Wearily, I glanced at the reception desk.
Angelica wasn’t alone.
Kyros straightened from where he’d leant on the desk. His meadow-green gaze scanned me from head to toe, returning to my face where they stayed.
So many conflicting emotions assaulted me at once that I closed my eyes. Lust, hurt, anger, loathing, bitterness, yearning. Each of them fought for first spot, and I reached a hand to my head, dizziness assaulting me.
“Miss Tetley,” Angelica repeated.
Stilling, I didn’t bother looking at Kyros again. He’d seriously fucked up. So many times I’d lost count.
“Angelica,” I replied calmly. “I’m staying at work. Please stop asking me the same question every day. If I want to be elsewhere, I will tell you.”
She cut off, halfway through the inevitable request for me to take time to grieve.
“Is that all?” I said bluntly.
For the last month, Angelica had done nothing but manipulate Kyros and I into each other’s company.
I’d told her I didn’t like games.
She’d continued to play them.
My goodwill was officially expired.
“We’re worried about you,” she said, casting a look at her hulking nephew.
The other half of the we couldn’t speak for himself?
She rounded the desk, standing between us. “We just wanted to say that we’re sorry about the passing of your grandmother. It was a heart attack?”
And there it was.
Every Vissimo in this tower found out my grandmother’s death as I did—their sensitive hearing made it hard to keep secrets within the confines of Kyros Sky.
Yet only the Indebted came to speak their condolences.
My voice was ice. “A heart attack, yes.”
I wouldn’t look at him. Because he’d see everything in my eyes. He’d see how much I still craved his touch. How much I didn’t want him to touch me at all. How much pain I was in.
The third blood exchange hadn’t solved the tension between us one bit. The draw to him was an itch under my skin. Now, Kyros occupied my mind at all times; however, his presence made things exponentially worse. The urge to go to him. To feel him. To have his hands on my body somewhere. Anywhere.
Nearly overwhelming, and a headache I couldn’t take.
Especially when I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since the thrall of our unplanned third blood exchange ended. For a month, I couldn’t get him off my fucking back. Since I last drank his blood in a basement, surrounded by his enemies, petrol, and in a pool of blood. Not a damn peep.
“You have our sincere condolences,” Angelica said, dipping her head.
I snorted. “Cool. Thanks. That it?”
“We need to discuss the developments between us.”
Oh, he could speak?
His eyes bored into the side of my face. “We sure do,” I said sweetly. “Is now convenient for you?”
A wise man wouldn’t have answered.
“It is,” he replied, face impassive.
The wave of conflicting emotions slammed into me anew, and my head spun.
What the hell was going on?
“That’s a shame,” I murmured, turning away as I blinked through the dizziness assaulting me. “Any time in the last week would have been convenient for me. Now, I’m all booked up.”
He hadn’t texted.
He hadn’t visited.
He hadn’t sent so much as a minion to check on me.
No flowers. No apologies. No fucks given.
Message received.
“Don’t turn your back on me.” His snarl filled the space.
My heart leapt at the sound, sputtering in fear.
“How rude.” I bowed low as I backed down the hall to my office. “This is how you prefer people to leave your royal presence, right?”
Angelica edged from between us, her downcast gaze turned in Kyros’s direction.
The vampire placed a hand in his trouser pocket, face hardening in the first sign of emotion he’d displayed. I recognised the gesture for the brittle hold on his alpha temper that it was.
My laugh was just as brittle.
Nearly at my office, perhaps the wisest thing to do would have been to remain mute.
I spun to enter the room, saying, “What a fucking joke.”
He was just there.
Kyros spun me so fast my knees buckled. Only his grip on my arms held me upright.
“What’s a fucking joke?” he hissed.
You.
This.
Everything.
Life.
Angelica’s voice was a mere whisper. “Sir, consider taking care. She’s human.”
Clever phrasing. A direct order could inspire a new tantrum from the crown prince. Usually, I understood that Kyros strove constantly for control over his alpha nature. He hated being victim to his own possessiveness.
Right now?
I tried to shake his hold. He let go, and I placed both hands on his chest, shoving as hard as I could.
“Just leave,” I shouted up into his face.
He wanted to go. I could see it. Since we’d met, part of him never wanted to be around me, and it was no different now.
The sentiment was entirely returned.
“Let me guess?” I panted from the heat of our bodies touching. “You need something? That’s why you’re here.”
I shoved him again to zero effect.
“Stop,” he ordered, capturing my wrists.
I tried to pull away. His grip didn’t alter, and panic found me.
“Let me go.” I kicked out, barely recognising my voice.
“You can’t run away from this, Basilia,” Kyros said, his eyes dimming.
I can. I will.
“Why not?” I spat at him. “You want to.”
He didn’t deny it. I could take solace in that. We were as miserable and trapped as each other.
My head tipped back as I laughed—my usual throaty sound warped to bitterness. Because the third blood exchange we’d completed was important for a whole other reason. Yet another thing I hadn’t paused to decipher since my grandmother’s death.
If Kyros and I weren’t mates, we’d feel nothing for each other. No itch under the skin. No drive to touch each other.
My laughter swelled. “Your true mate is a fucking human.”
Now I’d said the words aloud, I realised that was about the most hilarious thing in my life.
“Stop,” Kyros rumbled, shaking me hard enough to rattle my teeth.
To no effect. My laughter continued.
He bowed his head, holding my wrists tight as I whooped at the shitshow of my life. No friends under the age of sixty. No family. No fucking chance.
Kyros swayed in rhythm to my vicious efforts to be free, his head still bowed, and his expression serene.
No one was more disappointed than I when my manic laughter wouldn’t go the distance against Kyros’s meditative state.
“Please let me go,” I whispered, wrung out. Free me.
The Vissimo game master didn’t obey. Surprise, surprise. Lifting his head, he tugged me against him instead.
“Don’t you dare,” I snapped.
His arms tightened. “I’m here now, Basilia.”
I didn’t need him now. Even with his bullshit fucking lie about the second exchange, I might have accepted his support a week ago. Now, I refused to need anything from a Vissimo.