"I can't believe it."
Helena D. Galanis liked better to be called Princess, Highness, or some similar appellation. But now she felt anything but that.
She was about to lose her mind. She couldn't process or believe what her incredulous sapphire eyes were seeing:
—Like you can't imagine— Those words were the title that was written on the manila envelope that had arrived in her mail that morning... And to her mind came back certain memories, full of pain, rage, anger but most of all: regret.
Once upon a time, there was a younger Helena, only twelve years old and newly enrolled in a private school in faraway New York and not in her native Greece. But the princess was watching television and had come across the grimmest and horrible advertisement she could have ever seen in her life.
Her mother Persephone, her sister Elora and her younger brother Stefan, had moved because unlike her father, her mother was half American and missed her homeland.
His father Thalos D. Galanis was part of the Greek nobility and therefore, that made him a member of royalty.
But that in those moments made her a princess who felt incredulous and stupid at what her eyes must be processing.
"Mother, why do they say that about my father...?"
Adulterer. Unfaithful. Infraganti.
Those were the words she could read in the headlines of programs, newspapers, and magazines.
It was so unthinkable... I mean, she couldn't associate such mundane words with her father, because in her eyes he was a businessman and a gentleman of impeccable stature. He would never...
The great hero of her life was falling off the pedestal. And her misfortune of being the eldest in her family put her in a very bad place. She had been impeccably educated by the same man who was now losing face.
Her personality was to be feared before any rival, even if she had a delicate appearance, this had generated certain conflicts with her father who did not tolerate seeing her so authoritarian even though she only asked for her place.
She was the firstborn of her honorable family -if that word can still be used. She always proved to be the best in terms of her appearance, studies, recreational activities, and feelings. But... That news shattered her father's whole image and illusion.
Her mother was then a rising model and actress, whom everyone adored in the United States and even more so, knowing that she would soon be a princess living in a palace in Greece, living a fairy tale with the hotel magnate Galanis.
Even over time, she retained her angelic beauty, having inherited night-black hair, but deferring to the huge hazel eyes that framed her mother's face.
She had the most notable features of both parents, but blue eyes? The mark of her father's family.
"Why would you stay with him if...? If you know."
"Why, my dear Helena? There are those of us who are destined to love unconditionally and blindly another."
His sister Elora, looking indomitable and with a more tanned complexion like her father's, then looked at him as if to prevent him from asking such a question. Her younger brother seemed to take no notice and merely pretended nothing was wrong.
Stefan was a honey-eyed version of Helena. Almost like a pair of amber ones in the sun, but covered by enormous glasses on his face... Seeing him oblivious to everything, and hearing those words, shattered one more myth in his family.
Their stay in New York was to keep them away and hide them from scandal, as well as to lead a more anonymous life where, a city full of local scandals, would have little interest in some foreigners.
However, from that day on she vowed to herself not to live the way her mother did.
She would not tie herself to a loveless marriage. She could never accept it.
She would keep her promise, even though at the age of fourteen she had been betrothed to a wolf prince: Bastian Sideris.