HE DESTROYED MY REPUTATION TO CLAIM MY SOUL I was the Crown's perfect pearl. A silent princess raised for a political cage. My life was a series of cold treaties and suffocating silk. I was a prize to be traded to a foreign king. Then Lord Damien Rivera stepped out of the shadows. He is a soldier with a heart of flint and eyes that burn through my defenses. He decided I belonged to him long before he touched me. He cornered me in the library while the court whispered outside. He did not ask for my hand. He took my virtue instead. He unlaced my corset and shattered my future with a single, scandalous act. He ruined me on a library table to ensure no other man would ever want me. I was a ward of the state until he wrapped me in his heavy cavalry cloak and declared me his property. Now the King demands my return and Damien's head. We are hunted by the very crown I was born to serve. My savior is a man who demands total submission. He has locked me away in his ancestral halls to teach me the true meaning of his touch. I have traded a gilded throne for the weight of his hands. I am no longer a pawn in their game. I am a ruined woman bound forever to his dark obsession.