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There was no evidence Max had ever slept with her, her attempt to arrange another interview had gone nowhere, and apparently admitting she’d entered his apartment without permission made her considerably less attractive as a source. The internet had also discovered something newer to be furious about, which probably helped.
There was no dramatic apology or satisfying public retraction, which I personally considered a failure of modern media.
“I don’t want an apology,” he said while standing in my kitchen and reading the latest message from his agent.
“You want a full-page correction.”
“I want accuracy.”
“With your photograph?”
Max waggled his palm to indicate indecisiveness. “That would help people identify the subject.”
“And perhaps a headline saying MAX RENAUD WAS RIGHT?”
He considered it. “Tasteful.”
I snorted. “Very restrained.”
“I’m Québécois.”
I stared at him. “That doesn’t explain anything.”
Instead of answering, he put his phone down and caught me around the waist.
“That’s cheating. You’re using superior strength to avoid losing an argument.”
Max wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m using superior judgment to end a pointless one.”
“You really are a dragon.”
He kissed me before I could continue, which proved my point even if he refused to acknowledge it.
The strangest change wasn’t what happened with Melanie, though. It was everything that didn’t happen afterward.
Max still got stared at because he was Max: tall, unfairly attractive, famous enough to be recognized almost everywhere in Denver, and in possession of an accent that made perfectly sensible people forget how sentences worked. Men and women still smiled at him, and strangers still occasionally found excuses to start conversations.
The difference was in what came next.
Nobody followed us through a hotel lobby or manufactured three separate reasons to touch him during the same conversation. Nobody reacted as though a smile from Max had created an intimacy that didn’t exist.
Once I knew what I was looking for, I started noticing the absence of things I hadn’t fully understood before.
Max noticed too.
I could see it whenever an interaction ended normally and a faintly puzzled expression crossed his face, as though he was waiting for the moment when ordinary attraction became something heavier.
It didn’t.
Ignatius had warned us that the change wouldn’t be instantaneous or absolute. Max would always be attractive, and fame would always encourage a certain percentage of the population to behave badly without supernatural assistance.
But the thing Max had spent fifteen years fearing was already becoming quieter.
His dragon wasn’t reaching outward in the same way anymore because, according to Ignatius, he no longer needed to.
He knew where his mate was.
I considered telling Max I found that disgustingly romantic, but I had standards.
