Page 81 of Problematic

Alphus watched the movement. “Is New Abaddon under threat?”

I smiled beneath the mask.

“Shouldn’t you know that?”

The table shifted. I let them sit with that. Let them imagine rebellion, assassins, betrayal, another district falling into my hands.

Then I left them with the map, the rain, and the understanding that whatever had pulled me out of that room mattered more than their entire Southern Alliance.

The second the door shut behind me, I opened the feed.

Olivia Heart had found one of my sins, and instead of folding beneath it, she had turned it into a dare. “Come earn it.”

That was clearly an invitation, and one I planned on accepting.

Then I heard her say Kalon’s name. My hand paused over the control panel mid-motion.

There were several reasonable responses available to me. I could turn off the feed. I could respect her privacy. I could allow the large, blond Deathdrinker with a polite disposition and a savior complex to comfort my mate without becoming personally invested in his unfortunate and untimely demise. All excellent options. Instead, I chose violence with a side of delayed retribution.

I stared at her through the last working camera, the one tucked into the molding she hadn’t found yet, because, apparently, I had reached the stage of my psychological decline where I still took pride in craftsmanship. She stood in the middle of her apartment with her phone in one hand and my dead cameras lined up on the counter. I slipped the phone into my pocket and walked straight into my office.

The door shut behind me with a sound that awakened the shadows.

The Southern Lords could wait.

Olivia had declared war.

Much more interesting.

I reached into my desk and pulled out the gift I had planned before Olivia decided to commit murder against my electronics.

The gift sat wrapped in matte-black paper with a glossy black satin bow, because even courtship through escalating criminal behavior deserved presentation standards. Inside waited an unreleased, personally annotated copy of the next book in the stalker romance series she had been reading, the one with the morally indefensible man on the cover and the heroine who kept insisting she wanted peace while making choices that suggested otherwise.

There was also a smaller box tucked beneath it. The second gift was tasteful, expensive, and battery operated. A literary companion piece.

On the screen Kalon showed up at the door. I had given her roses. Kalon gave her a locked door. I had given her notes written in perfect ink, private jokes, filth hidden between margins, and the kind of attention that made women in her books melt into poor decisions with terrible men like me. But Kalon asked before touching a deadbolt, and her face broke open like he had offered her the entire world in both hands.

I wanted to drag Kalon through the wall by his polite throat and ask him who’d given him permission to be decent in front of my mate. Honestly, it made me look bad. The nerve of some people.

Then Kalon reached across the table.

Stopped halfway.

Olivia stared at his hand.

For one sharp, stupid second, I thought she would refuse him. I thought her anger would keep her fingers tucked safely under the table. I thought she would glance at the corner again, at me, at the last dark little thread between us.

She put her hand in his.

My nightmares rose in one black, hungry sweep, spilling up the wall, over the monitors, across the ceiling, like my jealousy had finally found a body. The feed flickered. The temperature dropped. Somewhere behind me, glass cracked inside a cabinet.

Kalon’s thumb moved over her knuckles.

They stood, and she stepped closer to him.

My thoughts emptied.

Her fingers curled into his shirt, small and uncertain, and the uncertainty made it worse, because I couldn’t tell if she was holding on to him or holding herself back from him. Kalon lowered his head a fraction, giving her the final inch, making room for her choice like a gentleman, which proved he had no survival instincts at all.