Six Years Ago
THE MATCHMAKING AGENCY occupied the top floor of a building that officially didn’t exist in any government registry.
No directory listing downstairs. No name on the brass plate beside the private elevator.
Just a small symbol etched into the metal: a crescent moon cradled by thorns that meant nothing to most of Athens’ population and everything to the select few who needed to know.
Inside, the waiting room looked more like a museum than a business.
Ancient marble statues stood in alcoves, their faces turned away from each other as if keeping secrets.
The furniture was dark wood that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, and the air held an odd quality.
Too still, too heavy, like time moved differently within its walls.
Samira Hondros sat motionless in one of those dark chairs, her spine straight not from poise but from the kind of rigidity that came from years of consequence.
Pale hands lay flat against the emerald fabric of her dress.
She didn’t fidget. Didn’t adjust the auburn hair that fell past her shoulders.
Her face remained blank, carefully empty, the expression of someone who had learned that showing nothing was safer than showing the wrong thing.
The temperature shifted before the door opened, a subtle drop that raised goosebumps along her arms.
The first to enter the room was surprisingly nondescript. He was neither tall nor powerfully built. He was just...a man. And yet he carried himself with an air of authority that was noticeable to everyone.
Alphonse Mercier, the alpha of the snow leopards from the mountains of France.
But while he might hold both the title and the crown, it was the man who followed behind him that had everyone catching their breaths. Well, almost everyone. It was hard to tell with Samira, whose pale features revealed nothing but blankness.
Behind him swaggered a younger man, whom the alpha briefly introduced as his lieutenant Vaughn. The latter’s arrogance was evident in the way he looked at the bride disparagingly, but even he seemed to wilt when he, along with everyone else, heard the door behind them slide open yet again.
The air crackled with power as Alphonse’s younger brother made his appearance. Hexius Mercier didn’t walk so much as flow into the space, his every move economical, graceful, and deadly.
His hair was the same ice blond shade as his brother. A Mercier trademark, in other words, and so were his eyes of gold. His gaze was cold and hard, and it swept past Samira without pause.
The matchmaker rose from behind her desk. “Messieurs Mercier. May I present Miss Samira Hondros.”
Samira, on cue, rose to her feet.
“Miss Hondros, Alphonse Mercier and his brother, Hexius.”
The alpha inclined his head in greeting, but Hexius didn’t even glance her way, and the matchmaker could only clear her throat in discomfort. “If there is nothing else, then we shall—”
“Non.”
It was Hexius who spoke, and the matchmaker found herself shrinking under the leopard prince’s gaze, which seemed to see all the way to her less-than-pure soul.
She mustered the courage to make an appeal, mostly because her six-digit commission from the closure of this arrangement depended on it. “Monsieur—”
Hexius reached for the pen that had been set aside for his use, and the matchmaker’s eyes widened at what he wrote on the contract.
Rejetée.
Chaos erupted, with the representatives of Samira bursting into their feet in offended outrage while a red-faced Vaughn, the lieutenant who served as the alpha’s second-hand man, turned to Alphonse, saying furiously, “Such defiance is considered treasonous. You cannot—”
Alphonse raised a brow. “And what about you, Vaughn? Are you telling your alpha what he can or cannot do?” The words having effectively put the younger man in his place, Alphonse then turned to his brother, who appeared impervious to any of the havoc his actions created.
“What do you think you’re doing, Hexius?”
“Exactly what it implies. Rejetée. She is rejected.”
The alpha’s brother didn’t wait for a reply, having already risen to his feet as he spoke, and leaving everyone stunned as he walked away without a single backward glance.
“Sire!” Vaughn looked at Alphonse. “You cannot let him—” Realizing that he had once again made the same mistake, he switched his attention instead to Hexius’ retreating back, fists clenching at the way the other man kept disrespecting their alpha.
“Reviens ici immédiatement!”
The words seemed to fall on deaf ears, and a confused silence descended as the door automatically slid close behind him.