Chapter b166 /b

    E

    When we finally broke apart, both of us were breathing hard. My head spun, heart pounded, every nerve ending tingling as if I’d just gripped a live wire in my bare hands.

    “Delicious,” my wolf purred. And it was. I could have had a thousand of those kisses and never felt satisfied.

    But as the cameras shed around us, I realized what I had done.

    I’d kissed my husband. Passionately. In front of everyone.

    My cheeks burned as I took in the sea of camera lenses pointed in our direction. Tomorrow, those photos would be all over social media.

    Alexander straightened his tie and cleared his throat. “The mate bond,” he said quietly, as if reading the dumbfounded expression on my face. “It’s still new. Sometimes it can be… overwhelming, so I don’t me you.”

    Of course. The mate bond. A biological reactionb, /bnothing more. Alexander wasn’t kissing me back because he wanted to–he was just responding to the chemical pull between mates.

    I felt like the biggest fool in the world.

    “Right,” I managed, taking his outstretched hand and standing. “The bond.”

    I needed some air.

    Before Alexander could stop me, I forced a smile onto my face and turned, weaving my way through the crowd. There was a set of double doors by the rear of the banquet hall, which led out into arge and lush courtyard.

    The moment I stepped outside, I felt like I could breathe again. The night air was cool against my heated skin, and I gulped it down gratefully. The courtyard was empty except for mè, lit only by strings of fairy lights and the pale glow of the moon overhead.

    I walked to the center of the garden and tilted my head back, staring up at the stars scattered across the dark sky like diamonds on a nket of ck velvet.

    Goddess, I was so tired of pretending.

    Tired of smiling and ying the loving wife when Alexander didn‘ feel the same way. Tired of making up romantic stories for strangers when the man I was married to saw our rtionship as nothing more than a business arrangement.

    He was marked to me now. I was carrying his child. But he still couldn’t love me the way a husband should love his wife.

    He couldn’t love me in the way I’d started to love him, despite my est efforts not to.

    “You’re being too hard on yourself,” my wolf said gently, “The kiss meant something to him. I could feel it through the bond.”

    “It was just biology. He said so himself.“”

    “Males are idiots about feelings. Doesn’t mean they don’t have them.”

    I shook my head, wrapping my arms around myself. It didn’t matter what my wolf thought she’d sensed. Alexander had made his feelings clear. Even with a baby in my belly, we were still contracted to one another–we weren’t in love.

    Which begged the question: did he still have intentions to marry Sephia as soon as he could? Did he love her in the same way she loved him, but remained bound to me because of politics and a fate mate bond that he never wanted?

    Sure, we had made love once in our five years of marriage. Sure, I rried our child in my womb. And sure, he had marked me.

    But what did any of it mean?

    I had always prided myself on my intelligence. When all else failed me, when my parents refused to let me continue training and relegated me to the position of housemaid, I still had my mind.

    Even when I was ill, I still had my wit.

    But now I just felt like a lovesick fool who didn’t know anything anymore. Maybe I had truly, finally been outsmarted by the

    universe itself.

    “E?”

    I turned to find Alexander standing in the doorway, his brow furrowed. “Are you alright?”

    I tried to force another smile, but my lips trembled, giving it away immediately. “I’m sorry about that kiss. You’re right–the mate bond is overwhelming at times, and I was half asleep. I wasn’t thinking.”

    Alexander studied my face in the moonlight. Instead of answering, he walked over to the rose bushes that lined the courtyard wall. He selected a pale pink flower and broke it off, careful to avoid the thorns.