Page 29 of The Sovereign, Part One (The Sovereign Saga #1)

The café suddenly felt too small, the air too heavy, as if something was about to shift.

Joss hadn’t moved, but he might as well have been an intruder, his presence pressing in on the fragile calm Maxim had just helped restore.

Maxim’s attention narrowed on Joss, as if assessing not just the man, but the millions of scenarios that could unfold from this unexpected disruption, each one carrying its own potential consequences.

I tilted my head upward just enough to look Joss in the eyes, my fingers tightening around the napkin. “You shouldn’t be here.”

His jaw clenched. “We need to talk, Isara. Come outside with me.”

“Who are you?” Maxim asked, an undercurrent of indignation in his voice.

“This is, er… this is Joss. He’s an old friend.”

Joss scoffed. “A friend. Okay.” He shook off the perceived slight and continued, “I need you to come outside with me, Isara. We have things to discuss. In private.”

When I didn’t move, Joss sighed, reaching for me.

Maxim rose in one fluid motion, his presence imposing, clearing Joss by nearly three inches.

His voice was calm, but there was no mistaking the edge beneath it.

“She’s not going anywhere with you. And there’s no chance she’s going anywhere with you alone.

Isara is mine to protect. I don’t know who you are, but you came here uninvited, and that was a mistake. Leave. Now.”

Joss blinked, his expression twisting with something close to disbelief. “I thought you’d started your Vesture? Where’s your Supplicant?”

“I have,” I said carefully, my pulse jumping at the implication. Joss had mistaken Maxim for a Sovereign because a Supplicant was never aggressive unless there was a sense of clear and present danger. “Joss, this is Maxim. We’re on Day Two of our Vesture.”

“Maxim…” Joss said, as if he were testing the name. His brows knit together. “My apologies,” he said to Maxim, then looked down to me. “After our last conversation, I thought you’d come here to talk. I didn’t know who he was, so I made it sound urgent.”

“The venue was my idea,” Maxim said coolly, giving Joss a slow once-over before meeting his gaze again. “You’re still here.”

A beat of silence passed. He wasn’t asking. He was waiting.

Joss exhaled sharply, shaking his head before stepping back. “Isara?”

I glanced at Maxim, his glare locked onto Joss with the sharp intensity of a predator tracking its target.

“You should go,” I said.

Joss’s chest rose and fell in a staggered breath, as if my words had knocked the air out of him.

“We do need to talk, Is. It’s important. Please reach out soon,” Joss said, his voice tight, edging on desperation. He hesitated, then extended his hand to Maxim. “It was nice to meet you. Congratulations. Isara is… She’s wonderful.”

Maxim’s gaze flicked to Joss’s outstretched hand before meeting his eyes with finality. His silence carried more weight than words—there would be no second warning.

Joss let his hand fall. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, turning for the threshold.

I watched him leave, my throat constricting, torn between the past we shared and the undeniable presence at my side.

Maxim remained standing for a moment longer before lowering himself back into his seat, though the muscle in his jaw ticked. He looked at me, eyes sharper now, searching for something.

“What was that about?” he asked, his voice even, though an unmistakable tension threaded through it. “Is he the inappropriate second-date topic?”

I set my napkin down carefully, smoothing it against the table. Discussing Joss with Maxim felt like crossing a boundary I hadn’t known existed until that moment. But there was no avoiding it. I drew in a slow breath and met Maxim’s eyes.

“Yes,” I admitted. “Joss is my ex.”

A brief shadow of frustration, maybe even jealousy if that were possible, crossed Maxim’s face before he smoothed it away. “Not someone you casually dated. Someone you were in a relationship with? It was serious?”

“There were feelings, yes, but I ended it because I wanted a life here, with you. I knew what I wanted. It wasn’t him.

” Saying it aloud made Joss feel even further behind me, like a panel that had already closed.

I glanced at Maxim, his expression unreadable, but there was something in his eyes.

