wrong once already—it took only a few minutes of honest and serious self-reflection to learn it wasn’t what he thought it was.

Just two months before, he’d had another tantalizing glimpse of something that could be a magical moment, which he felt could’ve held the power to convince him he was wrong about love.

He’d been seeing Diana Schonberg off and on for the past several months. That was longer than his usual affairs lasted because she genuinely interested him as a person. Or maybe it was because she had been very good at concealing her ulterior motives.

Diana had seemed different. She didn’t appear to be faking anything. She didn’t try to exaggerate things they had in common, nor did she share feelings about anything. He hadn’t suspected she was after his money because she had her own.

Amazingly, she also seemed to be fine with extended periods of time away from him, which was one of the greatest and most relieving things about her because he didn’t feel any need to have her around all the time. She had seemed his equal; confident, wealthy, attractive, and not emotionally needy. When they were apart, no matter how long, he was perfectly fine, whether or not there was someone else sharing his—or her—bed at the time. If there was, he felt no guilt. If there wasn’t, he didn’t mind. There would be someone soon; as soon as he wished. And if Diana was enjoying herself, too, so much the better.

They had open minds, therefore their open relationship worked well, which pleased him to no end. They were a good match. For the most part.

And then last month, when he and Diana were on his sailboat, there had been an odd moment. He easily could’ve missed it, such a small thing it was. They had been on the Mediterranean in the middle of a perfectly beautiful day with calm waters under a gorgeous blue sky. The boat was gently being pushed toward the horizon by a mild breeze with no one around them for miles. After they had sex on the top deck, they had gone below; Diana to refresh their drinks, and he to grab a book.

When he reached the bottom of the steps, he caught a glimpse of her gazing through the starboard port hole. As he continued into their cabin, the image stuck with him for a moment. She looked so content just being herself, unobserved as far she knew, gazing out at the blue expanses of sea and sky. Beautiful and comfortable in her own skin, standing by the bar without a stitch of clothing on.

He would’ve loved to capture that moment in a high-resolution photograph and have it framed. He would’ve titled it: the perfect woman. She had everything she wanted and didn’t need him. And that was just what he needed.

He felt something new for her creep up on him. Not just physical desire, although that was part of it despite just having had sex. A different emotion, stronger and powerful in itself. An admiration—and a need for something more. He had even stopped for a moment in his cabin to analyze the emotions he didn’t ordinarily feel with a woman. He’d almost started to question his views on love and emotional need being inextricably tied.

When he returned to the deck, she was waiting for him and handed him his drink, smiling like she had something good in mind. She reached out to run her fingers through his luxurious hair and pulled his head down kissing him ardently for a moment, before saying, “I was thinking…”

He was thinking, too. But instead of ordering her on all fours and taking her fast and hard from behind, he waited for her to continue.

“About how happy I am when we are together.” And then she added, “I feel as if I have found myself. I feel…complete.”

His erection wilted and whatever new desire he had turned sour. He had completely misunderstood what he’d seen below. She wasn’t one hundred percent happy in her own skin with who she was. She was not even whole in herself, needing him to complete her.

And that had been the end of their relationship.

Angus has found his mate and will live happily ever after. Please let it be so. He deserves it.

Ludwig left his chambers and climbed down the magnificent stairs to join the soon-to-wed couple.

He was fairly certain people deluded themselves into thinking love was happening to them. Not only that, he suspected it was a sign of emotional weakness. That wasn’t a thought he’d share with anyone though because he was certain they’d misunderstand what he meant. He didn’t mean people who fell in love were weak and that he was stronger than them, but rather, people who were missing something inside themselves and attempted to find it in others. As far as he could tell, he had never fallen in love with anyone because he was quite happy with who he was. He had no gaping hole in his heart that he felt could only be filled by the love of another.

It was just a mind trick that only the unwary fell for.

Love is just an illusion. One I’ll not fall for.

Princess Angelica de Castella y Aragon had come to hate weddings recently.

