He looks...better. The shadows under his eyes are lighter. His hair is pulled back in the same ponytail, but he’s standing straighter, and there’s something in his expression that wasn’t there the last time I saw him. Not hope. Not longing. Something quieter. Something that looks almost like peace.
“Hey,” he says. Awkward. Unsure. His hands in his pockets, his eyes flickering between my face and the floor. “I didn’t...I saw you in line and I just wanted to say hi. I’m, uh. I’m working with one of the Bellecourt startups now. Human outreach.”
“Billy, that’s great,” I tell him, and I mean it. “I’m really glad you’re...”
I feel it before I see him.
That shift in the crowd. That particular frequency of awareness that ripples through a room when someone important enters it, like a current passing through water. Women straighten. Conversations dip. Eyes track sideways without turning. Not fear. Something closer to magnetism, the involuntary response of every body in the room to the presence of a man who changes the composition of the air just by walking through it.
And then his arm curves around my waist.
Warm. Familiar. His hand settling on my hip with the easy, possessive certainty of a man who has held this woman ten thousand times and will hold her ten thousand more. I lean into him without thinking, the way I always do, the way my body has learned to respond to his proximity like a compass finding north.
I hold my breath.
Because Billy is standing right there, and Billy looks like he might actually pass out, and I’m terrified that Alexei is going to say something that will make this worse, something cutting, something princely, something that will remind Billy of the vast, unbridgeable distance between a wolf shifter from a foothill pack and the last stallion prince of Atlantis.
But Alexei extends his free hand.
“Her husband,” he says simply. “I have heard a great deal about you.”
Billy’s face goes through about six expressions in two seconds, none of which he manages to land on. He takes Alexei’s hand. Shakes it. His grip is limp and his smile is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever witnessed on a human face.
“I...yeah. It’s, uh. Nice to meet you. Sir. Your Highness. I...” He withdraws his hand. Gestures vaguely behind him. “I should actually...I have a panel. So. It was good seeing you, Zia.”
He leaves. Quickly. Without looking back.
I exhale.
We step up to the booth. Alexei orders without consulting me, a cortado for me and a black espresso for himself, because he knows, because of course he knows, because this man has my coffee order filed away with the same precision he applies to Blood Oval intelligence briefings.
We collect our cups. We turn. We walk.
“You’re welcome,” he murmurs.
I look up at him. “What?”
“I know you worry about the boy’s sensitive ego, and being the exemplary husband that I am...”
I choke back a laugh.
“...I took care of the problem.”
A small laugh escapes me this time, because the way he phrases things in that silky, bone-dry tone, like he’s narrating a diplomatic briefing about his own marriage...
“...so that you will have no reason to think of another man.”
Oh, Alexei.
I look up at him, helpless, hopeless, completely and irrevocably in love with this impossible man. “I love you.”
He falters.
Just for a second. A blink. The composure ripples, and what surfaces beneath it is something I’ve seen before but will never get tired of seeing: surprise. Genuine, unguarded surprise, like a man who has been told he is loved a hundred times and still can’t quite believe it on the hundred and first.
It’s the most endearing expression I’ve ever seen on his face.
And then it changes.
