He gave me a week. Seven days to “get used to the idea.” Seven days that were supposed to be a countdown to a deadline I hadn’t agreed to, a marriage I hadn’t chosen, a future I hadn’t asked for.
Five days left.
And I’m not counting them the way I should be.
I should be counting them like a prisoner counting days until sentencing. Instead I’m counting them like a kid counting days until Christmas, and that terrifies me, because Billy taught me what happens when you let yourself want something.
But maybe Alexei is different. Maybe a man who memorizes your lunch and fixes your air vent and kisses you in daylight where anyone can see is fundamentally, structurally different from a boy who kept you in the dark for two years.
Maybe.
I’m almost starting to believe it when Ruby emails me at 9 PM to say that His Highness will be traveling Thursday and Friday for Blood Oval business in Geneva.
Two days. He’ll be gone two days. I can survive two days.
Except on Thursday night, alone in my apartment with the window cracked and the city noise drifting in, I open my phone and the preter gossip feeds are on fire.
And there he is.
The Prince of Atlantis, with a woman I’ve never seen before. A Lyccan. Golden and stunning and draped against him in photographs that look nothing like a business trip and everything like the life he had before me.
My phone buzzes. Trish.
Trish: DON’T SPIRAL. Let me look into this.
But I’m already spiraling. Because this is what Billy taught me. This is the lesson that lives in my bones.
Everyone leaves.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PHOTOS ARE EVERYWHERE.
I’m sitting on my bathroom floor at 11:47 PM on a Thursday, which is day five of seven, and Lauren Ashford’s face is on every preter gossip feed I can find.
Lauren Ashford, who is tall and golden and Lyccan and has cheekbones that could cut glass, with her arm looped through Alexei’s and her head tilted against his shoulder and a smile on her face that saysthis man is mine and I know it and so does everyone else.
The photos are intimate. Not scandalous, not explicit, just...close. The closeness that comes from familiarity. His hand on the small of her back (the same place he puts his hand on mine). Her fingers adjusting his collar (the casual possessiveness of a woman who has done this a hundred times). The two of them at what looks like a formal event, her dress gold, his suit dark, their bodies angled toward each other with the gravitational ease of two people who have shared space for a long time.
The caption on the gossip feed reads:Sources confirm Prince Alexei Lykaios was seen with former partner Lauren Ashford at a private event earlier this week. The timing is notable given his recent engagement to human Zia Morgan.
Earlier this week.
He was with her earlier this week.
While he was kissing me in corridors and sending me breakfast and noticing that I don’t eat fish, he was with her. At a private event. With her hand on his collar and her head on his shoulder and her body curved into his like she’d never left.
My phone buzzes. Trish.
Trish: Have you seen this
Trish: ZIA
Trish: Those photos are OLD. Look at his hair. It’s longer. That’s not how he looks now
I stare at her message. I zoom in on the photos. His hair. Is it longer? I can’t tell. I can’t tell because my eyes are blurring and my hands are shaking and the rational part of my brain, the part that designs polymer casings and calibrates dispersion algorithms, has been completely overridden by the part that remembers Billy.
Because this is what happened with Billy.
