LITMIR.BIZ

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to read about the mythology behind that name and the land that wielded it.

      It turned out Zorya was a plural name, incorporating the two guardian goddesses, Zarya and Zvezda, who represented the morning and evening stars. According to Slavic mythology, they were charged through eternity with guarding the doomsday hound, Simargi, lest he consumed the constellation Ursa Minor. They were also responsible for opening and closing the gates for the sun. Zorya, the former—and soon to be again—kingdom was said to be the only place where both stars could be perpetually seen on all clear nights. Its coat of arms depicted the blonde and dark-haired goddesses holding up stars. Though the goddesses were twins, they were quite literally night and day.

      Just like her girls.

      Eva had taken after her, Zoya after Leonid.

      So this was what he’d meant. He considered this a sign he was meant to have both the throne and the girls.

      And she’d seen it in his eyes.

      He would make it all come true.

      * * *

      After an oppressive night spent pondering every possible distressing outcome of Leonid’s reappearance, Kassandra struggled to perform her morning rituals with the girls before leaving them with Kyria Despina and heading to work. Not that she expected to get any work done, but she needed to be away from them. She’d be damned if she’d let Leonid poison their moods, too.

      In half an hour, she was in her personal office on the second floor of her company, looking out the window at downtown LA but only seeing the chaos inside her mind.

      What disturbed her most was that she hadn’t come up with a plan of action in case Leonid did pursue his objectives. Which she had no doubt he would.

      “I’m sorry, Kass, I tried to...”

      Even before her PA’s cut-short exclamation, Kassandra’s senses had gone haywire.

      Swinging around, hoping she was wrong but certain she wasn’t, the air was still knocked out of her at the sight of him. Leonid.

      He filled her doorway, dwarfing her delicate PA. Mindy was looking up at him with a mixture of mortification and all-out awe.

      Kassandra understood. How she did. A god walking the earth wouldn’t have looked as imposing and overpowering.

      Their gazes collided, almost making her stumble against the plate glass of her wall-to-wall window. It was him who relinquished their visual lock first to look down at Mindy, who resembled a tiny herbivore that found itself in the crosshairs of a great feline.

      “I apologize for overriding you, Ms. Levine. Ms. Stavros will fully understand that there was nothing you could have done to stop me. You can rest assured she’ll chastise me appropriately for such high-handed behavior.”

      Gathering what she could of her wits, Kassandra tore her gaze off him and focused on her assistant. “It’s okay, Mindy.” Mindy looked back as if in a trance. Kassandra sighed. “You can go now, thanks. I’ll let you know if I decide to call security.”

      With a ghost of a smile, Leonid stepped aside to allow Mindy to stumble out. “She won’t. You can drop the red alert.”

      The moment the door closed, Leonid turned his focus to her. It was a good thing she’d moved to her desk so she could mask her own unsteadiness and feign a confrontational pose.

      “Don’t be so sure, Leonid. My private security isn’t the police and won’t care if you broke any laws. The one thing that will matter to them is that I don’t want you here.”

      “How do you know you don’t want me here before you hear what I have to say?”

      “I already heard it, and I not only would rather you spare me an encore, but I also wish there was some cosmic erase button to have it unsaid. If that’s all you’re here to say, I will cut everything short and have you removed.”

      “You don’t need to bother. I will remove myself once I’ve done what I’ve come to do. And it’s not to reiterate what I said last night. I’m here to state my terms.”

      “This time I will spare myself the aggravation of reacting to your terminal audacity. The answer to anything you have to say is no anyway.”

      “If you remember anything about me, you should know I do not take no for an answer. Now, more than ever, I won’t.”

      Every nerve jangled as he approached, as if to emphasize that there was no stopping his invasion of her life. With every step, she felt as if he was planting a foothold that she wouldn’t be able to uproot.

      “My terms are the following—I want to become Eva and Zoya’s father, in name and in reality. You will give me full access to them, effective immediately. You won’t try to do anything to put them off me, or to put off the procedure of declaring me as their father. I will have them bear my name before the coronation. It is in just over a month’s time.”

      Feeling she’d taken a deep breath underwater, her protest came out a gurgle. “Now, look here...”

      He continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. “As their mother, you can and will of course dictate your own terms and I will meet every one.”

      She shook her head, as if to shake off a punch to the face. “My only term is that you get the hell out of my life. You stayed out of it for two years. And that is where I demand you stay.”

      His face remained as hard as stone. “That is not an option. Anything else is negotiable.”

      “Nothing else is worth negotiating. I won’t let you walk into my life, making those insane demands and expecting me to fall in with your timetable.”

      “I’m not walking into your life, but my daughters’.”

      Knowing he was powerful enough to do whatever he wished, her mind burned rubber trying to latch on to an alternative to anger or defiance to hold him at bay. Those had gotten her nowhere. Continuing to challenge him head-on would only make him more intractable. If that was even possible.

      Her only way out could be to negotiate a less-damaging deal. Something other than the takeover he was bent on.

      “Listen, Leonid, let’s take a time-out and rewind to the beginning. Let’s say, for whatever reasons, you wish to acknowledge the girls as your daughters. I can, if necessary, live with that. We can come to an agreement where you can be...included. That doesn’t mean you have to be in their lives. You haven’t been since before they were born and they are totally fine without a father. I’m not saying this to be vindictive, or because of our personal history. It’s just a fact. Also consider the effort and time commitment that goes into being a parent. You can’t possibly want to be a father, especially now that you’re on the verge of becoming a king. You literally have far better and more important things to do.”

      He waited until she finished her speech, then demolished it with that vacant look. “There’s nothing better or more important than becoming the father my daughters deserve. And need. No matter how adequate you are as a single parent.”

      Her rage seethed again. “You know nothing of how adequate I am as a single parent, or what my daughters need.”

      “Like you take exception to my opinion of your life, I would appreciate you not passing judgment on mine. Being a father is exactly what I now want to be. Becoming a king only makes it more imperative I claim all my responsibilities with the utmost commitment.”

      “Fine, I won’t presume to know what you want. I’ll keep to my side of things. I need no commitment from you.”

      “Then, I will change your mind about what you need.”

      The way he’d said that... The way his gaze dropped to envelop her body before returning stonily to hers...

      Did...did he mean something personal? Intimate...?

      Before her thoughts caught fire, he disabused her of any ridiculous notion this was

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