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 NOTHINGlike 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 inthe 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 justnotice, 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.
And Alexei doesn’t acknowledge any of it. Doesn’t seem to notice, or care, or need it. He moves through the deference like a river through a canyon, not because it’s trying to be powerful, but because it doesn’t know how to be anything else.
I follow one step behind and to the left, taking notes, and try very hard not to think about the plane. About the wrist. About the moment he leaned forward and looked at my mouth and the whole world narrowed to nothing before Captain Fishburne’s voice broke it apart.
I imagined that.
Idefinitelyimagined that.
The first booth is a Lyccan pack presenting integrated environmental systems for shared workplaces. The delegate, a tall woman with sharp eyes and an even sharper handshake, has questions about the V-Series scent neutralizers and how they perform in high-traffic environments where multiple preter species occupy the same space. Alexei responds in that low voice, covering the strategic overview, the market positioning, and then his hand makes that small gesture.
My turn.
My heart does a small, panicky leap, but my voice comes out steady.
“The V-Series Vanish line uses a multi-spectrum neutralization protocol,” I say. “Rather than masking scents with a competing fragrance, it breaks down airborne scent molecules at the molecular level. This means it works equally well for preternatural sensitivities without creating a sterile environment that feels unnatural. The plug-in format is designed for continuous ambient coverage in spaces up to three thousand square feet.”
The delegate nods, looking genuinely impressed. She asks a follow-up about calibration for different species. I answer that too. And the one after. And somewhere in the middle of my explanation about how the dispersion rate adjusts automatically based on the room’s occupancy sensors, I forget to be terrified and just...talk. About the thing I designed. The thing I’ve spent months refining, testing, and caring about.
We move on. Another booth. Another delegate. Another gesture from Alexei that passes the spotlight to me, and each time, I step into it a little more confidently. A Fae architect asks about integrating the Vanish technology into enchanted building materials. A Souri cultural attaché wants to know if the scent neutralization affects the pheromone-based communication that some winged races rely on. It doesn’t, and I designed it specifically not to, and explaining this makes me feel like maybe I actually belong here.
Maybe.
For a little while.
And then I notice something that makes the maybe evaporate.
