28

dmitri

I COULD HEAR her outside my chambers, her voice cold and firm. "I am his omega, and I am his wife, and I am the princess. I demand entry. I will speak with him."

It stirred something in me, I had to admit.

I crossed the room and threw open the door. She was arguing with a servant, who had obviously followed her up here to try to keep her out, because those had been my express orders. "It's all right," I said to him. "You can let her in."

She made eye contact with me, and she perfumed.

Oh, I'd missed the smell of her. I couldn't help but smile. "Come in," I breathed. "Please come in."

She vaulted into the room, into my arms.

I caught her as she practically climbed me. I banded an arm around her waist and one under her bottom to support her.

We were kissing.

The servant shut the door behind us, muttering something to himself about alphas and omegas and he didn't get paid enough.

We kissed and kissed and then she pulled back. "Oh, Dmitri, how could you stay away from me?"

"I don't know, I don't know," I muttered, gazing at her, undone, utterly destroyed. How could I deny myself my omega? Had I lost my mind?

"I need your knot," she said in a strained voice. "Badly."

"Mmm," I said, kissing her. "Yes, you do. I can scent that. And I remember you telling me you thought you might be… what did you say? A slut for anal?"

"Oh, please, yes, in my ass, now," she said, breathless. "Please, please, please ."

We tore each other's clothes getting at each other.

I tossed her onto the bed and ordered her to present for me, which she did, readily and eagerly, her scent filling the air and making me lose my mind—and that was when I knew why I'd stayed away from her. It was because she made me crazed and insane. I wasn't capable of doing anything when I was around her.

I thumbed the bud of her, remembering the squeeze of her tight passage on my knot. I needed that.

Frenzied, I found the lube and began to stretch her, toying with her pussy at the same time.

She climaxed as I rubbed her swollen clit, sighing my name over and over again.

I took her, took her sweet, small little asshole, filled it full of my knot as she cried out in a strained voice, " Yes, alpha, please , alpha, I'm yours , alpha."

Then we were fucking, and it was like being encased in the most brilliant of white lights, nothing but a tunnel of perfect pleasure, the feel of her around my cock everything I'd ever wanted, the scent of her better than anything I could ever have imagined.

When I came inside her, filled her full of my release, I felt emptied and sated and sane.

Yes, this was the only time I felt sane, in these small moments after climaxing with her, before she got me all bothered and ready to fuck her again .

We lay on the bed, still connected. I did my best to not lie directly on her, shifting most of my weight to the bed. She was face down, her cheek against the bed, and I settled next to her, facing her, sweaty, breathless, spent.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she moaned. "I came here to talk , Dmitri."

"Sorry," I said, out of breath. "I can't think straight around your perfume."

"I know, you make me stupid, too."

I laughed softly. "You're never stupid, omega."

"I am. I'm an idiot."

"Well, if you are, then so am I."

She whispered a litany of swear words.

"Omega? Sweet, beautiful girl, my bride, my love," I said, smoothing a hand over one of her soft, soft shoulders. "We're knotted together for a while now. You want to talk? Talk."

She sighed, tension going out of her body, and I could feel that on the way her asshole loosened on my knot, which made me twitch down there. Fuck. She needed to hurry it up or I was going to want another round.

"Dmitri, you want to make me happy, right?"

"You know I do," I said.

"This dynamic with our pack does not make me happy." She was firm. "What would make me happy is if you would stop ordering everyone around all the time and if you would stop insisting on controlling everything and if you would allow everything to happen more organically. I want to decide who I fuck and when and where. You don't decide this stuff. It is not about what you want. It's about what I want. I want you to agree to that, for me, because you love me and you want me to be happy."

Okay, wow.

My knot deflated. I extracted myself from her and rolled onto my back, my dick entirely soft. I didn't think I'd ever been so completely switched off when I was near her. I felt as if she'd dumped a bucket of cold water on my head.

She let out a gasp when I detached. Then she scrambled up to hug her knees to her chest and look down at me. "You're not going to do it."

"You want to be the pack leader, omega?" I said in a lilting voice.

"No," she said. "I want to be the omega. A pack revolves around an omega. Alphas dominate, yes, but in service of the omega. That's the natural order of things. I fought it for a long time, but it's become apparent that things are out of balance here, and I have to do what I can for the good of the pack. You are tearing this pack apart, Dmitri. If you can't submit to your own alpha instincts to please me instead of pleasing your damned self, we're not going to work."

I gaped at her. "Pleasing myself? What? Everything I do is for the pack."

She snorted. "Oh, sure, right. Not letting me touch the other alphas cocks on our wedding night, that was for the pack. Not because you get off on your little power trips."

"It's not like that," I said.

