"I know," he said quietly, close to my ear. "I owe you an explanation."
"You think?" I managed.
Something that might have been a smile crossed his face. "I was afraid. The last person who found out who I was only wanted the title. And you..." He paused, his hand tightening slightly at my waist. "You were the first person in a long time who saw me. Just me, and I didn't want to lose that."
I wanted to be angry with him, like I was trying to muster up everything I could to make myself feel that way.
But the way he was looking at me was the way he always looked at me across the bakery counter. He was making it extremely difficult to hold onto anything except the warmth of his hand and the sound of his voice and the way his scent was doing something tonight that it had never quite done before.
It smelled deeper and richer than it ever had and it was pulling at something low in my stomach that I did not have the capacity to examine right now.
"You should have told me," I said.
"I know," he said simply. "I'm sorry."
I opened my mouth to respond and my knees went weak.
Not metaphorically.
What in the world,I thought.
I’d actually gone weak in the knees, and a sudden wave of heat had up through my body so fast that all I could do was grab onto Kael’s arm to keep myself from hitting the floor. My skin felt like it had been turned inside out and my pulse was hammering away inside of my throat.
The ballroom lights seemed suddenly too bright and Kael's scent hit me again like a wall, overwhelming and consuming and achingly familiar all at the same time.
Oh my god….
Please not here and not now in front of two hundred people and my mother and Lila…
My mother and Lila were definitely still watching from where I’d left them standing and I dared not look over to see the expressions on their faces.
Instead, I looked up at Kael and found him already looking at me, his hazel eyes darker than I had ever seen them, the gold burned down to something deeper and more serious. His jaw had tightened and his hand was at my waist, still and steady.
He already knew.
"Amara," he said, very quietly and very carefully. "I need you to trust me right now."
I was going into heat in the middle of the Solas Valentine Gala and I had no choice in the matter it seemed.
"Okay," I whispered, because apparently that was all I had left.
10
KAEL
The scent hit me like a second heartbeat.
One moment I was standing in the middle of the Solas Valentine Gala in a custom tux, watching Amara process the fact that her baker was a prince. The next, every hair on my body stood up and my dragon slammed against my chest so hard and I nearly lost a step.
Her heat.
It smelled early and intense as my nostrils flared pulling it into my lungs. Of course, it was also absolutely unmistakable to every Alpha in this room that Amara was going into heat on the ballroom floor.
I felt it the second it rolled off her skin, that sweet lavender deepening into something headier, something that bypassed every rational thought I possessed and spoke directly to the most primal part of me. My dragon didn't whisper this time.
It roared,mine. Protect. Now.
I had maybe thirty seconds before this became a problem.