She was happy for the bride, her long-lost half-sister, Siobhan Faulkner, who was recently found by her brother, Valantín, the King of Aragon. And she was obviously glad Siobhan had found her match, but still, it didn’t warm her for the celebration.

It wasn’t just that she had yet to even become acquainted with her new sibling, but also having to be reminded of her worst humiliation by just being present at this wedding.

Or any wedding, for that matter.

Eleven months ago, it had been she who had worn a beautiful bride’s gown on her own allegedly special day. Except there had been nothing special about it. Her intended marriage to Abelardo Gutiérrez, who was not a member of royalty as she was but was sufficiently wealthy and influential to warrant marrying a princess, had not been an affair of the heart.

It had been strategic and designed to increase the crown’s favorable rating with a sector of the Aragon populace not pleased with the ruling family. Abelardo had long been a persuasive and charismatic critic of the king. Bringing him into the royal family through marriage had several benefits, all of which Angelica agreed were beneficial to the Castella y Aragon family’s desire to continue ruling. Enough so to agree to the marriage.

Besides, she was sure she didn’t have what it took to genuinely appeal to a man in such a way that he’d honestly ask for her hand in marriage. Not unless he was a shallow man, concerned only with appearances. And there were plenty of those, she knew. Angelica’s beauty was a given. She was hailed as one of the most beautiful women in Europe. Which, to her, was an odd and meaningless compliment; firstly because no one could take credit for their natural appearance; secondly because Angelica herself didn’t feel beautiful; and lastly, and even more importantly, one’s outer appearance spoke nothing of what was inside a person.

No one could tell by looking at her how intelligent or how compassionate she was. And so far, she’d succeeded in keeping anyone from discovering how utterly incompetent she was on a personal, intimate level. She was a talented diplomat, able to converse easily with heads of state, business leaders, and all manner of people. But alone with a man? She was clueless. She devoured romance novels in an attempt to learn the secret she felt all other women were born with: how to be a true woman in the most strict and natural sense of the word.

The intended marriage to Abelardo had not only been perfect for her family, it had also been perfect for her. The world would not have the opportunity to learn of her failing as a sensuous creature. They would not see her grow old, alone and unloved, because she didn’t know the first thing about loving someone romantically, or even lusting over someone carnally.

It helped that Abelardo had been handsome enough, educated, well-bred, from a good family, and would presumably make for a suitable husband and father. And marrying him would have hopefully had an impact on those who took his criticisms of the king to heart, and looked forward to each new scathing utterance of his about how poorly her brother ran the country.

At that time, she had been too concerned about not failing him in the bedroom to notice other small details. He had already hinted he found her to be too prim and proper, and once she had overheard him saying she was frigid. Not that he used that word exactly. No, he had said something much more demeaning.

She was determined to please him, despite her insecurities, so in the spare moments between helping her brother and taking care of the social needs of her people, she had studied a few books on human sexuality she found in the palace library. She had even managed to secretly order—which was something almost impossible to do in Aragon, since her correspondence was opened by security before being handed to her—an old copy of Kama Sutra.

But the non-fiction books taught her little more than the classic romances she read. And so she clung to the hope that Abelardo would be sufficiently enamored with being a member of the royal family that her awkwardness at being a woman would not be enough for him to take lovers, since divorce was not allowed in Aragon. She was sure, with time, she would come to like his lecherous looks, sloppy kisses, and wandering hands. She had hopes that when they were alone—which had not yet occurred—he would be able to teach her what pleasure was.

Everyone stood to gain from their union, especially him. That was the mystery that eluded her. With so much to gain, why had he have thrown it all away and publicly humiliated her in the process?

Her face flushed with heat at the memory of riding in the traditional Aragonese open carriage from the palace through the streets of San José, the small capital of Aragon.

She had waved cheerfully at the sea of faces crowding the streets until the carriage stopped at Santa Maria Cathedral. Everyone smiled at her and waved back.