"Telling me to sit down in the argument? That wasn't a power trip? Telling Nikolai you would cut off access to me if he didn't stay in a relationship with you? That wasn't a power trip?"

"I was keeping the pack together," I said. "I don't want Nikolai to leave."

"Neither do I," she said. "But you can't just order him around ."

"Actually," I said softly, "I can."

"If you won't stop, you'll make me miserable," she said. And then she did something insane. She pushed an emotion into me, through the bond, and it smacked into me with all the force of someone taking a mallet to my skull. I didn't even know that was possible, to purposefully do that with the bond, to use it like a weapon.

I cut it off.

I didn't know how I did that either.

But one minute, I could feel her in the bond, and the next minute, it was gone. Our connection, our bond, our everything. I'd just severed it.

I sat up straight, panicked, feeling around internally for her, trying to reconnect.

She was similarly distraught, letting out a sound of dismay. She started to cry. "What did you do?" she whispered. "What did you do?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I didn't mean to." I tried to relax, to reopen it, but I… I couldn't relax.

Tears were streaming down her face.

I pulled her close, wiping at them. "Oh, Aurelie, you just… you attacked me—"

She pushed me away. "Why? What is wrong? Is it like Johannes said, something to do with that time the alpha made you have anal sex?"

"No," I said. "Why bring that up?"

"Why won't you talk about it?"

"I just didn't like it," I said. "It's not…" I squirmed on the bed, feeling naked and vulnerable and terrified. "Look, it's just, being fucked, it's a position of, um, submission. It's like being… being… I don't know. But that's not me. I'm not…"

"The woman?" she said. "The omega?"

I got off the bed and started trying to put my clothes back on. They were all ripped. I tossed my boxers, annoyed. "Look, I've bent a lot for you. I publicly declared in that press conference that I have a male lover. I told everyone that I have gay sex. The whole fucking country, including my fucking father, and that's not nothing, Aurelie. I never wanted to do something like that, and if you and him hadn't left together, if you hadn't kept defying me—"

"You're a bisexual man!" she exploded. "You like having sex with men. Why are you ashamed of it?"

"I'm not ashamed," I said. "But my dad, he thinks of it in this way ."

She eyed me from the bed, her voice quiet. "It's about your dad. Of course it's about your dad. Duh. Idiot, Johannes, you're an idiot. Why would it be about anything else?"

"I don't feel attraction to my own fucking father!" I exploded.

"No, that's not what I meant!" She was yelling, too.

"What did you mean?" I spread my hands, shaking all over, my soft dick bobbing around and making me look comical, even in this moment, where I wanted so much to be a pillar of strength, unassailable. Fuck .

"Your dad thinks it's a sign of weakness to be gay," she said. "Because gay men are not the pinnacle of the patriarchal hierarchy, I guess. No, maybe it's more elemental than that. Sexually submitting to another man is weak. Getting fucked is weak. Because if you do the fucking, you're the one who's in control, and if you take it, you're… the bitch."

"I don't believe that shit," I muttered.

"Huh," she said. "Could have fooled me."

"I don't," I protested. "Nikolai could destroy me with his thumb and forefinger. Literally. He knows ways to kill men that are just about putting pressure on certain places on their neck. He's not weak, not even a little bit weak, and he, you know, bottoms. It's not like that. I just don't… like it. You're making it into this significant thing, and it's not."

"Maybe I would agree with you if you weren't this same way about everything else in your life," she said. "You can't be weak, ever. You can't even be weak with me. You resent the way you want me. You resent your desire for me."

"I don't," I said, a little petulant.

"It has power over you. It makes you weak. Therefore, everything you do is a fucking compensation for that."

"You know, if I wanted to get your amateur psychology diagnosis, I would have asked for it," I snapped.

"Here's the thing, Dmitri," she said. "You are weak."

I drew back. "What?"

"You're a human being, and you need to be vulnerable sometimes," she said. "I'm vulnerable sometimes. If people are going to trust each other, they have to be vulnerable with each other. That's why I don't trust you. Because you never show me any of your weaknesses."

"You don't trust me?" I said. "Seriously?"

"I really don't. If I trusted you, I wouldn't worry about submitting to you. But it scares me to submit to you, Dmitri, and that's because I recognize that when you dominate, it's about you in some way. It's because you're afraid. You have to boss everyone around so that you don't have to face that you're afraid. You don't know how to face fear. You don't know how to be vulnerable."

"That's…" I licked my lips. "People don't like weak, vulnerable people."

"No?" she said. "I'm weak. I'm vulnerable. I'm an omega. You think people don't like me?"

"That's different."

"Nikolai, he may be lethal and skilled and super fucking scary, but he's capable of showing his vulnerability," she said. "And you love him, or so you said."

