That girl feels like someone I used to know.
I shift my weight, glance at the program in my hand. PreTEx. Preter Technology Exchange. The Bellecourts host it twice a year, rotating cities, and this one is in Denver, which means home turf, which means I actually know where the bathrooms are, and that small geographic victory shouldn’t feel as significant as it does but here we are.
The line moves. I move with it.
The woman in front of me is a Fae delegate I met at last week’s Blood Oval reception, the one where Alexei presented the new cross-species trade framework and I stood beside him and didn’t flinch when three hundred preters turned to look at the human wife of the stallion prince. She catches my eye and smiles, warm and genuine, and I smile back, and the ease of it still surprises me.
I’m making friends.
Not performing friendships, not enduring introductions with a fixed smile and a racing heart, but actually making friends. Ada texts me memes at 2 a.m. Maryah and I talk every day, sometimes twice, and our conversations have developed the comfortable rhythm of two women who have decided they’re family without needing anyone’s permission. Last Thursday, a Panthera councilwoman named Isla invited me to lunch and spent two hours telling me about her daughter’s obsession with human pop music, and I laughed so hard I snorted sparkling water out of my nose, and she laughed too, and nobody looked at me like I was a curiosity or a novelty or a political statement.
I’m just Zia now.
Zia, who is married to the prince. Zia, who works on the V-Series and argues with espresso machines and has opinions about polymer casings. Zia, who belongs here.
The confidence didn’t come from nowhere. It came from him.
Not in grand gestures. Not in declarations or public displays or sweeping romantic theater that makes for good social media content. In small things. Quiet things. The things that Alexei does without thinking because showing love is as natural to him as breathing, and he doesn’t know how to do it any other way.
Like last week, at the Blood Oval reception. I was talking to Isla and her husband when I noticed Alexei across the room, mid-conversation with two Lyccan territory leaders, and his bowtie was crooked. Not dramatically crooked. Just slightly off-center, something nobody else in the room would have noticed or cared about, but I noticed because I have spent the last month memorizing every detail of this man and his bowtie waswrong.
I excused myself. Crossed the room. Reached up and straightened it, my fingers adjusting the fabric the way his fingers adjust my collar every morning, and I didn’t think about it. I didn’t consider the three hundred preters in the room or the delegates watching or the fact that I was publicly fussing over the Prince of Atlantis like he was mine.
Because he is mine.
And the look he gave me, that slow, quiet warmth that lived behind his composure, the almost-smile that meant more than any smile could, made my chest ache in the best possible way.
Or the hair thing. He does this thing where he tucks loose strands of hair behind my ear, and he does it everywhere. In meetings. At dinners. Walking through the lobby of his own building with three hundred employees watching. His fingers find the strand and tuck it back with this absent, tender precision, like it’s a reflex, like keeping my hair out of my face is simply part of his operating system, and every single time he does it, I forget how to breathe for a second.
Or the tickets.
Two weeks ago, I mentioned, in passing, while stealing his basil and telling him about my day, that Trish’s boyfriend might be Caro royalty. That Trish was losing her mind about it. That there was a Caro film premiering in New York next month and Trish was convinced her boyfriend would be attending and she was desperate to go but couldn’t figure out how to bring it up without revealing that she’d been doing extensive research into Caro social calendars.
Alexei listened. He did the almost-smile. He went back to his fettuccine.
Three days later, Trish called me screaming.
Two tickets to the Caro premiere. Front row. With a handwritten note on Lykaios Enterprises stationery that read:Ms. Morgan’s guest and companion. Regards, A. Lykaios.
Trish cried. I cried. Alexei, when I threw my arms around him and told him he was the most wonderful man alive, looked mildly confused and said, “You mentioned she wanted to go.”
Like it was obvious. Like hearing his wife mention something in passing and then quietly making it happen was simply what husbands did.
That’s who he is.
That’s who he’s always been. The man who bought my toothbrush before the wedding. The man who let me argue with Mariano for a week because he found it informative. The man who memorizes the name of Kirsten’s coffee order and Trish’s boyfriend’s texting habits and every small, ordinary detail I share, because it came from me, and anything that comes from me matters.
Billy taught me that love was conditional. That I was something to be hidden. That my worth was determined by someone else’s willingness to claim me.
Alexei unteaches me every day.
The line inches forward. Two people ahead of me now. I’m deciding between a cortado and an espresso when a voice behind me says:
“Zia?”
I turn.
Billy Stein is standing three feet away.
