don’t make a hero out of me.” He smiled bitterly. “I’ve got plenty of faults. Just ask my sire. He’ll give you a list longer than your driveway.”
As she fell silent, the sadness that came back into her eyes made him want to hold her. But Marquist was watching on the closed circuit—and more to the point, Rochelle was not his to comfort.
Calling off the arrangement was so the right thing to do—
“No,” she said in a stronger voice. “I will take responsibility for this. I am not going to let you—”
“Rochelle. I don’t know who your male is, but if he’s in our class? You cannot be the one who breaks things off. If you refuse to perform on this arrangement, his family will never allow you two to be together.
You know this. You will be sullied, and it will haunt you for the rest of your life. Let me take the hit.”
“I still don’t know why you would do this for me.”
“If I had someone to love, I would want to be with her. But I don’t.” He frowned and considered all of the females he knew or had met. They were all aristocrats. “And honestly, I can’t see where something like true love would come from for me. So I want to help the two of you.”
Rochelle dabbed her face with his handkerchief again. “I really wish I could love you. You are a male of true worth. But no, I can’t let you—”
The double doors burst open, the heavy panels thrown wide by Marquist.
Boone’s sire, Altamere, strode in, his wing tips clipping over the marble until they hit the carpet and were silenced. The male’s dark hair was brushed back from his finely boned face, and his pale eyes were the color of steel in his anger. Absently, Boone noted that the suit his father had on was made of the exact same fine wool his own was. The slate blue color was flecked with threads of heather and pale gray, the speckling so subtle that one could not notice it without pressing a nose to the lapels.
The cut of the jacket and slacks was not the same, however. Boone had always taken after his mahmen’s side of things, his shoulders broad, his arms thick, his legs long and muscled. He had always been aware that his father disapproved of his physique, and could remember a hushed comment after his transition, made under his sire’s breath, that Boone had the body of a laborer. As if that were a birth defect.
Or maybe something that made him doubt the fidelity of his shellan.
Boone had always wondered about that.
“Whate’er are you doing,” Altamere demanded.
As that hard stare locked on Boone, it was not a surprise that the male ignored Rochelle. To him, females were nothing but background, something pretty on the periphery, an accessory rather than an active participant in one’s life.
Boone got to his feet. “Rochelle has come to tell me I am not worthy of our arrangement. She has rejected me, and because she has honor, she wanted to do it in person. She is taking her leave the now.”
He could feel Rochelle looking at him in shock, but he was prepared to shoot down any attempt she might make to deny what he’d laid out. Meanwhile, over Altamere’s shoulder, Marquist was a watchful presence, a living, breathing camcorder that was taking everything in.
“You are not going to embarrass me like this,” Altamere hissed. “I will not allow it.”
As if he sensed there was a deeper story.
The anger that had curdled in Boone’s chest found further purchase in his very soul. “The choice is not yours to make.”
“You are my son. It is no one else’s—”
“Bullshit.” As his sire blanched at the curse word, Boone’s voice grew deeper and louder. “We’re done with me trying to please you. I was never very good at it, anyway—at least not according to you, and it is beyond time that I stand up for myself.”
In the back of his mind, the tally of his sire’s neglect and condescension was like an electric meter going haywire, the count spiraling up into the stratosphere: Boone’s body type. Boone’s desire to read rather than be social. Boone’s mahmen’s death ignored. Boone’s stepmahmen entering the house like a cold draft. Boone’s never measuring up no matter what the standard.
Altamere jabbed a finger in Boone’s direction. “I’m giving you one last chance. I don’t know what the two of you are doing with this