Page 62 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

“—I will marry him,” I say. “Here, in this country that stood beside us, before the month is out. I ask you to be glad for me, as I am glad. Thank you.”

I hold. I count three. I let my face stay exactly where it is, and I do not breathe in through my nose again, because if I do I will not be able to hold it.

“And—cut,” the woman says. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

Nobody moves. The wind moves. It has coffee in it still. I can taste it.

“Again,” Reinhardt says.

The man at the camera looks at the sky behind me and then at the small light and then at the woman. “Sir, we’ve lost the sun. If we go again it won’t match. The river will be black.”

“He hesitated.”

“It’s a beat, sir. It reads as emotion. Honestly, it’s the best moment in it. We can trim it if you’d rather. But we can’t get the sunset back.”

Reinhardt looks at me.

I lower my eyes demurely. “I am sorry, Prime Minister. I thought it would show emotion. I didn’t realize it would ruin the shot. Perhaps we can do it with the sunrise. I’ll practice tonight.”

For a moment, I worry that I have overdone it, but then he grunts. “Leave it. Send it as it is.”

I am taken back up to my room and left alone again. I am desperate to reach up and touch the skin on my neck where Roan claimed me. I don’t. They are still watching.

Instead, I put the television on the way that I always do and watch a news anchor talk about baseball.

None of this matters. I know what I smelled.

Roan is alive. He is out there in the dark somewhere, and he is looking for me.

16. Roan

The big gray-haired alpha has me pinned. He asked me a question but I haven’t answered him.

I don’t know what the right answer is and the wrong one will cost me, so I keep my mouth shut.

He waits. The forearm stays against my throat.

Then he steps back, fast, out of reach, and the thing in his other hand comes up between us and now I get a look at it.

It’s compact and black with a suppressor on the end that makes it longer than it should be. He holds it low against his coat. Anyone glancing over from the road is going to see nothing other than two men talking under a tree.

“Get up.”

I get up. It takes longer than I want it to. My left arm is hanging off my shoulder still feeling half dead and the back of my head is wet and painful where I hit the tree.

“Hands in front. Together.”

I consider refusing.

But there is something going on here. These guys aren’t Aurelio’s security. They were watching the hotel, same as I was. And the big gray-haired alpha changed his mind on me the moment he saw Aurelio’s bite.

Of course, if I refuse, he might just shoot me.

I put my hands together. He says something in Monteverran over his shoulder and a second man comes around the end of the low wall.

This one is younger, thirties perhaps with a narrow face, dark beard trimmed close. He has a zip tie already open in his hand. He doesn’t look at my face. He looks at my wrists and does the tie and pulls it tight enough that I feel it bite.

The younger man takes his coat and loops it over my hands so it looks like I’m carrying it, hiding the zip tie.