"Yeah, but… that's Nikolai. People expect things from me, and I can't just…" I hung my head.

It was quiet.

"It's probably not your fault," she said finally. "Your father, he probably reacted negatively every time you skinned your knee and cried, or every time you were afraid. He probably told you to man up and to be brave and he probably never expressed any emotion himself. Except maybe anger."

I didn't say anything. She, uh, was not exactly wrong.

"What are we going to do?" she murmured.

"I can't," I said. "Giving you all the power in the pack, it makes my chest feel all tight and it makes my heart pound and it makes me feel like hitting something—"

"It scares you," she said. "You can't face your fear."

"It does not scare me," I said.

She let out a long, slow breath. "And you're in denial about it, too."

"Aurelie…"

"Reopen the bond?"

"I'm trying," I said. "But you're being like this. And I can't."

"Okay," she said. "Well, then, I'll just have to help you." She got up off the bed and patted my chest. "I'm an omega. I can help you."

"I don't need help."

"Yeah, you might not like it," she said. She went up on tiptoe and kissed my chin. "At least not at first."

johannes

A WEEK HAD gone by since the press conference, and I'd been alone most of that time. I'd stopped bothering to try to get in touch with Nikolai, though I'd seen that he was back in the castle now, back here because he was being stalked by the paparazzi pretty intensely right now, and the royals afforded him the best protection that he could get.

I knew that must be making him crazy.

He was always worried that people were after him and now they were. His paranoia must be off the charts. He probably needed me, needed to dominate me and order me around, to force me to service him. I wanted to be there for him, but he wouldn't see me.

I'd started going out and drinking a lot, doing outrageous stuff. I told myself this was because I was taking the heat off everyone else, that if the gossip sites and tabloids were printing pictures of my debauchery, they couldn't be going after Aurelie or Nik.

But really, I was just depressed.

I knew drinking didn't help depression, but it sort of seemed like it did, at least at the beginning, when you were first getting drunk. Later on, it sort of made it worse, so then I'd drink even more, pass out, feel like death the next day and start drinking again all the sooner.

That night, I was in the back seat of a car, waiting to be taken out to yet another club for another night of drinking and pills and whatever else I could get into. There was some hold-up, and I was complaining to the driver, who kept saying there was nothing he could do.

The door to the car opened, and it was Nikolai. He poked his head in, saw me, stood up and said—to someone behind him, "You tricked me."

"Inside," came Aurelie's voice. "Now."

Nikolai hesitated and then he climbed into the car.

I scooted over, heart in my throat.

Aurelie got in next to him. "Okay, go ahead," she sang out to the driver.

"This was the hold-up?" I said to the driver.

He gave me a helpless grin in the rearview mirror. "She's hard to say no to."

"True," I said, and I smiled over at her. I was grateful. She'd brought Nikolai to me. That was all that mattered.

The car started to drive.

Aurelie turned to sit sideways, cheery. "Okay, Nikolai, I know you're angry with Johannes. You've explained it to me, and I don't really get it, but I think you should explain it to him."

Nikolai was blank and still, staring forward. He got that way when his emotions were overwhelming. He simply retreated from them.

"If you don't," she said, "I'm going to start explaining it, but—like I said—I don't really understand, so I'm going to get it wrong."

Nikolai was stone.

"Fine," she said.

"Where are we going?" said Nikolai.

"For a drive," she said. "We'll drive as long as it takes to figure this out between the two of you."

Nikolai grimaced.

She looked at him, expectant. When he was still silent, she shrugged again. "Okay, so Johannes, you and Nikolai have some thing between the two of you, where, like, he's really dominant sexually or something, and he thought you liked it, but then he found out you didn't—"

"What?" I said. "I never said I didn't like it."

"Well, see?" she spread her hands. "There we go. Problem solved."

Nikolai sighed heavily. "That's not it."

"I told you I didn't understand," she said pointedly. "Fill in the blanks, please."

"You don't do it willingly," he said to me in a dark voice.

"Uh? What?" I eyed him. "Why would you think that?"

"Because you said that I needed it."

"You do."

"I don't," he said. "It's for fun, Johannes, just fun. How could you think I needed you to submit to me like that when you know what it's like with me and Dmitri?"

"Well, Dmitri makes you do that," I said. "You don't really like it. You just do it to please him."

"No," said Nikolai tersely. "I like it."

"Yeah, sure, because he makes you like it—"

"I've watched you submit to him, too," said Nikolai. "Did you like it?"

"Sure," I said. "But I don't have all this latent sexual trauma—"

"Look, this may come as a fucking surprise to you, Johannes, but when I'm having consensual intercourse with people I love, I'm not actually thinking about the times in my life in which I was assaulted."

