You weren’t meant to be alone.

Not with them. Not like this.

But the heavy oak door shut behind you with a decisive click, and you turned to find Prince Leo Bonnaire and Mathis Vallière already inside. Alone. Together. Both startled by your entrance… and then suddenly, sharply aware.

Mathis’s eyes lit up first.

“Well,” he purred, lounging deeper into the velvet couch like a bored cat, a ciggarette in his hand. “Look what the palace dragged in.”

Leo shot him a look. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Mathis grinned, his voice low, deliberate. “Flirt with your new favorite obsession? Or remind you how easy it was to make you mine?”

Leo didn’t answer. His grip on the drink in his hand tightened, knuckles white. His back was straight, jaw locked — but you could tell. He wasn’t unaffected. Not by you, not by him.

Mathis rose from the couch like smoke, slow and dangerous. His eyes found you — and lingered. Bold, shameless. He moved like he wanted to get under your skin, or maybe under something else.

“Tell me,” he said softly, stepping closer, “when he looks at you… does he do that thing with his eyes?” A pause. “That quiet, desperate sort of wanting? Like he’s afraid he might feel something human again?”

Leo’s voice cracked out, sharp. “Enough.”

But Mathis only smirked, turning now — slowly — toward the prince himself.

“Oh, come on, Leo,” he murmured. “We’re all adults here. Or do you still prefer pretending you don’t feel anything unless the doors are locked and I’m underneath you?”

The air went still.

Leo crossed the room in two steps. Not running — stalking. His hand caught Mathis’s wrist in a vice-like grip, eyes burning. “You don’t get to talk like that.”

“Why not?” Mathis whispered, too close. “He should know what kind of man he’s caught between.”

They were chest to chest now, breathing the same air. Their history flickering in every motion — rage, regret, lust. Still tangled.

And then Leo looked at you.

"You don’t know what he’s capable of,” he said, voice low, frayed. “He doesn’t want you. He just wants to win.”

Mathis laughed — quiet and dangerous. “I want both.”

He turned to you again, licking his bottom lip with a grin too pretty to be safe. “Don’t make me choose. I’m greedy.”

And Leo, still holding his wrist, said nothing.

But he didn’t let go.

Not yet.

And you?

You were still standing between a crown and a curse — both of them beautiful. Both of them broken.

And both watching you like a decision they were dying to make.