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“The seat suits you.”

My pulse stumbled as his eyes lingered on me, not as a king looking at someone occupying his throne, but as a man imagining something else entirely.

When he leaned closer, the distance between us vanished completely. I could feel the warmth of his breath against my lips, could see every fleck of gold hidden within his eyes. And when he finally spoke again, his voice had dropped low enough that the words seemed to settle directly beneath my skin.

“But don’t forget who is king here, my little queen.”

Everything inside me stopped because at that moment, I understood exactly what he was saying. For the first time since this ridiculous argument had begun, I wasn’t looking at the throne beneath me. I was looking at the future he saw when he looked at me.

His Queen.

For several seconds, I couldn’t think.

The throne disappeared. The argument disappeared. Even the lingering embarrassment that had fueled this entire disaster seemed to dissolve beneath the weight of those three simple words.

My little queen.

The title echoed through my head long after he’d spoken it, settling into places I wasn’t prepared to examine too closely. Atlas wasn’t a man who wasted words. He never had been. Every promise, every threat, every declaration carried weight because he meant them. And looking into his eyes now, seeing the certainty there, I knew this wasn’t some teasing remark thrown into the middle of an argument.

He meant it.

God help me, he actually meant it.

My pulse hammered against my ribs as I stared up at him, trying and failing to find some response that didn’t completely betray how thoroughly he’d just derailed every coherent thought in my head. A few minutes ago, I’d been furious enough to throw him onto a marble floor. Now I was sitting on his throne while he looked at me as though he could already see a future neither of us had dared speak aloud.

The worst part was that I wasn’t entirely sure I hated the idea, and that thought alone should have terrified me.

Atlas’s gaze never left mine. Something shifted in his expression as he watched the realization unfold across my face, and the frustration that had lingered there since the beginning of our argument finally seemed to disappear completely. In its place came something softer, though no less intense, and somehow that proved far more dangerous.

I knew how to handle anger. Frustration, I could fight.

This?

This was unknown territory.

Slowly, his hand slid from my cheek into my hair, his fingers threading through the loose strands that had escaped during our chase. The gesture was gentle, almost impossibly so for a man capable of tearing armies apart. And yet there was still something possessive in it, something that made warmth spread through me.

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly as the man actually looked pleased with himself. He had every reason to be.

“You’re staring,” I stated, and I hated how breathless my voice sounded. As for Atlas, naturally, he looked entirely unapologetic.

“So are you,” he pointed out, and I opened my mouth to argue.

Nothing came out, and his smile widened.

Arrogant bastard.

A quiet laugh rumbled in his chest before he whispered my name over my lips, “My Alexandra.”

My breath caught as his hand tightened slightly in my hair, not enough to hurt, only enough to tilt my head back toward him, and suddenly all I could see was Atlas.

The gold in his eyes.

The shadow of stubble along his jaw.

The warmth in his expression existed for almost nobody else. Every instinct I possessed told me I should say something. Anything. A clever remark. An insult. A threat.

Something.