2

aurelie

I RAN ALL the way upstairs to my bedroom, where the clothes I would be wearing for traveling were laid out for me to change into. I slammed the door shut and sagged into it, pressing my forehead into the smooth surface, as if I needed it to hold me upright.

What was that?

I'd never reacted to scents like that before.

Even Dmitri, who had smelled the best of any alpha I'd ever scented, had not made me react quite so violently.

I'd heard of this before, of course. Sometimes termed a scent match, it was the idea that certain alphas smelled better to an omega, that their scents produced a violent reaction which was taken as a sign that the omega should be mated to them.

It wasn't uncommon for omegas to have more than one alpha bite them.

Except, well, it was uncommon in Valhn.

Alphas in Valhn tended to be proud. There was a lot of warrior and hunting imagery associated with the royalty in Valhn. During the coronation, they would be draped in the fur of some dead animal and instead of a scepter, they would be given a jeweled spear.

They didn't much like sharing, Valhn alphas.

I hadn't thought I would mind.

I'd only been through a handful of heats. I went through my first when I was only seventeen, and then I went onto suppressants immediately. After that, until the dinner with Prince Dmitri, I only had one breakthrough heat, and it was so uncomfortable that I begged for relief and a doctor had been dispatched to give me something that knocked me out for the rest of the duration of it.

Since then, since the scent of Dmitri, I hadn't had a heat. I'd stayed judiciously away from alphas, actually, which was deemed intelligent. After all, if you didn't ever scent your scent match, you didn't know what you were missing, right?

And I didn't think it would matter.

Corentin had been my one true love. Of this, I was sure. He wasn't an alpha, though, so it didn't matter. He was a commoner, also, far too common to ever marry. I had loved him with my entire soul, and that was all I would ever experience of love, I thought.

So, if I was going to have to marry someone I didn't love, it might as well be the heir to a kingdom. I might as well get to be Queen of Valhn out of it, right? That was a compensation.

But this reaction to this Nikolai person—

Well, no, it couldn't have been to him. He wasn't royal, was he? Only royals had designations.

True, there was something going on in Angleford where a commoner had presented as an omega and married their heir to the throne, Prince Devlin. But was that catching? Were there going to be other commoners who presented? Was that what was going on with Nikolai?

There was a soft knock on my door.

"Aurelie, darling?" It was my mother.

I opened the door.

Prince Johannes was behind her.

"I'm sorry darling, but he insisted," said my mother. "He says it's important."

"Yes, if we could speak alone?" said Johannes, giving me that we've-got-a-secret smile of his.

"All right," I said, opening the door wider.

He came inside and shut the door.

"Well, I suppose I'll go then?" called my mother, sounding a little miffed.

"Comtesse Le Blanc, we'll be down momentarily," said Johannes. "Thank you so much."

I heard my mother's footsteps disappear away from the door. I turned back to Johannes, who I could scent now. He smelled good. My body clenched on itself, and I gasped.

"That's a good thing," said Johannes, his voice dropping to a velvet tone. "I'm glad. But when it comes to Nikolai, if you could do your best not to let on."

"He is an alpha?" I said

Johannes inclined his head. "A secret of the Valhn nobility, I suppose. A commoner with a knot. He's been a sort of, I don't know, companion to various alphas since he was young, too young. But he's ours now, Dmitri's and mine, more mine than Dmitri's these days, truthfully. He likes you, and we tend to let him have whatever he wants, so…"

My lips parted. Did I understand that the way I thought I did? I blinked.

"We'll talk all about it later," said Johannes. "The point is, it's best if others don't know about his designation."

"Prince Dimitri will allow me others?" I said. "I had heard that the princes of Valhn were not so inclined."

"Other bites? No," said Johannes. "Other knots, certainly. A bit of discretion may be required, since we don't like it splashed all over the gossip sites and the tabloids, but it's always been done that way. There's no omega on earth who's satisfied with one alpha. If Dmitri tried to keep you to himself, he'd end up ragged and ill trying to keep up with you. He knows very well he needs assistance, and that's me and Nikolai."

I smiled.

"If you're agreeable, of course," said Johannes. "I promise nothing is against your will."

"I'm agreeable," I said, feeling a blush steal across my cheeks.

He winked at me. "Excellent news."

nikolai

I'D NEVER BEEN so close to an omega.

When Dmitri'd invited her for that dinner, I'd wished to inspect her, because I thought of her as a threat to him, and that was what I did. I protected Dmitri from threats, when I could. I'd been trained, long ago, to assess threats and destroy them. Nowadays, my situation had changed, but that didn't mean I didn't still see threats everywhere.