Then as the minutes ticked by and her brother hadn’t appeared on the church steps to take her down the aisle, people began looking around and whispering behind their hands.

But still, she’d smiled and kissed the few children who had been allowed to come closer and give her gifts and flowers.

When she’d seen her brother stomp away from the cathedral with a dark face, she had known something was very wrong.

Before she fully realized what was happening, the reporters crowded around the carriage, screaming their questions, shoving their microphones in her face, demanding to know why she had been stood up at the altar.

As the flashes popped around her, she hadn’t known what to do. Keep smiling? Grab the reins, turn the carriage around and head back to the palace, and never go out again?

The millions of people around the world watching the live broadcast got to see the torment clear on her face as the tears flooded her eyes when her brother climbed on the carriage with her and ordered security to keep the reporters back. The coachman had taken them home to the palace with haste.

Valantín had turned to her and explained, “Abelardo is not here and the palace ceremonialist can’t locate him anywhere in San José.”  

Even though that bothered her a lot, it had been the confirmation of her worst fear. She wasn’t good enough for a man. That humiliated her more.

Now, everyone knew that not even a commoner would take her as his wife once he saw past her beauty and her brain and found her lacking in some essential way that made her unlovable. She was a failure as a woman.

The jilted princess bride became the talk of the country and all European gossip mags.

After that experience, she would’ve avoided any and every wedding invitation until the day she died, if she could have. But her brother had insisted on her presence in this particular wedding. And she had acquiesced, as she always did when it was best for her family and her country. So, here she was.

But she didn’t have to like it.

And now she watched as her brother walked out to the dance floor where he handed Siobhan back to her husband, Angus. The couple smiled at each other as they began to dance again, clearly very much in love.

She wished Siobhan all the luck in the world. But Angelica couldn’t help her twinge of cynicism at seeing them pressed so close together out there on the dance floor. No. Not cynicism. Realism. If true love was real and couples stayed together forever, that would be great.

But that wasn’t how things actually worked, she knew, and the statistics didn’t lie. However happily Siobhan and Angus looked at each other today, according to the numbers, it was a fifty-fifty chance whether they would still be married just three years from now.

Believing that you’ve found true love is as crazy as being certain the lottery ticket you’ve just bought is definitely going to be the winner. You can be as certain as you want; it doesn’t change anything.

Angelica shook her head slightly, only too aware she shouldn’t think like that but having been jilted at the altar didn’t make her sympathetic to these kinds of celebrations.

For Angelica, relationships were like the flower arrangement she was hiding behind. She plucked a white rose out of it and sniffed at it. Right now, they were beautiful. Perfect. Pristine with a shockingly beautiful scent. But in a day or two, they would be wilting, messily thrown in a waste bin. People who think otherwise are simply deluding themselves, however sweetly.

She was ready for the night to be over. She stared at the married couple and at the other couples as they laughed and flirted so easily. Even her mother, Princess Anchela, danced with a young blond man and smiled. Not that Angelica bemoaned her mother’s happiness.

At the age of forty-four, Anchela was a beautiful woman and still quite young, easily in the prime of her life. The yellow and purple amethysts in her crown highlighted her dark hair and glittered in the light of the ballroom. Her yellow ball gown was stunning and simple. It fit Anchela’s form with ease, gleaming dark beads accentuating her curves and gorgeous body.

Angelica had inherited her full, curvy figure from Princess Anchela and she hoped that one day her mother would find a new love. She was much too young to live the life of a spinster. Young widows are always a painful sight to see.

Jilted brides are even more pitiful than young widows—at least widows had been loved and cherished.

Angelica could hide in her room, hide beneath layers of elegant clothes and sparkling jewels, but she couldn’t hide from her own shame and humiliation.  

For a moment, she was jealous, wishing she could be like one of those happy people enjoying the small celebration.

They laughed and joked like a giant family, a whole community bonded in trust and loyalty. She knew what it was like to belong to a family, one you could depend on and go to, one who would fight by your side, no questions asked. It was love and romance that had always eluded her.

