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)
Just for a second.
And my heart stops. Actually stops. I feel it stall in my chest like an engine cutting out, and the world narrows to the space between us, which is shrinking, which is almost nothing now, which is—
“Your Highness, this is Captain Fishburne. We’re beginning our final descent into Miami. Please ensure your seatbelts are fastened. We’ll be on the ground in approximately twelve minutes.”
The intercom crackles and goes silent.
Alexei leans back.
The distance returns. The air thins. The moment, whatever it was, whatever it almost was, dissolves like fog in morning light.
He picks up his screen. His expression is already resettled into that impenetrable calm, as if nothing happened, as if the last thirty seconds were a figment of my imagination.
And maybe they were.
Maybe I imagined the whole thing. The leaning, the look, the way his gaze dropped to my mouth like it was pulled there by something he couldn’t control. Maybe my broken heart is playing tricks on me, conjuring connection where none exists, because feeling anything, even terror and impossibility, is better than feeling nothing at all.
I fasten my seatbelt with fingers that are categorically not shaking.
I don’t look at him.
I look out the window, where Miami is spreading beneath us in a glittering sprawl of coastline and concrete and sunlight, and I tell myself very firmly that I imagined it.
All of it.
I imagined it, and I don’t want it to be real.
I don’t.
Because I know what happens when you want something to be real. I know the exact shape of that hope, and I know the exact sound it makes when it breaks.
The plane descends toward Miami, and I grip my tablet and stare at the coastline and tell my stupid, misfiring, still-mending heart to be quiet.
It doesn’t listen.
CHAPTER THREE
THE HIVE IS NOTHING like Lykaios Holdings.
Where Alexei’s headquarters are built into a mountain, all dark stone and glass and quiet power carved into rock, The Hive is fifty floors of downtown Miami wrapped in steel and light. It rises from the city block like a blade, gleaming and sharp, and inside it’s all polished surfaces and soaring ceilings and sleek, modern energy that makes you feel like the building itself is alive and watching.
Which, given that it belongs to Caros, it might actually be.
The Convergence Expo takes up the entire exhibition level, and it is enormous. Hundreds of booths filling a space the size of several football fields, the air buzzing with conversation in at least a dozen languages, some of which I’m fairly sure aren’t human. Delegates from every major race mill through the aisles: Lyccans in sharp business wear, Fae artisans with iridescent wings folded flat against their backs, Souri engineers whose movements carry a particular airborne grace even on the ground. And Caros, of course. This is their house. Their territory. The Bellecourt brothers’ presence is everywhere even when they’re not visible, from the elegant branding on every directional sign to the anti-vampire tech showcase that dominates the center of the hall like a throne room.
The Bellecourt booth is the one everyone gravitates toward. It’s stunning, a massive installation demonstrating their latest innovations in anti-vampire defense technology, the life-saving work that has made the four white-blond brothers legends in the preter world. I catch a glimpse of their newest neutralizer on display, compact and beautiful, and the designer in me itches to get closer and examine the casing.
But I’m not here to browse.
I’m here to walk one step behind and to the left of Prince Alexei Lykaios, take notes on my tablet, and speak only when spoken to.
And not stare at him.
That last one is the unofficial rule. The one Ruby didn’t include in her briefing because she probably assumed it went without saying, because who would be foolish enough to stare at their employer during a professional event just because he happens to move through a crowd the way a stallion moves through an open field, with this effortless, rolling authority that makes every other person in the room look like they’re standing still?
Me, apparently.
I would be that foolish.
Because watching Alexei at the Expo is nothing like catching glimpses of him in hallways. In hallways, he’s a passing presence. A shift in the atmosphere. Here, in a room full of the most powerful preters on the planet, he is...
I don’t have a word for it.
Majestic sounds too soft. Commanding sounds too military. Regal comes close, but even that falls short, because regal implies someone performing royalty, and Alexei doesn’t perform anything. He just is. The way a mountain just is. The way the ocean just is. He walks through the Expo and people don’t just notice, they yield. Conversations pause. Bodies angle toward him and then away, like flowers following the sun and then remembering they’re supposed to have dignity. A Lyccan alpha who probably commands an entire pack catches sight of Alexei from across the aisle and actually bows slightly, instinctively, before catching himself and pretending he was reaching for something on a display table.