But Johannes said that I couldn't inspect the omega then. The omega would scent me, know my designation, and we couldn't be sure she was the one for Dmitri. Until we were, they would rather not out my designation, for my own safety, Johannes said.

It wasn't a situation I was much used to, anyone worrying about my own safety.

Dmitri and Johannes were the only people who ever cared.

Maybe my mother would have, I don't know. But I'd never met her, or—if I had—I'd been so young I didn't remember.

The princes were my family. My pack.

I protected them. They protected me.

It was a good arrangement.

I didn't think I'd like the omega. She was an interloper into our perfectly formed arrangement, I thought, though I had to admit that, lately, Johannes kept me too busy, and that Dmitri probably needed someone else to warm his bed. There was only so much of me to go around. Still, in some ways it felt as if she was supplanting me, and I wasn't keen on that thought.

So, I thought I'd dislike her, maybe even hate her.

But…

Well, she was pretty.

If asked this morning, I would have claimed that I wasn't much attracted to women, but the truth was, I'd presented as an alpha when I was only eleven years old, and I'd been immediately put to work seducing other alphas, almost exclusively male alphas. I'd knotted for them easily, had been enthusiastic about going to their beds. It hadn't seemed like a hardship at the time. Being abused physically was awful, of course, but being abused inside your mind—feeling as if you didn't know what part of the abuse you brought on yourself, feeling as if you took pleasure from your own degradation? That was where the deepest scars were.

Back then, I spied on alphas, found out their secrets. My organization, a sort of rogue black ops outfit called Sector Unius, sold those secrets to the highest bidder. From time to time, I was bought and sold as a bodyguard of sorts, someone who could be intimately close to an alpha at all times, even in his bed. I was paid to do whatever it was that alpha wished.

Sector Unius didn't exist anymore. Dmitri had seen to that. He'd saved me from that life.

Anyway, point being, I had little experience with omegas or women, and she was… alluring.

I sat far away in her sitting room, just gazing at her. Johannes sat with her, flirting shamelessly with both her and her mother and her younger sisters. They were all charmed by him.

I noted little things about her, the shape of her fingers, how graceful and elegant they seemed. I imagined kissing them. I imagined those elegant fingers on my own skin.

I had a knot. There was that.

It was like a knot I'd get for an alpha and yet not. It was different in some way that intrigued me. I was forcing myself not to pay too much attention to it, of course.

One rule about this omega was that she could never have been knotted, never once.

Dmitri wanted to be the first.

So, I would be allowed to knot the omega eventually, but not for some time, not until after the wedding night, which was when Dmitri wanted to do it. It was best if I didn't let myself get out of control. Alphas could control themselves. Sometimes, they did bad things and said it was because they couldn't help it, but that wasn't the case. They could help it. Sometimes, they just didn't.

She was very pretty in that way of Castillian women. Small and dark, with long lashes. She was shaped like an omega, with a figure made for lust. She had a pleasant voice, and she smelled luscious. I wouldn't mind bathing in that scent of hers, rubbing myself all over her, getting myself drenched in it.

But these were all surface things, in the end.

There wasn't much chance to really get to know her, not while Johannes was flirting with her mother, complimenting the comtesse's taste in decorating, and laughing at the omega's sister's jokes.

So, I got up from his chair and motioned for Johannes.

Johannes smirked at me in a particularly Johannes way. Johannes was always smirking, always smiling, always laughing. Johannes never took anything seriously, and I lived for the moments I broke that cavalier air and made the other man react . "One moment, comtesse," he said to the omega's mother, and came over to confer with me.

"We should get going," I said softly.

"Oh, should we?" said Johannes. "You want to be alone with her, I see."

"It's hard to know anything about her with all the extraneous… noise."

"The scent will be more intense in the car, you know."

I took a deep breath. "Well, we'll break in two hours to stay at the Grande Suites in Ludwig." It was a good thing we weren't doing the entire four-hour trip at once, I thought. A very good thing. I could control myself, of course, but I'd have my hands full pulling Johannes off the omega.

"True," said Johannes. He turned back to everyone. "Nikolai has reminded me we are on a tight schedule, and how it has been impressed upon us that we must not miss dinner in Ludwig. I'm afraid we need to be getting on the road soon."

"Oh, of course," said the omega's mother. "We are so sorry to have kept you. You must be on your way."

But we weren't on our way, not for another forty minutes, because there was a lot of talk—the omega hugged everyone in her family and they all said goodbye, and then they stopped and talked for ten minutes and then she excused herself to do one last look over her bedroom and then more talk—but finally, we all exited the house together and climbed into the car.

