Page 5 of Feral King

As I try to catch sight of Julian, Sophia spots me.

She approaches deliberately, a bright but brittle smile on her face. Alexander follows, his expression somewhere between surprise and irritation.

"Lyra," Sophia says as she draws near. "This is unexpected."

My pulse pounds, but I'm not about to let her or Alexander see me sweat.

"For you, maybe," I reply, keeping my tone light. "I organized this event, and I was invited. Try the canapés. I picked those too."

Alexander cocks his head to the side. "Invited? By whom?"

"The CEO."

He narrows his eyes slightly. "What are you talking about? I'm the CEO."

"Not anymore, now that Julian's back," I reply. "Besides, I thought you were just keeping the seat warm for him."

"Ah, so the prodigal son has returned." He's trying to play it cool, but his jaw twitches. One of his tells. He'd be a disaster at poker, which explains a lot about the state of the company.

Sophia steps closer and I can smell her perfume; the same Chanel No. 5 I'd often catch traces of on Alexander's clothes.

My stomach turns. Two years, I told myself it was the dry cleaner's.

The dry cleaner's. What a joke?

"You look lovely, Ly." She tilts her head, all sympathy. "You always were brave. Wearing silk that unforgiving, after everything Alexander said."

Sharp enough to open skin. That's Sophia's real talent, the one she never puts on a résumé.

But I've had three weeks to stop flinching, and I know exactly where her seams are.

"The silk isn't unforgiving, Sophia. It's honest." I let my eyes travel over her white sheath dress, slow, the exact way she likes to look at me. "You should try it sometime. Honesty, I mean. The dress wouldn't survive it."

Her smile tightens at the corners.

"And while we're being brave," I continue, pleasant, conversational, loud enough for exactly no one but us, "seven years, Sophia. Seven years of studying me, and the best you could steal was my fiancé and my job. You should be embarrassed by how little you became."

Her smile doesn't move, but something behind it does. Alexander's jaw does its little twitch.

And then she stops bothering with deniable.

"The work," she says, her voice rising, carrying now, pitched for the tables around us. "You're here for work. Right? Well, Julian likes money, not charity cases with stretch marks."

The words land somewhere below my ribs.

For one second, I'm back in Alexander's apartment, standing in front of his mirror in my underwear while he tells me I'd be so much hotter if I just tried a little harder.

Then the second passes, and what floods in behind it isn't shame.

It's fury. Because I love this fucking body.

This body carried me out of that apartment. This body is wearing the hell out of this dress. And someday, if I'm lucky, this body will carry the loud, chaotic houseful of babies I've wanted since I was a little girl falling asleep to my grandmother's stories.

Stretch marks were always part of the dream, not the price of it.

Alexander knew that. During the breakup, he told me exactly what that dream made me in his eyes. She's not clever enough to have found that wound on her own. He handed her the map.

And that's the part that steals my voice. Not the insult. The collaboration.