“Would you like to dance?”

“Goddamn,” Abelardo Gutiérrez slammed his fist on the steering wheel for the third time in five minutes. He was pissed.

“The bitch.”

Nobody could know how Angelica’s mind, and apparently her loyalties and her morals, worked. He beat the wheel in frustration as he drove through the hard, freezing rain.

“Like no one else’s I know of,” he muttered between his teeth. As he drove away from the mountain house that belonged to the leader of the Dragonslayers, the soft lamps subtly lit the front of the house slowly disappearing in his rearview mirror.

The Dragonslayers were a secret group comprised of active members of the Democracy for Aragon Movement. Their membership in the secret secondary group could never be discovered. Working strictly as a law-abiding, non-governmental organization could take decades to achieve their goals. Additional pressure on the Aragonese monarchy was needed, and the people had to feel the need for urgent reform. Thus, the Dragonslayers were born. To push things along and to speed up the process by which the DFAM could acquire political power in Aragon and ultimately, finally annex it to Spain. And in the process, Abelardo would become a hero in the people’s eyes.

But Angelica had managed to convince herself—and he was sure any number of her friends, her mother, her sister, the people of Aragon, the Dragonslayers, and Christ knew who else—it was his fault they hadn’t wedded.

Sure, he was to blame for not showing up, but it was her conniving-ass of a brother who required a last-minute signing of a prenup contract that ensured he’d never inherit a dime of her wealth under any circumstances and worse, he would never hold a government position, not even in the case of her illness or passing.

“I had—correction, I have every right to be pissed,” he decided.

But he had been an idiot when he’d fled San José instead of wedding her and trying to find a way into the government.

“Go ahead and work. Clean up your mess,” Aguilar Castro, the Dragonslayers’ leader, had told him a while ago.

He wasn’t sure how much cleaning would be needed to undo what leaving Angelica at the altar had done.

They had been careless to think that wooing a Crown Princess would not result in a wedding date with a prenup.

But maybe he could fix things now that the Dragonslayers were back together again.

Soon, very soon, the right time would come and he would be ready.

He looked in the rearview mirror and even if he couldn’t see anything, he promised, “This time I won’t fail you, Aguilar.”

Aguilar Castro looked up from the papers on the desk as Celipa Alfaro, Dragonslayer’s second in command, closed the door after the last member had exited.

“Do you think he will do it this time?” asked Celipa, referring to Abelardo. “Do you think he will open the way for you?”

“If he doesn’t, he’s expendable…if he does, he’s still expendable, but at least he’ll have served his purpose.” Aguilar pulled Celipa by the sweater and kissed her hard on the mouth. “See that you don’t become expendable, too. As much as I like you, the cause is more important.”

Celipa grunted her acknowledgement and went around putting out the lights and making sure the windows were closed and the doors were locked in the large rustic mountain home.

Raised under the shadow of strong men and forced to do all the hard work, it was only a matter of biding time until Aguilar’s word had become law in the kingdom’s criminal underground.

Aguilar ruled in this deserted and lawless mountainous part of the two countries, controlling every single criminal deed that passed through these mountains—girls, drugs, weapons traffic, anything—and earning a nice profit from it. If a person needed to disappear—or to be disappeared with—Aguilar was the one to be contacted.

For many years, it was all that mattered: the power, the influence, the money.

Not anymore.

Now Aguilar wanted the real power, the real influence of the Aragonese king, the real wealth which waited in the palace. And if cheating, lying, and betraying was the way to obtain it, so be it.

“I’m done here.” Celipa slid onto Aguilar’s lap. “Let’s go to bed. I’ll give you a massage, make you relax.”

Celipa was certain that Aguilar felt something special for her. Maybe not quite at the level of love, not yet, but certainly something.

But what Celipa didn’t know was that Aguilar was above feeling love.

In fact, Aguilar was above feeling.