Chapter 2

Rosalia POV

The door opened slowly, and the Lycan King stepped into my chamber like he was walking into a battlefield instead of his wife's bedroom.

Dante Vittorio Castellano. Six foot four. Shoulders wide enough to block out the hallway behind him. Silver white hair that fell past his jaw, framing a face so sharp and cold it could have been carved from marble. His ice blue eyes swept the room once before landing on me, and the expression on his face was exactly how I remembered it.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a flicker of warmth, not a trace of interest, not even basic human acknowledgment that his new wife was standing in front of him wearing a nightgown so thin she might as well have been naked.

In my first life, this moment had destroyed me. I had spent hours preparing, agonizing over my hair and my skin and whether he would find me beautiful. When he walked in and looked at me with those dead, frozen eyes, I had felt my entire sense of worth crumble to dust. He had stood at the foot of the bed for exactly two minutes, told me to rest well, and walked out. That was my entire wedding night. Two minutes and a door closing behind him.

But things were different now, because the moment his eyes landed on me, I heard his thoughts.

And his thoughts were absolutely nothing like his face.

Don't look at her body. Don't look at her body. Do NOT look at her body. You are a king. You have fought wars. You have torn grown men apart with your bare hands. You can handle standing in the same room as your wife without losing your mind.

My eyes went wide.

She's so beautiful it physically hurts. How is a human this beautiful? Is this some kind of test from the gods? Why is her skin glowing like that? And that nightgown... who gave her that nightgown? I will have them executed. No. Promoted. No. EXECUTED.

I blinked. Then blinked again. Because the massive, terrifying, emotionally dead Lycan King standing in front of me was not cold at all. He was panicking. Completely, hopelessly, catastrophically panicking on the inside while his outside remained a perfect mask of royal indifference.

"You may sit if you wish," I offered, testing the waters, keeping my voice neutral.

"I'll stand." His reply was clipped. Short. The kind of tone that would make anyone think he couldn't wait to leave.

If I sit on that bed next to her, I will lose control. My hands are too rough. My strength is too much. One wrong grip and I could crush her bones. She's human. Fragile. Breakable. I cannot touch her. I will NOT touch her.

Something cracked inside my chest, and it wasn't anger this time. It was confusion. Deep, painful, bewildering confusion, because the man I had spent three years hating for abandoning me had apparently spent those same three years terrified of breaking me.

Memories rushed back. Guards who had called me a "human stain" in the corridors. Servants who had spat near my feet when they thought no one was watching. And then, one by one, those same guards and servants simply... disappeared. Transferred. Reassigned. Gone. I had never understood why, and I had been too isolated and too afraid to ask.

He had been punishing them. Quietly. Secretly. Without ever telling me or taking credit for it.

The realization should have softened me. Maybe in another life, a better version of me would have run to him and thrown her arms around his neck and told him she understood.

But I was not that version. I was the version who had died alone, poisoned and forgotten, while her husband stood on the other side of a locked door too scared to walk through it.

Understanding his reasons did not erase three years of loneliness. Knowing he loved me did not undo the damage of believing he didn't.

I was done with this territory. Done with these beasts. Done with whispers and assassination attempts and political games played with my life as the chip on the table. I wanted out. I wanted a small apartment somewhere in Manhattan, a little bar with dim lights and good wine, and a life where nobody cared that I was human.

But for that, I needed money. And the only person who could give me enough to disappear was standing right in front of me, fighting a losing war against his own body because my nightgown was too thin.

"I have a proposal for you," I told him, and I made sure my voice carried no warmth, no affection, nothing that could be mistaken for the desperate, lovesick girl I used to be. Cold. Business only.

Dante's jaw tightened. "A proposal."

"Let me take my dowry and leave." I watched his face carefully, looking for cracks, looking for anything. "I'll go quietly. No scandal. No embarrassment. You can tell everyone I took my own life on our wedding night. Your reputation stays clean, and you never have to deal with an unwanted human queen again."

What.

"You didn't want a wife," I continued, my voice steady even though my heart was hammering against my ribs so hard I was sure he could hear it. "You didn't want a human in your territory. Your people don't want me here. I don't want to be here. So let me go, and we both get what we want."

WHAT?!

"It is a clean arrangement." I folded my arms across my chest, partly to look confident and partly because the chill in the room was cutting straight through this ridiculous nightgown. "You lose nothing. I gain my freedom. Everyone is happy."

Dante did not speak. He did not move. He did not even blink. His entire body stood completely frozen, like someone had reached inside his chest and ripped the wiring out. His ice blue eyes were locked onto my face, but behind them, his mind was screaming so loud I almost winced.

She wants to leave me?! She wants to LEAVE?! She just got here! We just got married! She hasn't even given me a chance to... I haven't even... I was going to work up the courage to hold her hand by next month! I had a PLAN!

Tell the public she killed herself?! Does she think I would let anyone believe my wife is dead?! Does she think I could survive a single day knowing she's out there somewhere and I can't protect her?!

No. No. No no no no NO. She is NOT leaving. She is MY mate. Mine. I waited twenty nine years for her. I fought a war to end the marriage negotiations peacefully. I threatened to burn the Governor's entire estate to the ground when he tried to delay the wedding. She is MINE and she is NOT going ANYWHERE.

But none of that came out of his mouth. Not a single word. Because the mighty Lycan King, the most feared ruler in the entire territory, the man who had torn enemies apart with his bare hands and brought entire armies to their knees, was standing in front of his wife completely paralyzed by the sheer, overwhelming terror of losing the mate he had been too scared and too awkward to properly claim.