I sat in the front seat, leaving the back seat to the omega and Johannes, which was proper. I was a commoner, after all, but I turned back to them and said that if they felt it necessary, the omega could come up front, to keep some distance between all their scents.

The driver was a man named Jerome. He knew all our secrets, including my designation. I had vetted him myself before he'd been trusted with such information.

Finally, however, we were all arranged, and the car pulled away, the omega waving out the window to her family.

She rolled up the window and sagged into the seat, shaking her head slowly. "I wonder, why send you at all? I could have been delivered to him by my family just as easily."

"No, it's by design," I said. I was turned round from the front seat to look at her. "He wanted Johannes and I to get to know you."

"Is that what he wanted?" Aurelie looked back and forth between us. "The three of you? It's some sort of menage a trois?"

"Not exactly," I said. "Him and me and me and Johannes. Not the three of us."

"Oh," she said, furrowing her brow. "So, then, all of you at once with me? That's not happening, I suppose."

"Hmm," I said, sucking in a breath at the possibilities of that.

"Sorry." The omega laughed. "I don't know why… until only an hour or so ago, I assumed I was going to him, only him, except maybe if I was very needy in heat or something, so, I don't know why I'm disappointed."

"I'm disappointed, too," I said. "What do you think, Johannes? Could you ever see him that way?"

Johannes laughed. "Don't ask me that. You know I do. He's, well, Dmitri."

"Yes," I said.

"He wouldn't, though," said Johannes. "He wouldn't touch me. I doubt he'd be with you if he just met you off the street."

It was true. I'd been assigned to seduce Dmitri years ago by Sector Unius, and he hadn't been easy to seduce. Dmitri was in denial about a number of his desires and yearnings. When he did give in, however, it was explosive.

I turned around, facing forward. "He is… intense in bed, I'll say that. He's not wrong to think that it's a bit of an ask to take him."

"What do you mean?" said Johannes, laughing. "All this time, and you've been keeping secrets. And now, in front of the omega, you're on about how he's got a bigger cock than me?"

"I didn't say that," I said with a chuckle.

"Bigger knot?" said Johannes.

"You're easy, love," I said, turning to face him. "You're light. You're pleasant. He's…"

"What, dark?" Johannes snorted. "That's rich, coming from you, my little assassin."

I flipped him off. I didn't kill people. Not anymore.

"Sorry," said Johannes, contrite. "I didn't mean to bring it up."

"I'm not angry," I told him, but I didn't look at him. Maybe I'd punish him for that later. Johannes was not averse to punishments, and I wasn't averse to dishing them out.

"Intense," whispered the omega.

I turned to look at her. "Of course you're curious about him. But he's curious about you, too, you see, and you are in the better position. You can ask us anything you like, and we've both known him for over a decade each. He can ask us questions, but we've only met you this afternoon."

She smiled. "Yes, all right. I see what you mean."

I waited. She said nothing, so I turned back around. "Well, if you're not going to ask questions, I will. Why did you choose him?"

"Me? Choose him? I didn't. We were engaged as children."

"Oh, yes, but then that fell apart after he presented, and you had to decide again after you presented. You're a very pretty omega, your family has money, and I heard you wouldn't even meet with one of the alpha princes of Spesseta."

She shrugged. "I figured it was decided at that point. Why bother?"

I watched her. She was hiding something. Hmm.

What could it be?

My training made my mind run wild, to various dangerous scenarios, but I had to remind myself that she was just a girl, barely into her twenties, and that she was likely not planning on doing Dmitri bodily harm.

What could a girl like that hide?

Maybe she wasn't as unknotted as Dmitri would like, maybe that was it. Maybe once she'd secured an alpha who seemed pleased, she decided she didn't want to risk any others.

Of course, that didn't quite make sense.

Alphas in other countries tended to be less demanding than the alphas in Valhn, so to submit herself to Dmitri instead of someone else, well, I wasn't sure about that.

On the other hand, it wasn't as if Dmitri was ever going to know.

I didn't hold with such things. Virginity was a made-up construct. A woman (or a man) was entirely the same afterward. Nothing was torn or broken or changed.

I didn't like it, because it was just a way for men—alphas, especially—to determine some way they owned someone's body. I claimed it first, planting my cock like a flag, and now this is mine.

I'd been owned by alphas before.

No, thank you.

If that was the case, I'd never tell Dmitri. If Dmitri had ever asked for my opinion on wanting an unknotted omega, I would have told him he was being an ass. I didn't have any problem telling him what I thought.

Well, I hadn't, though, had I?

He hadn't asked, and I kept the thought to myself.

Dmitri was… Dmitri.