exhaled a breath that he hadn’t been aware of holding for the last month. “It’s okay. I know why you came.”
“You do?”
“When you called me directly, instead of going through proper channels, I knew it had to be because you wanted out of this arrangement. And as I said, it’s all right.”
She seemed surprised, as if she had expected to have to explain herself. As if she had anticipated a hard conversation. As if she had braced herself for anger and indignation on his part.
“No . . . it’s not all right.”
“Yes, it is. Come here.”
As he held out his hand, she walked over to him, but their palms did not make contact. He was careful to drop his arm before she was close, and he drew her over to the sofa by indicating the way across the formal room. When they were both seated on the soft cushions, he had a thought in the back of his mind that they were cardboard cutouts of their parents. In spite of being out of their transitions some fifty years, he and Rochelle were dressing and behaving as if they were three or four hundred years old: Suits and court shoes. Discreet jewels for her, pocket squares for him. Perfect manners.
Inside, he knew it wasn’t right. None of this was right, and not just the arranged mating. None of this household, this bloodline he had been born into, was as it should be, and abruptly, as he contemplated the reality that he had been prepared to follow through on a lifelong commitment he knew was wrong for him, anger took hold.
Thank the Virgin Scribe Rochelle was braver than he.
“I am so sorry,” she said with a sniffle.
He shifted and took his handkerchief out of his inside pocket. “Here.”
“What a mess.” Taking what he offered, Rochelle dabbed carefully at her eyes. “What an . . . absolute mess I am making out of everything.”
More tears came for her, and he wished he could put a friendly arm around her shoulders for comfort. But he hadn’t touched her in any way yet, and now was hardly the time to start.
“We can choose not to do this.”
“But I want to. I truly do.” She pressed under one side of her nose and looked at him. “You’re amazing. You’re everything I should want, but I just don’t—oh, God. I shouldn’t say that.”
Boone smiled. “I take it as a compliment.”
“I mean it. I wish I could love you.”
“I know you do.”
Abruptly, she shook her head over and over again, her blond hair breaking across her shoulders in thick waves. “No, no, we have to press on. I don’t know why I came here. There is no getting out of this, Boone. Arranged matings can’t be broken.”
“The hell they can’t. Tell them all you do not find me acceptable. It’s your right. That’s how you—how we—take care of this.”
“Except that’s not fair to you.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “There will be all kinds of judgment on you, and—”
“I’ll handle it.”
“How?”
He didn’t know. But what he was sure about was that having the glymera believe he was undesirable as a hellren for a fellow member of the upper classes seemed a better lot than forcing this mating. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Rochelle or that he found her unattractive. She was smart and funny, and she was classically beautiful. Over time, there was a possibility of things developing between them, but they were essentially strangers.
And as they sat here alone for the first time, the question he had been asking himself since night one was finally answered: The only reason he had gone down this path of expectation was because he’d thought maybe he could make it work better than his father had. In fact, he had been determined to succeed where his sire had failed by meeting the expectations of the glymera and yet still living a life that was authentic.
Except winning that kind of a race would only get him a hollow trophy, wouldn’t it—in the form of a mating to a female he wasn’t in love with . . . just so he could prove a point to a male who would undoubtedly not notice the nuances outside of “normal.”
“It’s going to be all right,” he repeated.
Rochelle took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to think I was being hasty in calling you. Or impulsive.”
Impulsive? he thought. What, like signing on for seven hundred years of mating, the possibility of young, and the