Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 44703 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44703 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
It’s appetite.
And I’m alone, and human, and standing in a gap between booths where the crowd has thinned, and for the first time all day, I feel the full weight of what it means to exist in a world that was not designed for people like me.
I open my mouth to respond, to say what, I have no idea, something politely deflective and slightly panicked, when a hand settles on the small of my back.
Warm. Large. Unmistakably deliberate.
Every thought I’ve been having evaporates.
“Miss Morgan.” Alexei’s voice comes from beside me, and it’s the same as always, cool, measured, but there’s an edge beneath it that I’ve never heard before. One that makes the Caro in front of me go very, very still. “We’re needed at the next appointment.”
He doesn’t let go.
His fingers spread slightly, the pressure increasing just enough that I can feel the heat of his palm through the fabric of the dress Ruby chose for me. It isn’t a grip. It’s a claim. Quiet, absolute, and completely unambiguous to everyone in the vicinity who has the supernatural senses to read it.
The Caro’s eyes shift from me to Alexei, and whatever he sees in the prince’s expression makes him incline his head, and just like that, he’s gone, dissolved into the crowd.
Alexei doesn’t break stride. The touch stays, guiding me smoothly, firmly, away from the display, away from the crowd, toward the corridor that leads to the private suites. His pace is even, unhurried as always, but there’s a difference in how he’s moving. Coiled. Like the stillness that precedes a storm, if the storm were six-foot-something of Atlantean royalty in a dark suit steering a twenty-two-year-old human through a trade fair with his palm on her spine.
“Y-Your Highness—”
My voice comes out in a stammered whisper. His palm is warm against my spine and my pulse is doing things that would concern a medical professional.
“This is...this isn’t appropriate.”
“No.” His voice is silk over steel. “It’s not.”
“I’m working for you—”
“Yes.” His pace doesn’t falter. Neither does the pressure at my back. “But I’m also about to marry you.”
I stop walking.
Like, just stop. My feet cease to function. My legs forget their entire purpose. If I were a computer, there would be a spinning wheel on my forehead and a message that says Zia.exe has encountered an error and needs to shut down.
“I...what?”
He turns to face me. He lets go, finally, but the ghost of it stays, burning against my spine.
Those pale eyes look down at me, and I can see it again, that vast, barely contained intensity from the plane, from the moment before Captain Fishburne’s voice broke us apart, except now there’s no intercom to save me.
“You heard me, Miss Morgan.”
“I...umm...what?”
The words are tumbling out, tripping over each other, and I sound nothing like the woman who just confidently presented scent neutralization technology to a room full of supernatural delegates. I sound like what I am: a twenty-two-year-old human who is standing in a hallway at a trade fair being told by the Prince of Atlantis that he intends to marry her, and whose brain has officially left the building.
And the worst part, the truly worst part, is that somewhere underneath the shock and the panic and the this makes no sense that’s screaming through my head, there is a small, traitorous, still-mending part of my heart that heard the word marry and...
Wanted it.
For one single, unguarded second, before I could shut it down, before the memory of Billy’s four-sentence text could rise up and do its job, that broken piece of me wanted it.
And I hate myself for that.
The hallway isn’t empty. Preters pass through, shifters, Caros, Fae, Souris, all possessing hearing that can pick up a whispered conversation from across a football field. He said “I’m about to marry you” at a volume that was perfectly conversational for humans.
For preters, he might as well have taken out a billboard.
I can already feel it happening. Heads turning. Eyes finding us. The electric quality of a crowd that has just learned something extraordinary.
And then my phone starts buzzing.
Once. Twice. Then continuously, like a small, furious animal in my pocket.
I pull it out with numb fingers. The screen is a waterfall of notifications I can’t read fast enough because new ones keep pushing older ones down.
Social media alerts from an account I haven’t touched since college. My single post, a link to my thesis, drowning in comments from strangers.
Congratulations!!!
OMG THE Prince Alexei??? How did this happen???
Girl you are LIVING
Messages from numbers I don’t recognize. A former classmate I spoke to exactly once wants to be my bridesmaid.
And one text from my mother.
Joni: Sweetheart is it true??? I just saw the announcement in L’Alliance Today! Congratulations! I knew it! I KNEW all along that Billy wasn’t right for you but I couldn’t tell you the truth. I’m so happy for you! Call me when you can! See you tonight!!