Something quiet, something waiting, that urged me to hesitate.

His questions and responses to my answers were a deviation from anything I had ever expected from a Supplicant, and the last thing I wanted was to make this harder for him while he was still trying to reconcile instinct with logic, emotion with programming.

“What family is he from? Is he a Vanguard?”

“He’s Vale-born.”

This rattled Maxim in a way I hadn’t anticipated, even after my prior revelations. His expression remained composed, but there was a shift, something churning beneath the surface as he struggled to navigate emotions he wasn’t designed to feel.

“Is that what he came here to talk to you about? A reconciliation, fully aware that you’ve started your Vesture?”

“It’s… complicated,” I said. It was all I could manage in such a public place. “Maxim…”

“He wants you to return to The Vale with him.” It wasn’t a question, it was recognition.

He seemed wounded. In a moment, he’d gained an understanding of what it meant to have something to lose, something beyond his control.

He was already designed to be perfect for me.

If I chose to leave, Maxim could do nothing more to convince me to stay.

That truth carved itself into his expression, his jaw tightening, eyes darkening.

It was something unvoiced, something dangerously close to pain.

“Can we please talk about this somewhere more private?”

He exhaled. “You haven’t told him no.”

His voice held no accusation, yet there was a vulnerability in his tone, an ache that hadn’t been there before.

Earlier, there had been only a trace of hurt, and that alone had the power to crush me.

The pain in his eyes lingered as he waited for me to deny what he feared most, pulling me into a tide of guilt I wasn’t sure I could surface from.

I hesitated. “I did. I did tell him no. But I’m not going to lie to you, I considered it. But that was before I met you.”

“Was this before your Veritas?”

I swallowed, the truth feeling like a stone in my throat. There was no way to soften it, no way to frame it in a way that wouldn’t cut him further. I knew how it would be perceived, how it bordered on betrayal, and that knowledge made it even harder to push the words past my lips.

“He asked me a few days ago.”

He only offered a single nod, but I could see turmoil just beneath the surface.

Joss’s presence had displaced him. A physical threat would’ve been a quick and easy resolution.

I could see that what Maxim was struggling with went much deeper.

Sovereign were strictly barred from dating during their Veritas year, making this a uniquely cruel revelation.

He was plagued with thoughts of losing me to another man, something that was, by law, supposed to be outside the realm of possibility.

I reached for his hand, a futile attempt to help him regulate the onslaught of emotions he had no means to process.

His response wasn’t just a personal struggle, it was a liability.

If Cygnus Mercier, the Chief of Operations and head of the Office of Synthetic Oversight, was alerted to it, Maxim’s deviations from standard programming could mean, at best, a disruption in our Vesture.

Cygnus could even recommend termination.

“My love,” I said, echoing the tenderness of the endearment he’d used with me before.

He loosely held my fingers, despite the dissonance that was never meant to exist within his construct.

He’d just learned that after I’d spent a year composing him, after we’d stolen a glance at the Eidolon, I’d considered running away with another man—a devastating blow difficult for even a Sovereign to navigate.

His willingness to let me in had to mean something.

Perhaps it was evidence that hope, however delicate, wasn’t lost.

Maxim’s fingers curled briefly over mine before he let them relax. “I apologize,” he said, though the words felt scripted. “I shouldn’t have reacted so strongly.”

“It’s not your fault.”

It was my hope that with understanding, he’d let it go. That if I remained calm, whatever anomaly in his programming allowed him to feel this deeply would also help him make sense of what had just happened.

But that was only the first hurdle. If I alerted anyone to even the possibility of deviation now, I would have little control over what happened next.

And the truth was, I wasn’t sure what that could be.

If I was right, then I had to keep it to myself.

Maybe even from Maxim. At least until our Oathbond.

Until then, I’d have no say-so over whatever procedure The Citadel and the OSO determined to be the necessary course of action.

