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But Every is not a nobody.

He is a CEO.

He has connections as far as the next solar system.

But this naive, innocent girl is trying to break his golden heart, nearly making him shed mournful tears, something he had never done in his life, not even when he was a newborn baby. It is as if she is deliberately scheming to pierce his cold, cold heart.

He sighs. “Of course you know me,” he says, “I am your fated mate.”

Lily Lilyaneyala Lalique, our heroine, blinks. “I’m so sorry, mate. But do you expect me to believe that bullshit?”

The hero stares back, scandalized by her harsh words. “Yes. When I first saw you in the café, looking dump as shit, I knew it was love at first sight. I felt it, darling, I felt it in my veins. It was like my once-frozen blood had started to boil. It was burning, love, burning, as hot as the lava from that volcanic eruption that thrust the Dinosaurs into extinction.

“I love you, my princess, more than all my three-hundred shell companies, more than all my brothers-in-arms in the wolf pack, and even more than the enforcer of my evil mafia organization, Niko. I love you more than Bitcoin, more than pancakes for breakfast, more than the rainbows in the sky and the flying pink ponies, although I do not know how those are supposed to love you.

“I was obsessed with you since I first noticed you, a random quirky girl who I somehow knew from the beginning is my soulmate. It was like I wanted to eat you alive, or perhaps kidnap you to lock in a cell with mice and roaches. Lils, you are so different from the other girls, so mature for your age, although we’re pretty much in the same age range. I might never have had a real, solid conversation with you, but I just know it. And oh, fuck, this is making me so emotional.”

Wow. How romantic.

Not.

The confused girl then stares blankly at him, dumbfounded. “Did you just profess your love to me?”

“Yes.”

She continues staring, her eyes unbelieving. “In a two-thousand-word essay?”

“Yes.”

CHAPTER 3: LLAMA SALIVA

“Oh, not you again,” Lily Lalil Lalinda mutters under her breath as she bathes a stray llama rescued from the mountains.

But isn’t that where they’re supposed to be?

Their natural habitat?

Her fellow llama shelter volunteers, Jing-Jing and Yang-Yang—two sisters from Lily’s biochemistry class whom she has kind of a crush on—stand behind a cashier, debating whether they should steal the tips in the tip box to buy a new Xbox game or simply use it to order delivery burgers and fries from Wendy’s.

Either way, it’s going home with them.

For the two queen bees’ backstory, they are not really characters of any importance. The only points they are worth mentioning are: one, they used to bully back the mean bitches who bullied Lily-girl back in high school by bitching them behind their backs (oh, so many Bs), and two, they gave Lily her Chinese name, Li-Li, which basically means something along the lines of pretty plum tree.

Anyway.

Lily the Pretty Plum Tree spots Every, the weirdo she met yesterday, standing at the entry, inspecting an old, brown-spotted llama named Betty, which no one wanted to adopt. The old cow (not really a cow, but whatever) bleats at him, then turns away, annoyed by his presence. And most likely the thick air of cologne around him too.

Earlier in the night, the weirdo CEO had gone back to whatever hideout he sprouted from not long after confessing his one true love to her, embarrassed by how emotional he was acting. Because traditionally, CEOs are not supposed to know about love or feelings or relationships. In fact, they are supposed to detest the very ideas of those for drama and plot reasons. He fell back down through his Lily-darling’s attic window like a dysfunctional version of Romeo, crashing onto this and that and so and so along the way.

Turns out, not even all the money in the world could buy flying abilities.

Or common sense.

Judging from the sound, the mean-spirited Lily Lilique Lavvana had expected him to at least break a couple of bones, or even crack his back. Literally. But since he is now walking around the llama shelter like he owns the whole place, which he probably does, Lily decides that he must be just fine. Either that or he truly is a werewolf-bear shifter or whatever he thinks he is, and actually has bones of steel.

“Hello, and welcome to the Darkindeep Ebonyng— Wait, my bad, bro, wrong place. Hello, and welcome to the town’s llama shelter. Which of these goat-like creatures would you like to adopt? That one right there is the oldest here, twenty-three years and counting,” Lily proudly says, though she actually has no idea of Betty’s age. Or if llamas could even live that long.

But whatever.