Page 49 of Fake Fae-Ancée

Okay, what?

Trying to bear my footing, I braced my hands on his midsection. His body radiated massive amounts of heat, his big hand on the curve of my waist on at least a thousand degrees, minimum. But it felt strangely… comfortable. And that hidden part of me, that soft and gooey and needy part, squirmed treacherously.

I wrenched my neck to face him and regretted it immediately. His gaze caught me completely off guard. Dark and sincere and tense. My breath hitched and I just… stared. Mesmerized by the pair of obsidian eyes that kept me pinned.

I opened my mouth. But my brain was blank. Everything I had wanted to say, all the words I’d ever had in my head had packed up their stuff and marched away.

"Uh..." was all I could produce.

Yuri turned to our visitors — as if all of this was perfectly normal and not totally absurd and head-spinning — and said:

"Kai and I had a sit-down and talked things out."

Meanwhile, I was kind of shocked by the fact that my hand was still resting on his stomach for some reason. His body heat came bleeding through the fabric. And his show-off muscles underneath felt hard and unyielding.

Why was my hand there in the first place?

"You talked things out?" Gabriel frowned, but Charly next to him beamed at me. No, atus! Argh! How much did she know? What the hell did she think?

Yuri looked at me again.

"I told her how sorry I was for everything that happened. And she forgave me."

His voice had changed. A tender vulnerability had crept into it.

I blinked. A wave of utterly absurd emotions crashed through me as I realized, he had never properly apologized.

After Amsterdam, I had returned to base camp and waited.

And waited.

Two endless weeks during which I felt like I was slowly going crazy. During which I kept the ring — my wedding ring — securely hidden in my pocket, turning it over and over between my fingers, wondering where the hell my husband was?

After a few more days, I started to hear the rumors. In the canteen. In the training room. While cleaning weapons. That the king of the Bears was dead. Murdered. By a usurper.

I checked the news and was devastated for Yuri. My heart broke for him. That explained why I hadn't heard from him. And I was worried sick.

After another week, I couldn’t take it anymore and I went to see his friends, also sons of super noble Bear families who were serving in the EDF so it would look good on their resumes. But when I asked them where the hell he was they only laughed at me.

"Oh, you poor thing. Of course he's fine, what do you think?" said one of them who was sporting a particularly stupid mustache.

"Cut the crap and tell me..."

"Prince Yuri is no longer any of your business," Mustache told me, and his words etched so deeply into my memory that I still heard them sometimes in my dreams, even today. "He’s moved on. And that's all there is to it."

A cold lump clenched in my chest, but my face turned bright red, causing more snickering laughter from the guys.

We had kept us a secret, everything about our relationship. But those laughing morons had known everything. If Yuri had told them or if we hadn’t been careful enough after all didn’t really matter.

"Cute," one said. "She really thinks he was serious about her."

"Hilarious." Mustache wiped tears of laughter from his eyes.

"Honey, the entire base knows about you two. Everyone knows he just used you to sow his wild oats."

Red hot mortification spilled over me. "That's not true," I groaned.

"Oh, cheer up," the other guy grinned and lit a cigarette. "You’re lucky he even considered you."

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