Her mother had always had a soft heart for the less fortunate. “He has a room with a literal pile of gold. I’m sure he can afford a night or two at the Hyatt.”
“But he’s never been to the Upperworld, has no idea how things work here,” Papá said. “It’s like when I first arrived here and your mother had to hold my hand and explain everything to me.”
Figures.
Papá was worse than Mom sometimes. “It’s your house, you can invite anyone you want to stay.” She crossed her arms over the chest. “But I’m not speaking to him.”
With that, she spun around and marched back to her room. Slamming the door shut once she got there, she inhaled a deep breath and buried her face in her hands.
Did she dare hope Hektor meant what he said this time? That he wasn’t going to fall apart again the minute he saw Eleanora?
Do you love me?
I care about you.
It wasn’t about what he said or what he didn’t say.
It was what shedidn’tfeel.
“I can’t feel it.” Zara had to whisper. If her voice got any louder, she would surely break down. “I don’t feel that you do. And I can’t accept it like this.”
He could have hurled insults at her, or even denied he loved her, told her he used her.
She would have taken those words better.
But that emptiness she felt, that cold silence in his heart, nothing had hurt her more.
Yet here he was.
She didn’t dare even try to reach out to him, afraid to encounter than emptiness once more.
She couldn’t get hurt again.
Chapter 15
Hektor
“Thank you again for your most generous offer, sir,” Hektor said as Zara’s father ushered him into a guest room.
“Please, Hektor, like we said earlier, you can call me Roberto and Zara’s mom Pam.”
“As you wish, Roberto.”
The name sounded foreign on his tongue, as was the concept of calling Zara’s father by his given name.
Then again, the very idea of coming to the Upperworld itself was outlandish, something he’d never in his life thought would ever happen.
But here he was.
A beat of awkward silence passed before Hektor cleared his throat. “Your den, er, home is beautiful, but the way.”
“Thank you for the compliments, but it’s all my wife’s work, I’m afraid,” he said. “Some people think I was the visionary behind it because I’m the artist, but no, this was all Pam. I was happy to defer to her preferences.”
“Of course.” Drakkon were very much the same once they mated. The home was the mate’s domain.
“I hope this room is adequate?” Roberto asked as he gestured around them.
Hektor glanced around the sumptuously-furnished room. While he had no eye for design, he could tell all the furnishings and fixtures, from the large bed filled with pillows to the plush rug under his feet, were well-made and expensive. The main feature of the room, however, had to be the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that took up an entire section of the room and showed off the vast blue skies outside like it was a painting.
