She glances back at me as Nash leads her down the hallway to a bedroom, her eyes streaming with pain, and I finally let her see how I’m the man crying for her.
I knew this would happen.
But Love never accepts its loss.
It lives like it’ll last forever.
The silence is deafening until we hear her muffled wails, how Nash is ripping Alena’s world away.
“How could you DO this to her?” Vale shouts, and I snap my blurred glare at her, dropping every fucking mask I’ve ever worn.
“Because I love her, Vale!” I boom. Too many months and memories shatter my mind.They’re not a lie.“Just like I saw with my own eyes how much Nash loves you. And Iwillfightfor her,” I seethe, glaring down at Vale’s pretty, furious face. “So, don’t get in my way and regret it.”
“Lyov.” Mom summons my royal name, trying to calm my beast. “That isnothow you speak to a queen.”
I glower at Vale, and she snarls back at me.
This isn’t her fault, but how the fuck did she figure it out? Who I really am. The logic hits: my ink, my lions. All the kings have our totem on our skin. But why does it matter? The lies have escaped. They’re free. Roaming. Destroying.
Now what’s the truth?
Vale thinks this past year has been an act for me, when Alena is the only real thing I’ve ever known.
It’s why Vale’s mad at Nash. He didn’t tell her who I really am. It’s why she’s mad at me. She thinks my love for Alena is a lie. That I’m just her secret bodyguard, and not her soulmate.
So I fume, confronting her, “My apologies, but Vale, you read this all wrong. Does it matter how we fall in love with someone? Or does it matter more how we’ll love them until the day we die?”
Vale searches my eyes. She’s been initiated. She’s a queen. She’s one of us now. Iwillrespect her. She has every right to challenge one of her kings, but she has to face the brutal truth in my glaring eyes.
Alena is mine.
It’s our bond—the kings and queens—she sees it, fuming right back. “Then, if you truly love her, it starts today,” she demands. “You’ll stop lying to her and fight to win her love again!”
“Will you keep that promise too?” Mom asks her. “For you, moya doch, are no different.”
Mom calls Vale her daughter in Russian, and it plucks an eerie chord inside me.
Why? Mom doesn’t have any daughters.
Though she treats the queens as hers, speaking directly to Vale, “Nash has revealed his greatest secret. There are no more lies, so will you let him fight for you, too?”
And this is the shit show I knew it would be.
Nash and Vale. Vale and Alena. Alena and my mom. Every relationship Alena has is upended.
Alena will be so hurt, but she has a loving heart. It’ll heal in time.
But with me?
That same loving heart?
I fear I finally touched it, like a blanket of green Lenten roses, but now they’re dying, poisoned by my lies, and they’ll never bloom again.
“It’s my fault,” Mom laments to Vale. “Please don’t hate my boys. And I mean Nash too…” She tells Vale our story, defending us. “My dear, all they’ve ever known is lying to protect the ones they love, and…”
But all I can do is stare at the bedroom door, behind which Alena must be devastated, hearing of our betrayal.
And the only story I remember is how the first time I kissed Alena…
