Page 98 of Rejected By the Shifter King

“One last question.”

He waited, golden eyes never leaving her face.

“Why do you want me to be your wife now? What changed?”

“Compatibility.” He didn’t even have to think about this, having always planned to let her know from the start that their marriage was no love match.

Samira, however...

She turned red as soon as she heard the word, color flooding her cheeks, and Hexius was once again...perplexed. Her face might be expressive, but he was starting to appreciate how...unpredictableher thought patterns were.

“What do you find so uncomfortable about this?” Hexius asked.

“It’s just that someone told me—”

“You mean your roommate, the human sister of the Adelardi queen.”

Her eyes widened. “How did you—”

He only raised a brow, and she sighed. “I should probably be more surprised if you didn’t know about her. Right?”

How unexpectedly astute she was turning out to be, and completely unlike his original assumptions about her being this puppet heiress being controlled by her power-hungry grandfather.

“Anastasia did tell me a bit.” Samira fidgeted as she made her confession, her cheeks turning a deeper shade of red while she once again avoided his gaze. “About...things.”

Why that was, though...

“What is it about us being compatible that you object to?” Hexius had to force himself to ask the question. He was simply not used to admitting incomprehension.

“It’s not that I object, but I’m just...it’s a little too...”

“You will have to do better than that,” he reprimanded, somewhat impatiently.

“I...I was told that compatibility would increase your strength as a preter.”

“That is what you object to?”

Samira quickly shook her head, her expression aghast. “No, of course not! But I was also told for it to take effect, Anastasia said...” She trailed off, wrapping her arms around herself as if suddenly cold.

Everything finally became clear.

And it was the worst of distractions, the final nail in the coffin of his self-control that he did not see coming.

“You’re talking aboutsangferia.”

She didn’t answer, only gulped, the movement of her throat making him think of all the things she could...dammit.

“It is indeed true thatsangferiacan exponentially increase a preter’s strength, but most of the experiments are focused on Caros.”

“Oh. Okay. I see.”

She actually looked torn between relief and disappointment, and for the first time in his life, Hexius also experienced something similar. Her reaction made him want to smile.Almost. But it also made him want her again.Now.

“All is not lost for my kind,” he said gravely, and this time, Hexius really did have to press his lips together when he saw the way she brightened.

“Does that mean there’s something I can do for you?”

“If results from the new set of experiments conducted by the Faes are to be believed...oui, there is. But it has nothing to do with yoursangferia.”