Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 44703 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44703 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
And Alexei doesn’t acknowledge any of it. Doesn’t seem to notice, or care, or need it. He moves through the deference like a river through a canyon, not because it’s trying to be powerful, but because it doesn’t know how to be anything else.
I follow one step behind and to the left, taking notes, and try very hard not to think about the plane. About the wrist. About the moment he leaned forward and looked at my mouth and the whole world narrowed to nothing before Captain Fishburne’s voice broke it apart.
I imagined that.
I definitely imagined that.
The first booth is a Lyccan pack presenting integrated environmental systems for shared workplaces. The delegate, a tall woman with sharp eyes and an even sharper handshake, has questions about the V-Series scent neutralizers and how they perform in high-traffic environments where multiple preter species occupy the same space. Alexei responds in that low voice, covering the strategic overview, the market positioning, and then his hand makes that small gesture.
My turn.
My heart does a small, panicky leap, but my voice comes out steady.
“The V-Series Vanish line uses a multi-spectrum neutralization protocol,” I say. “Rather than masking scents with a competing fragrance, it breaks down airborne scent molecules at the molecular level. This means it works equally well for preternatural sensitivities without creating a sterile environment that feels unnatural. The plug-in format is designed for continuous ambient coverage in spaces up to three thousand square feet.”
The delegate nods, looking genuinely impressed. She asks a follow-up about calibration for different species. I answer that too. And the one after. And somewhere in the middle of my explanation about how the dispersion rate adjusts automatically based on the room’s occupancy sensors, I forget to be terrified and just...talk. About the thing I designed. The thing I’ve spent months refining, testing, and caring about.
We move on. Another booth. Another delegate. Another gesture from Alexei that passes the spotlight to me, and each time, I step into it a little more confidently. A Fae architect asks about integrating the Vanish technology into enchanted building materials. A Souri cultural attaché wants to know if the scent neutralization affects the pheromone-based communication that some winged races rely on. It doesn’t, and I designed it specifically not to, and explaining this makes me feel like maybe I actually belong here.
Maybe.
For a little while.
And then I notice something that makes the maybe evaporate.
Alexei is watching me.
Not the delegates. Not the displays. Not the Bellecourt installation or the Lyccan alpha who bowed or the Fae delegation that’s been trying to secure his attention for the past twenty minutes. He’s watching me, and there is something in his expression that I’ve never seen directed at a junior product designer giving a technical presentation about scent neutralization.
It’s the same look from the plane.
That recognition. That quiet, focused intensity. Like something inside him is confirming an answer to a question I didn’t hear him ask.
Our eyes meet, and the Expo drops away. The noise, the crowd, the hundred conversations happening at the same time in a dozen languages, all of it fades to static. And in the silence that’s left, there is only him looking at me and me looking at him and that pull, that terrifying, undertow pull, dragging me toward something I can’t survive.
Because I’ve been here before.
Not here, not at a trade fair in Miami with the Prince of Atlantis. But here, in this feeling, this specific, reckless, hopeful feeling that says maybe this is real. I felt it with Billy. I let myself believe it. And the believing was what destroyed me, not the breakup itself but the part before it, the part where I was so certain, so stupidly certain, that someone who looked at me like that couldn’t possibly leave.
I look away first.
I look down at my tablet and pretend to type, and my heart is hammering and my face is warm and I can still feel the weight of his gaze on the side of my face like a hand I can’t brush off.
It’s not real.
It’s not real.
We keep moving.
And I keep telling myself that, even though my body has an entirely different opinion. Even though every time his arm comes near mine as we navigate the crowded aisles, the hair on my skin rises. Even though when he leans down to speak to a shorter delegate and his shoulder brushes mine in passing, the point of contact sends a jolt through me that I feel in my teeth.
A delegate from another shifter race asks about the V-Series Vanish plug-in’s performance in tropical climates: humidity, heat, the dense scent-profiles of equatorial environments. I answer, and I’m good, I’m focused, I’m explaining the climate-adaptive dispersion algorithm with enough detail that the delegate pull out his own tablet to take notes. And the whole time, Alexei stands beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him in waves, and I am acutely, painfully aware of the physical scale of him.