He did not need to hear anything else.
For one hour, Alexei Lykaios sat in his empty office and did not move.
Not a finger. Not a breath that wasn’t automatic. He sat in the chair he’d occupied for a decade of board meetings and negotiations, and he was absolutely still, the stillness of a body that has run out of instructions.
The city below went about its Sunday. Cars moved. People walked. The world continued in its ordinary, relentless way, indifferent to the fact that in an office on the top floor of a glass-and-stone tower, a man was learning what it felt like to lose the only thing he had ever wanted.
He had promised her.
I am not that boy. I will never hurt you.
He had promised, and she had believed him. She had said yes with a voice that broke. She had let him hold her and touch her and learn the geography of her body and the music of her laugh. She had named his espresso machine and played his piano and put throw pillows on his couch and filled his fortress with sounds that made the silence retreat into the corners.
And all along, from the very first text she blocked and didn’t tell him about, she had been hiding something. Not an affair. Not a betrayal. A boy who wouldn’t let go, and a heart that was too kind to crush him.
But Alexei couldn’t see that. Not through the scent of deception. Not through the stammer and the blush. Not through the terror of a man who had found something he didn’t deserve and had been waiting, every day, for science to correct its mistake.
All he could see was that she had chosen to hide Billy’s name from him. And there was only one reason to hide a name.
Because it still mattered.
He would not keep her. He would not be the cage. He would not be the prince who trapped a woman in a marriage she didn’t want because his pride couldn’t survive the alternative. He would be the door.
Alexei stood. He straightened his jacket. He composed his face into the mask that had served him his entire life, the prince, the last of his kind, the man who needed nothing and no one.
And he drove home to let her go.
She was waiting in the living room.
Standing by the window where Billy had stood, though Alexei tried not to think about that, and when she heard him enter, she turned, and her face...
Her face was radiant.
The loveliest smile. Bright, warm, full of something that looked so much like happiness it made his chest crack along a fault line he hadn’t known existed.
She opened her mouth to speak.
“There’s been a mistake,” he said.
The smile faltered.
“A mistake?”
“I had our compatibility numbers rechecked.” His voice betrayed nothing. The voice of a man delivering a briefing, not a manwhose world was collapsing one word at a time. “By Etienne Hirsche. I’m afraid our compatibility isn’t as ideal as Maryah’s system initially indicated.”
The color drained from her face.
“Oh. I...”
“Would you prefer a divorce or an annulment?”
The words hung in the air between them. Her lips parted. Her eyes, those wide, dark eyes that he had spent two weeks memorizing in every light, in every mood, in the golden haze of morning and the blue dark of 2 a.m., filled with something that looked like the world ending.
“I...I...”
She swallowed.
“May you excuse me for a moment?”
