Page 79 of Fake Fae-Ancée

I might have signed some papers, but I knew it in my bones, right this very moment — Kai was mine. She always had been. The stars knew. The earth knew. Mother Bear in the Skies knew.

She would leave. That was our plan, and Kai would stick to it. So I needed to take her. Mark her. Claim her. Imprint myself on her. If I could only hold her like this, fuck her like this, like the world would end. I didn’t care about my throne, the name of my family.

Nothing mattered but her.

Kai

"Hey, you okay?"

Yuri's face appeared in my field of vision, a little blurry, and only then did it occur to my foggy brain that I had probably passed out at some point.

"I guess so," I muttered, clearing my throat, blinking Yuri back into focus.

I rose a little, propped up on my elbows, my head swimming. I found myself in exactly the same bed in which I had woken up completely disoriented and without memory a few weeks earlier. Only this time things were completely clear — we had really done it.

And how!

Yuri sat next to me in the rumpled sheets, (Black silk, ugh.) wearing nothing but a worried and kind of glowering expression. Like he was as shocked as I was to find me here, of all places, and just in such a way.

You know, naked and post-coital…

"Are… we okay?" he asked lowly.

His obvious insecurity made my heart clench. All the anger and that gigantic dark bubble I had carried around for years, throbbing painfully like an infection as soon as I even looked at him — was gone. In its place was just a dull a void, with a hint of what I had once felt for him glimmering on the edges.

I reached out, covering his hand with mine. His eyes, no longer golden but dark, widened, muscles on his tensing and then relaxing. A wobbly smile crept onto his face, and those cursed dimples reappeared. The ones that had ruined everything, back in the day.

This bastard was far too pretty for his own good. Or mine.

"I’m sorry, if I made things complicated," I muttered.

"I’m not." His features softened again into that crooked smile. "But I guess you figured as much, huh?"

"We are okay…" I said, flicking my eyes back to him. "Maybe we needed to clear the air or something."

He huffed a laugh. "Yeah, that’s one way to put it."

A sudden lump tightened my throat.

It was being unfair. And not because of me having sex with him despite the situation being messy enough. As far as he was concerned, we were divorced — he had signed the papers. I had not. But being honest and telling him, would just raise his hopes again. It was really better if we went our separate ways and never saw each other again once all this was over...

His shocked frown snapped me out of my thoughts.

"Why are you crying?"

"What?"

"You're crying."

My hand went to my cheek. "I'm not," I said, wiping away the wetness. It was no use, though, my vision immediately blurred again.

"I would’ve been the wrong one for you anyway," I heard myself say. "Your prophecy was wrong from the start."

"I don't think so."

"Please believe me. Just this once. I could have never been a proper queen to you."

He scoffed. "Now that we're officially divorced, that should be obvious."

---