Page 200 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
He draws back, looking shocked. “That’s not typical.”
“No, I’m sure not. I’m sorry.”
“Does that mean you weren’t looking for a partner tonight?”
Suddenly, my body aches. With missing Lucian. His touch. His possession. I would love to have a partner tonight. But it would have to be him. The music just feels too loud now, and I’m too hot. And I don’t want this man.
“No,” I say. “Just my husband for me. But…thank you. It’s flattering.” I feel bad turning him down, maybe because I’ve never turned a man down in my life before. “I have friends,” I say, gesturing to the group.
He looks quite interested in that.
“And believe me when I tell you, some of them are looking.”
Which is how he ends up with the group for the majority of the evening, and it’s Tefi who ends up winning his attentions, and I try not to feel nervous when she elects to leave with him. Though, I do end up sending a security detail to follow them. I figure it’s a very normal thing for people to hook up with strangers, but I have every right to feel responsible for how this goes, given that I’m the one that allowed him to join the group. Which means I can send my security detail out with them.
We all leave the club bedraggled and tipsy at two in the morning, and I fall into bed and wake up when my phone buzzes ferociously. It’s only six, and I feel vile. My head is pounding.
“Hello?”
It’s Zuri.
“Oh God, girl. You’re in trouble.”
“Why?” I sit up, and I try to think around my pounding head, and my dry mouth.
“Your picture with that dude got put all over the internet. And people are acting like you were hooking up with him.”
“What? But Tefi left with him.”
“Yes. Careful editing on the part of the people who posted the photos. They just put up pictures of you talking with him and bringing him to the group. And of course you’ve been identified as the Queen of Alabria, out cheating on your old husband.”
“I wouldn’t… I… I would never.”
“I know that, but it’s all viral now and everything.”
“God. Lucian is going to see this.”
“Yeah. So I would do some damage control with him if I were you. I mean, everyone is cheering you on, and praising you for being out living your life, but then the other issue is it’s now widespread knowledge that you’re going to university.”
People did know, but it didn’t matter before. Because there was no narrative. I open up my phone and google myself, and find the story faster than I would like. The emancipation of the Queen of Alabria. Like I’m the prisoner. Except I was. And… Why is this so…complicated?
Because a lot of the things that they say about him are true. But they don’t know him. And they don’t understand. They’re also diminishing me, the role that I played in our marriage. The way that I chose him. How much I want him. It’s all turned into this thing about him manipulating me, taking advantage of the power differential, but of course says nothing about how I stepped in and chose to marry him instead of my sister. And of course they act like he installed me at university as a place to keep me, ignoring that I got myself in, and he wanted me to go because he…cared what I wanted.
It makes me hate everyone.
I try calling Lucian, but he doesn’t answer his phone. So I spend the day texting him, and he doesn’t respond to me. I’m worried, worried that my marriage is over. Worried that this breach is something that we are never going to be able to come back from. Doesn’t he know me well enough to know that I would never cheat on him?
And anyway, I thought he didn’t care about his reputation. But now suddenly my dragon is what? Pouting in his cave because people think that I cheated?
That’s not fair. If he’s upset about it, he certainly has a right to be. I’m not happy about story either, but I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong, and he’s not communicating with me.
I call him five more times; he doesn’t answer.
And I spend the next several days at school being a celebrity in a way that I’ve never wanted to be. Deeply regrettably, this has also opened me up to men thinking that I’m an easy target, and so I’m also fending off advances left and right, which I can certainly say has never happened to me before.
“I hear you’re up for a good time,” some random bloke says to me in a common area, and I finally lose it.
“I’m married! And I’m not sleeping with some random when I have a king with a castle back at home.”
