The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 213

Every instinct was screaming at me to hold her, to wrap her in my arms like any good boyfriend would and comfort her. But I couldn’t. Having her on me like this, sobbing into my shirt, soaking my skin with her tears… It just made me uncomfortable.

“What was her name?” I blurted out.

“Wh…What?”

“Your friend’s name. What was it?”

She paused, sniffling, and pulled her head back just enough to look at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, but her tears were too large. Something about the way her face twisted into the most perfect crying expression seemed too contrived.

“Why would you ask that?” she whispered.

“Just tell me what her name was, Bianca.”

Bianca didn’t answer. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but nothing more than a few little strained sounds came out.

She didn’t know. She claimed this girl was her best friend, and she didn’t even fucking know her real name.

“Freckles,” she finally whispered. “Her name was—”

“That was her nickname.” I sat up and gently but firmly removed her from my lap, placing her next to me. “Not her real name.”

“What are you saying?” Bianca asked.

I ran a hand through my hair. “I don’t know.”

Bianca sniffled, then reached out, cupping my chin in her hand. She turned my head, forcing me to look at her. Forcing me to look into those eyes filled with crocodile tears.

She leaned forward and kissed me.

I pulled back just as our lips brushed. My wolf snarled, and at the same time, my stomach twisted with disgust. She pulled her head away to look at me again.

“Can I stay the night?” she asked. “With you? I’m so scared after… Everything.”

Any normal boyfriend would have agreed. But I didn’t.

“But don’t you want it?”

I shrugged off my shirt and started working at my pants. Love was something from which the importance had been sapped many years ago, when I first found out that my marriage to the princess would be arranged.

Love was secondary. It might or might not happen, but the marriage was always set in stone.

I couldn’t stand Bianca, but it didn’t matter. She was going to be my wife one day. I would have to accept her in sickness and in health, richer and poorer, and better and worse.

It was never optional for me.

And yet, that night, as I slept, my dreams were plagued with images of another. I saw Liora moving above me, her amber-colored hair spilling onto the pillow around us. I saw her radiant smile, her gentle hands cupping my face.

I saw her in a way that I never saw Bianca.

By the time I woke, my face was flushed from those dreams. I tried to ignore the strain in my pants. Tried to chalk it up to strange images conjured by an even stranger night.

But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to look Bianca or Liora in the face that day. Not when I was more attracted to Liora than I had ever been to anyone before.