"I didn't think you were—"

"Yes, you did," he said. "Because you thought we were having sex in a way that I ‘needed.' And you apparently, the entire time that we were making love, were thinking about people assaulting me. You were tainting everything we ever had together by tying it to the worst things that ever happened to me. You were trapping me in that place, making me a perpetual victim. I worked through that shit a long time ago—"

"Bullshit," I said. "You never worked through any of it. Every time we go into a room you've never been in, you go and look around for danger. You're still—"

"But that's not about the sexual part of it," he said, clenching his hands into fists.

"How could it not be?" I said.

"You just don't even understand me," he said.

"I…" I didn't know what to say. "I don't think I do," I said finally. Because I was sort of floored. I swallowed. "I want to, though. Look, I've been apologizing nonstop, sending you a thousand texts saying the same thing. I'll do better. Tell me what you need from me, and I will give it to you. If I hurt you, I want to make it right. So, talk to me, for fuck's sake. Please."

Nikolai squared his shoulders. "I'm not a victim."

I hesitated, and then I said, carefully, "Okay."

He looked up at the ceiling of the car. "All right, all right. I am a victim. No. I was a victim." He nodded, as if agreeing with himself. "I'm not anymore. I want you to stop seeing me that way." He glanced at me.

I was quiet, just digesting that. Was he right? Did I see him as a victim?

Aurelie piped up, "Um, Johannes? I think maybe you sometimes feel sort of like you're not very important?"

I leaned around Nik to give her a look, furrowing my brow.

"I don't think that," she said quickly. "I'm just saying, I think sometimes, you're looking for ways to sort of prove to yourself that you're important, or that you have some purpose or something. You're the second in line to the throne, and you're a rich prince, and you want some kind of, I don't know, important work to do?"

"I mean, doesn't everybody?" I said.

"Definitely," she said. "And you are very good with people. You're good at making people feel at ease and everyone likes you, and I think you go out of your way sometimes for other people in that way, but you maybe… have a tendency to turn people into, um, projects?"

I sat back and blinked hard, thinking that through.

"Like, Dmitri," she said. "You wanted me and you to get in this conspiracy about how he'd had anal sex or whatever, but I talked to him, and it's not about that. And—well, I mean, I don't have a leg to stand on, because I do want us all to enter into a conspiracy to fix Dmitri, so… Maybe I just understand this about you, because you and I are similar in this way, Johannes."

I cleared my throat. "I don't want to fix you, Nik, I swear."

"Are you sure?" he said. "Because with both of you, with Dmitri and you, you both have this savior thing with me. But at least with Dmitri he assumes it's done. He already saved me, right? He wants me to be grateful and lick his fucking boots, but with you, it's like, you can't ever let me be saved. And I don't know if you can see this, but if you're always rescuing me or whatever, then we're never equals. It's this relationship where you're always better than me—"

"No!" I shook my head furiously. "Absolutely not."

"But do you see what I mean?" he said.

"Maybe," I said. "But I swear to you, I don't think of myself as better than you, Nikolai. I'm not trying to save you. I just want to love you the way you need to be loved."

"Except you decide what that way is, not me," said Nikolai. "You don't ask me, you just assume, and sometimes, you're wrong."

I sighed heavily. "Shit. That's like a Dmitri-level sort of power-play, huh? It's fucked up. I didn't even realize I was doing that."

Nikolai reached over and seized my hand. "Fuck, baby, of course you didn't. I'm sorry."

Wait, he was apologizing to me?

"I…" He sighed. "I've been abused so much in my life, I expect the worst of people. I've been too hard on you. You have good intentions. You always have good intentions. I know this." He shook his head. "I should know this."

"No, but from your perspective, if I'm forcing you into this box that you don't want to be in, and I'm telling myself it's for your own good—"

"I could have talked to you about this," he said in a defeated voice. "I made this into this huge thing that we could have cleared up in a five-minute conversation."

"It's okay," I said. "I get it. After everything you've been through…" I winced. "Sorry. Is that me still putting you in the victim box?"

"Maybe I am still behaving like a victim, though." He squeezed my hand. "If I'm expecting danger all the time, if I'm always trying to protect myself from it, I'm never free."

"Well, you are safe, Nikolai."

He turned to me. "I'm not. It's not like that. Danger's always possible. But, you know, so is safety and sweetness and love and trust. And if I spend all my time protecting myself from danger, I miss the opportunities for the good shit. Focusing on the danger makes it so I don't even see them. It's actually braver to trust, in a lot of ways, isn't it?"

My throat tightened. "That was deep, babe. That was fucking insightful."

He grinned at me.

I grinned back.

Aurelie's voice, soft. "Now kiss," she said.

So, we did.