Chapter 9 Amara
AMARA
The Solas Valentine Gala had me frozen in fear; it was quite literally my nightmare come to life.
The ballroom ceiling soared above me, and I felt so insignificantly small while deep red roses spilled out of gorgeous arrangements perfuming the air around me.
I felt like I’d stepped inside of a fairy tale meant for the likes of people like Lila.
Yes, I thought, I definitely felt I’d wandered into the wrong story. A story that was meant for someone who was gorgeous who would immediately capture the heart of a prince.
"Stand up straight," my mother murmured beside me, already scanning the room with the focused intensity of someone running a military operation.
I did as I was told, pulling my shoulders back a bit, my spine locking into place.
Lila appeared at my other elbow approximately thirty seconds after we walked in, which had to be some kind of record even for her.
She looked stunning in a silver gown that probably cost more than my rent, her hair swept up in an elaborate style that I would never in a million years be able to pull off.
"Amara," she said, her eyes sliding over my burgundy dress with a smile that didn't reach anywhere near warm. "You look...sweet."
There it was.
Sweet.
The same word she'd been using to diminish me since we were twelve years old.
"Thanks," I said flatly and my shoulders drooped a little on their own.
Colin materialized somewhere behind her, handsome and uncomfortable in his tux, his eyes skating away from mine the second they landed on me. Good. He should be uncomfortable.
Lila leaned in close. "I heard the Solas brothers are all here tonight. All four of them. Can you imagine?" She pressed a hand to her chest like the thought alone might finish her off. "I've seen photos of the oldest one. Damon. Absolute perfection. Total hottie!”
I made a sound that I hoped passed for interested and looked out across the ballroom.
And then my brain stopped working entirely.
Because across the room, standing with a group of people who all carried themselves like they'd been born owning every space they'd ever entered, was Kael.
My Kael.
Except this version of Kael was in a perfectly fitted black tux with a burgundy pocket square, his short brown hair neat, those hazel-green eyes calm and commanding in a way I had never seen behind a bakery counter.
People moved around him like water around a stone.
A man leaned in to speak to him and he responded with a slight nod, unhurried and completely at ease.
I blinked and looked again.
Definitely him.
For sure the same jaw and the same broad shoulders. The same hands that slid honey-ember tarts across a counter every single morning with flour still caught under his fingernails.
What in the entire world was happening right now?
"Amara?" my mother said. "You've gone pale."
I could not explain to my mother what was happening because I did not have the words or the functioning brain cells.
And then he turned around and his eyes found mine across the crowded ballroom with the same quiet certainty they always did through a bakery window, and something in his expression shifted.
Maybe it was relief, or resolve, but something else underneath that made my heart rate do something deeply irresponsible.
He started moving through the crowd toward me.
He was purposeful in his steps, like he had all the time in the world and had already decided exactly how this was going to go.
People stepped aside without him asking.
He stopped in front of me and the scent of him, warm sugar and smoky vanilla, wrapped around me so completely that the rest of the ballroom seemed to go slightly muffled at the edges.
Didn’t it smell like roses a second ago, I blinked looking up at him.
"Amara." His voice was the same as it always was, low and warm and careful.
I opened my mouth and absolutely nothing came out.
He held out his hand, steady and sure. "Will you dance with me?"
"She would love to," Lila said from approximately two inches away, her voice three octaves higher than normal.
She had materialized between us with the speed of someone who had been watching from the moment he started moving.
Her smile was enormous and aimed entirely at Kael.
"I don't think we've been introduced. I'm Lila. Amara's cousin."
Kael looked at her for a brief moment before his eyes came straight back to me.
"It's nice to meet you," he said, in the tone of someone who had been raised with impeccable manners and was currently using them as a very elegant form of dismissal.
Lila blinked, clearly expecting more. She tilted her head, her smile sharpening at the edges. "And you are?"
"My brother," said a voice from somewhere to my left, dripping with amusement, "is His Royal Highness, Prince Kael of House Solas."
A tall blonde man appeared beside us, champagne glass raised in a lazy salute, ice-blue eyes bright with barely concealed delight. He looked between Lila and me like he was watching his favorite television program.
Then he turned and walked away without another word.
The silence that followed was magnificent and Lila's mouth opened.
Then closed.
Then opened again.
Somewhere behind her, I heard Colin make a sound like a man who had just realized the full scope of his mistakes.
My mother said something that might have been "Oh my Lord."
And I stood in the middle of all of it, holding the following information in a brain that had completely ceased to function properly.
My baker was a prince. His Royal Highness had been saving me the last honey-ember tart every morning for six months.
Lila, who had spent the better part of our lives making me feel like the lesser version of everything, looked like she might need to sit down.
And his HRH, Kael of House Solas, was still looking only at me.
He was acting like having a title was the least interesting thing in the room.
He was staring me down, like I was the most interesting thing in the room, and my stomach was fighting off butterflies.
I put my hand in his.
I was not entirely sure I made that decision consciously. My legs carried me onto the dance floor and his hand settled at my waist and we were moving before my brain had fully caught up with any of it.
"I know," he said quietly, close to my ear. "I owe you an explanation."
"You think?" I managed.
Something that might have been a smile crossed his face. "I was afraid. The last person who found out who I was only wanted the title. And you..." He paused, his hand tightening slightly at my waist. "You were the first person in a long time who saw me. Just me, and I didn't want to lose that."
I wanted to be angry with him, like I was trying to muster up everything I could to make myself feel that way.
But the way he was looking at me was the way he always looked at me across the bakery counter. He was making it extremely difficult to hold onto anything except the warmth of his hand and the sound of his voice and the way his scent was doing something tonight that it had never quite done before.
It smelled deeper and richer than it ever had and it was pulling at something low in my stomach that I did not have the capacity to examine right now.
"You should have told me," I said.
"I know," he said simply. "I'm sorry."
I opened my mouth to respond and my knees went weak.
Not metaphorically.
What in the world, I thought.
I’d actually gone weak in the knees, and a sudden wave of heat had up through my body so fast that all I could do was grab onto Kael’s arm to keep myself from hitting the floor. My skin felt like it had been turned inside out and my pulse was hammering away inside of my throat.
The ballroom lights seemed suddenly too bright and Kael's scent hit me again like a wall, overwhelming and consuming and achingly familiar all at the same time.
Oh my god….
Please not here and not now in front of two hundred people and my mother and Lila…
My mother and Lila were definitely still watching from where I’d left them standing and I dared not look over to see the expressions on their faces.
Instead, I looked up at Kael and found him already looking at me, his hazel eyes darker than I had ever seen them, the gold burned down to something deeper and more serious. His jaw had tightened and his hand was at my waist, still and steady.
He already knew.
"Amara," he said, very quietly and very carefully. "I need you to trust me right now."
I was going into heat in the middle of the Solas Valentine Gala and I had no choice in the matter it seemed.
"Okay," I whispered, because apparently that was all I had left.