Not physically. Billy is tall, fit, his long blond hair pulled back in that ponytail he always wore, the emo poet look I used to find romantic. But standing in Alexei’s living room, in the fortress that my husband built, surrounded by the quiet power of a space that belongs to the Prince of Atlantis, Billy Stein looks diminished. Like a candle brought into a room that’s already full of sunlight.
He turns when he hears me. And his face...
He looks the same and completely different. The same dark eyes, eyes I used to think were soulful, before I understood they were just confused, the eyes of a boy who never quite figured out how to step out of his mother’s shadow. The same jaw, the same face I used to trace with my fingers in the dark while he whispered promises he didn’t keep. But there are shadows under his eyes now, and something in the set of his mouth that I’ve never seen before, a rawness, an openness, like the boy who hid everything has finally run out of places to hide.
“Zia.” His voice cracks on my name. He takes a step forward, and his hand comes up, instinctive, automatic, reaching for my cheek the way he used to, leaning in to press his lips to my face.
I step back.
Quick. Sharp. My body moving before my brain has finished processing, because whatever we were, whatever we had, that intimacy belongs to another woman. A woman who doesn’t exist anymore. A woman who waited for his texts and wore his secret like armor and believed that a hidden love was still love.
Billy’s hand drops. His face crumbles for a second before he catches it.
“W-why are you here?” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “What exactly do you want?”
“Zia, I just need to talk to you. Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why are you so nervous?” He frowns. Studies me. And something shifts in his expression, a hardening, a flash of the old Billy, the one who made assumptions and followed them to conclusions that suited him. “Did he forbid you to talk to me? He did, didn’t he? That’s why I waited for him to leave...”
My eyes widen.
He breaks off.
But it’s too late.
The words are already in the room, filling the space between us with their full, horrifying weight.I waited for him to leave.NotI happened to come by.NotI took a chance that you’d be home.He waited. He watched. He knew when Alexei left and how long he’d been gone and he chose this specific window of time to show up at a fortress that doesn’t appear on any map.
“Have you been stalking me?”
CHAPTER TEN
THE SCREEN IN HIS OFFICEwas dark, and Alexei was staring at it the way a man stares at a door he knows he shouldn’t open.
The city below was quiet. Sunday-morning quiet. Silence that should feel peaceful but didn’t, because silence had a different texture now. Before Zia, silence was familiar. An old companion. Something he’d made his peace with long ago in a fortress that echoed with nothing.
After Zia, silence was an absence. A held breath. A room where her voice should be and wasn’t.
He had smelled it yesterday. On the road leading to the fortress, the access route that existed only for those who knew how to find it, a scent that didn’t belong. Faint. Old enough to be from a passing car, not a visitor. But distinctive. Wolf shifter. Young. Male.
Billy Stein had been near his home.
Not at it. Not yet. But close enough to learn the route. Close enough to study the timing. Close enough to understand the pattern of a fortress that existed in a pocket dimension and didn’t welcome uninvited guests.
The boy was watching.
And Zia had been hiding phone calls for days.
The two facts arranged themselves in his mind with the clean, terrible logic of a proof he didn’t want to solve. She had beenreceiving messages. She had been blocking them. She had lied about it, once, on the couch, with a stammer and a scent of deception so sharp it had stopped the humming in his chest.
She was in contact with Billy. And Billy was finding his way to the fortress.
The conclusion was simple.
The conclusion was unbearable.
He could have confronted her. Could have asked, directly, the way he did everything, without ambiguity, without games. He could have saidI smelled deception on your skin and I need you to tell me the truth.
