She had held that position for four months.
Alexei turned the page.
THE FINAL PAGE OF THEfile was the one that had given Nicolo pause.
Prior bond history. One entry.
Billy Stein. Wolf shifter. Age twenty-four. Son of Marcus and Helena Stein, whose pack controlled a modest but profitable territory in the foothills west of Denver. Compatibility score with Zia Morgan: 91.3%.
Relationship duration: two years.
Conducted entirely in secret, at Billy’s insistence.
Terminated seven months ago.
The reason was clinical in its brevity. Family disapproval of human mate. Subject chose to comply with family ultimatum.
Alexei did not need the file to tell him what that meant. He had lived long enough to understand the mathematics of cowardice. A boy who loved a girl but loved his inheritance more. A girl who had given two years of her life to someone who kept her hidden like something to be ashamed of. And when the moment cameto choose—when it cost something real to stand beside her—the boy had decided that she wasn’t worth the price.
91.3% compatibility.
Two years.
And it still hadn’t been enough.
Alexei understood what that would have done to her. Not just the heartbreak—heartbreak healed, eventually, even the worst of it. But the conclusion she would have drawn from it. The quiet, merciless logic of a girl who had been told by science itself that she and this boy were meant to be together, only to discover that even destiny had a price tag and she wasn’t worth meeting it.
In the preter world, where compatibility scores carried the weight of fate and fated bonds were treated as sacred, being rejected by one’s match was not merely a personal tragedy.
It was a public verdict.
It said: I was weighed against everything that science and faith and blood could promise, and I was found wanting.
For the one who was rejected, the message was crueler still.
Even destiny wasn’t enough to make someone stay.
ALEXEI KNEW WHAT THEworld would say when it learned of his choice.
That the Prince of Atlantis had lost his mind. That years of solitude had finally corroded his judgment beyond repair. That choosing a rejected human mate was not merely a scandal—it was a repudiation of every standard of preter nobility, every expectation that came with a bloodline older than most civilizations.
The Blood Oval would have opinions. L’Alliance would have concerns. The tabloids—both human and preter—would have a field day that lasted approximately forever.
And Billy Stein, the boy who had thrown away a 91.3% match because his parents told him to, would wake up one morning and discover that the girl he’d discarded was now engaged to someone whose bloodline predated his entire species.
Alexei considered this.
He found it deeply, immensely satisfying.
But that wasn’t why he was doing this.
If it were only about politics, about scandal, about making a statement that the Prince of Atlantis answered to no one’s expectations but his own—any number of women would have served. There were princesses and heiresses and daughters of Blood Oval members who would have accepted his proposal before he finished speaking it. Women of impeccable supernatural lineage who would have brought alliances, territories, and political capital to a union with the last of the Atlantean stallion shifters.
Any of them would have been the rational choice.
None of them were Zia Morgan.
THE COURTYARD HAD EMPTIED.
