The Luna You Betrayed Is No Longer Yours

Chapter 103: Chapter 103 A warm kiss

_Rowena’s POV_

I stepped closer.

I was trying to look unbothered about it. Trying to walk over to him like it was nothing, like I did this every day, like the close proximity wasn’t doing anything to my composure. I was doing a decent job of it on the outside.

On the inside it was a different story.

“Did you speak with my Nana?” I asked, keeping my voice steady.

He nodded. His hair shifted with the movement and fell slightly over his eyes and he didn’t bother pushing it back. Just looked at me through it with that calm unhurried expression he always had.

My heart did something embarrassing.

Kyra decided that was her opening.

She surged forward with zero warning, pushing at the surface of my control with a warmth that was completely inappropriate for the current setting. She had been patient for days and she was done being patient, she wanted me to close the remaining distance between me and the man in front of me and she was not subtle about communicating this.

“Not now,” I told her firmly.

But she pushed harder.

“Kyra!”

She grumbled and finally pulled back.

I refocused.

“What did you say to her?” I asked.

Alaric leaned back slightly and crossed his arms, casual about the whole thing. “I told her you weren’t a child. That keeping you under house arrest wasn’t going to change who you were or what you were going to do.” He paused. “I also told her that you’d be safer moving freely with the right people around you than locked in a room finding ways around the locks.”

“She accepted that?”

“Eventually.” The corner of his mouth moved. “Your grandmother is not easy to convince.” freēwēbnovel.com

“No,” I agreed. “She isn’t.”

I stopped about a foot away from him.

That was my intention. Stop there, keep a reasonable distance, have a normal conversation like a normal person.

But he had none of it. Alaric reached out and grabbed me.

I gasped. It came out before I could stop it. His arm wrapped around me and pulled me in and suddenly I was standing much closer than a foot away. His hand was at my back and he was smiling down at me with those perfect white teeth with absolutely no apology on his face whatsoever.

I forgot what I was going to say.

I actually stood there and forgot. My heart was doing things I had no previous experience with. Not fast exactly, just different. Heavier. More aware of itself than usual. And his hand on my back was warm through my shirt. Kyra went completely quiet in a way that wasn’t restraint but satisfaction, which was worse.

I didn’t push him away either.

I told myself I was just waiting for the right moment to step back. I was just collecting myself first.

He looked down at me for a moment. Then he cleared his throat.

“Your grandmother,” he said.

“Yes?”

“She asked me something before she agreed.”

I looked at him. “What?”

He made a face. Not quite a wince, but close. “She asked me to help arrange another banquet and bring more eligible men. She said she wasn’t giving up on finding you a husband.”

I stared at him.

“I’m just relaying the information,” he said.

“What did you say?”

He was quiet for a second. Then he said, “I told her I would host something suitable.”

“You told her you’d host a banquet to find me a husband.”

“I told her I would handle it,” he said. He looked at me with an expression that was doing several things at once. “I may have also said that she couldn’t see the most eligible man in the room when he was standing right in front of her.” He paused. “What do those men have that I don’t, exactly? I’d like to know.”

I bit the inside of my cheek hard.

“I’m serious,” he said, but the way he said it told me he wasn’t entirely serious, or at least that he knew how it sounded and didn’t care.

“You’re the Alpha King,” I said. “You can’t just......”

“I can host a banquet and then steal the guest of honor,” he said simply. “There’s no specific rule against that.”

I pressed my lips together.

He was watching me hold back the smile and he knew exactly what I was doing. He looked entirely too pleased with himself about it.

Then something shifted in the air between us. I noticed it before I understood it. The easy back and forth of a moment ago settled into something quieter. We were standing close together in his office and he had one arm around me and we were talking like two people who did this all the time, like this was a normal Tuesday afternoon thing, like neither of us was pretending the other wasn’t affecting them.

We looked like a couple.

The thought landed clearly and I felt my face do something I couldn’t control.

I cleared my throat and took a step back.

His arm loosened to let me go.

And then he did something I wasn’t prepared for at all.

He lowered himself, brought himself down to my height, and pressed his lips to my forehead.

Gentle and warm. Over in two seconds.

He straightened back up like it was the most natural thing in the world leaving me standing there in shock.

Something moved through my whole chest, slow and warm, spreading outward until my shoulders dropped and the tension I hadn’t noticed I was carrying just quietly released. My eyes closed for a second on their own. When I opened them he was already moving back toward his seat, pulling out the chair, and sitting down with that same relaxed ease.

“Sit,” he said, nodding at the chair across from him.

I sat.

My forehead was still warm.

I said nothing about that.

He opened a folder on his desk and looked at it briefly. “The travel arrangements are set. Three days from now, early morning. We won’t be taking a commercial route.” He looked up. “The Ebonmoon private plane. It’s faster and more discreet. I don’t want your movement through the region turning into a news story before you’ve done what you went to do.”

I nodded. That made sense. The last thing I needed was cameras at an airport.

“I’ll handle the security details,” he said. “You bring whoever you want from your side. Kasper, if you want him there.”