20

Devlin had a busy day. He spent most of it working with the public relations team on his inauguration speech—because apparently he couldn’t just wing it. Every word had to be perfect and reach the right audience. These days, monarchies were an unpopular form of government, and to remain supported by their people, they had to work for it twice as hard as the republics did. Devlin understood that it was necessary, but all of the public relations work was very exhausting and frustrating, and by the end of the day, he felt like letting his claws out and growling, just to finally shut Cormack up.

It certainly didn’t help that he had been incredibly distracted all day long.

Sighing, Devlin leaned back in his chair and stared at the computer in front of him without seeing anything. In the background, Cormack was droning on about his approval ratings, as if Devlin couldn’t read the data in front of him.

He could read it—but he