Now another woman lay where she should have been.
Nathan’s lips were pressed against hers, completely lost in the kiss, and he seemed to be enjoying it, while the woman rested comfortably in his embrace.
Long silver hair spilled across the pillows like moonlight, and when the door opened, striking amber eyes lifted lazily toward Lena without the slightest trace of panic or embarrassment.
Lena couldn’t move.
She couldn’t breathe.
She simply stood there, staring at the two people before her as her mind desperately searched for another explanation.
This couldn’t be happening.
Only a few hours earlier, Nathan had kissed her goodbye and promised they would celebrate that evening.
Only a few hours earlier, he had spoken about wedding venues and the future they would build together.
Now he was holding another woman in the bed they had shared.
How was it possible?
A strangled sound escaped Lena’s throat before she realized she had made it, and the quiet gasp shattered the silence inside the bedroom.
Nathan’s body stiffened instantly, and his head turned toward the doorway, and the color drained from his face the moment his eyes met hers.
“Lena…”
Her name slipped from Nathan’s lips as though it had been torn from somewhere deep inside him, barely audible beneath the suffocating silence that had settled over the apartment.
For a long moment, Lena remained standing in the doorway, unable to move.
It felt as though time itself had frozen around her.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink, couldn’t even hear the rain tapping against the windows anymore.
All she could hear was the deafening roar in her ears as her gaze slowly wandered across the room.
Nathan’s shirt lay crumpled on the floor beside the bed, his watch resting carelessly on the bedside table as though it had been forgotten in a hurry.
The room carried all the unmistakable signs that someone else’s presence had become intimately woven into a place she had always believed belonged to the two of them.
Every detail dug into her chest until even drawing a breath became painfully difficult.
“N… no…”
The word escaped her lips in a trembling whisper.
Across the room, the silver-haired woman quietly pulled the blanket around herself before looking at Lena.
Her expression remained composed, almost unreadable.
There was no triumph in her eyes, no mockery or smug satisfaction.
If anything, she looked like someone who had expected this confrontation from the very beginning.
“So…” she said after a brief pause.
“You’re Lena.”
Nathan was the first to move after the momentary shock.
“Lena…”
Panic spread across his face as he hurried toward her, nearly stumbling over the clothes scattered across the floor.
He reached her within seconds, his breathing uneven, his expression filled with desperation.
“Please… let me explain.”
Lena instinctively took a step back before he could get any closer.
Her eyes never left his face, searching for something—anything—that could make sense of what she was seeing.
“What…” Her voice shook so violently that she barely recognized it.
“What am I looking at, Nathan?”
” What is this, Nathan?” And it was in their sacred bedroom and bed.
Nathan parted his lips.
“It’s not…” but the expected words never came through his mouth.
Even he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
“Lena…
Let me explain…
”
A bitter laugh escaped Lena before she could stop it.
She slowly lifted a trembling hand and gestured around the room, her eyes already glistening with tears.
“Then explain it to me,” she said, her voice low and trembling.
“Tell me what I’ve misunderstood while seeing with my own eyes.”
Her gaze swept across the room before settling on him once more.
“The room?” she asked, her voice unsteady.
“You?” She swallowed hard, fighting to keep herself together.
“Or the fact that everything I believed about us fell apart the moment I walked through that door?”
Nathan reached for her without thinking.
“Lena…”
She flinched away so quickly it was as though his touch would burn her.
“Don’t.” The single word stopped him instantly.
She wrapped her arms around herself as though trying to hold together the pieces of her breaking heart.
“Please… don’t touch me.”
Nathan’s hand slowly dropped back to his side.
For the first time since they had met, he found himself completely speechless.
Every explanation sounded meaningless in his own mind.
There wasn’t a single excuse capable of erasing what she had already seen.
The silence stretched painfully between them until the silver-haired woman quietly raised her wrist.
The government-issued pairing bracelet shimmered with silver light before projecting a pale-blue holographic display into the air.
“My assignment arrived this morning,” she said calmly.
“It identified Nathan Reeves as my designated partner.”
The glowing words hung between them.
Compatibility: 98%.
Lena stared at the number without blinking.
Ninety-eight percent.
It was a single notification, a single percentage, and that was all it had taken to undo three years they had spent building a life together.