I took another sip of my drink, sorting through the thoughts piling in my mind. “Let’s talk about our next outing. You mentioned a service project?”

Maxim exhaled, his shoulders loosening as the rigid line of his posture relaxed. His fingers drummed once against the table before stilling, his eyes shifting to me, searching for reassurance. “Yes. I have a few ideas.”

I listened, nodding at the appropriate places, but my mind was a maze of conflicting emotions.

I’d clung to the idea that focusing on Maxim’s plans would offer a distraction, but instead, my thoughts only fed my unease.

Unanswered questions twisted it all tighter into a complicated knot of apprehension and the fragile hope that I was wrong.

An understanding passed between us, neither of us voicing what we both knew had shifted. With the tension lingering between us, we gathered our things and left Brym, our memories of breakfast very different from our perfect dinner just the night before.

Maxim kept my hand in his, guiding me down the walkway, across the street, and into the parking lot where our transport waited. We drove home in silence, his thoughts louder than the raised voice he’d used with Joss.

Maxim guided the transport to a stop in front of my Sablestone, controlled but not without urgency.

“Calyx,” he said, his voice monotone. “Isara will be home soon. Optimize the space for her arrival.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Oh, er… thank you,” I said, suspicious of the sudden change in his behavior. “I chose the tiles for their antimicrobial surface blend, so they self-sanitize, but they can feel like walking on a sheet of ice on cold days. You’ll find out for yourself soon.”

Maxim closed his eyes, shielding his thoughts from me. “I enjoyed every second I spent with you today, Isara. I’ll call tomorrow to schedule dinner.”

I shook my head. “I’m not going inside yet. You shouldn’t be alone.”

He turned to look at me, sadness weighing down his features. “I wish I could describe to you how much it means to me to be near you. But I need to return to The Crèche.”

I shook my head again, this time without words.

“I know I’ve ruined today for us. I’ve disappointed you, maybe even made you uncomfortable, which”—he sighed—“is quite frankly, unforgivable. I believe the best thing for you, and for us, is for me to return now, find a way to locate the issue and resolve it.”

“No,” I said, grabbing his arm. “I don’t want that.

I know what you’re experiencing is… unconventional.

But what happened at the cafe makes you more Sovereign than anything.

Is that wrong? Some might call it progress.

A step forward. Who knows what havoc unsanctioned thoughts and emotions can have on your protocols, and still, you handled it with unbelievable restraint. ”

“You really believe that?”

“I do. And I understand where Cygnus Mercier may not. But if you go back and disclose what happened, it could set things in motion we can’t undo. Stay here with me, and let’s try to sort this out between us.”

He studied me for a moment, a spark of recognition in his eyes. “You’re worried about me.”

“Stay, Maxim.”

The sound of his name on my lips eased the tension around his eyes.

“Stay,” he repeated, as if it were a dream he’d buried until this moment.

“We can make a day of it. Come on,” I said, lightly tugging his arm. “At least stay for lunch.” I gently pulled on him again with my most charming expression. “Come inside with me.”

He raised one eyebrow, but a teasing smile tugged at one side. “That’s an infraction.”

I offered a small, flirtatious grin as I worked my limited powers of persuasion. “Premature domestic previews are minor infractions. We’re allowed up to three for the next thirty days.”

He lifted his gaze to the Sablestone, his expression heavy with longing, as if stepping inside the threshold was the only way for him to find peace. “Go inside with you, and spend the day together?”

“We could have Calyx activate the emberstream, cuddle up under a blanket and listen to the rain.”

“You’re serious,” he said, his words tinged with disbelief. He searched my eyes again, this time for sincerity. All he would find was longing, and to keep him where he belonged—with me.

His thumb traced a slow, reverent path along my cheek before settling there, and I leaned into the warmth of his palm.

“Please?” I asked.

He breathed out a faint laugh. “How could I possibly say no?”