8

aurelie

I WAS SURPRISED when I wasn't very hungover the next day, because I'd never taken so many shots in an evening. I'd had three, plus another drink, and four drinks usually tanked me. Maybe it was because Johannes kept insisting we drink water all night. There must have been something to the hydration thing. Or maybe it was because I had stopped drinking a few hours before I fell asleep.

But I thought it was because of him.

I woke up to him carrying me up the stairs in the castle. I couldn't believe it. No one had carried me anywhere in years and years. He was doing it like it was nothing, and I was all snug up against his chest, wrapped up in his perfect scent.

I pretended to be asleep while he brought me all the way up to my room.

Then, he deposited me in my bed and tucked me in.

I moaned, missing his scent, his closeness. "I wish you could stay here with me," I murmured, worrying into the pillow.

"Fuck, omega," he breathed. "Really?"

"I like the way you smell," I said.

He stripped off his shirt and his belt and climbed into bed with me, shirtless, wearing his jeans, and he held me all night long. And I think he was just a Johannes-hangover-cure, that's what I think.

He left around dawn.

I woke to him tiptoeing out of the room.

I made another annoyed sound, but he came back, kissed me really hard, and said, "I have to go, omega, I have to."

So, I let him go, and then I drifted off to sleep for another several hours.

I woke to a text from Dmitri. Lunch today, just the two of us. Noon.

Was it a question or an order? I typed that out, thought better of it, deleted it, and typed back—instead— Yes, Your Highness. Which was still a little snarky, I thought, but at least less.

The text came back immediately. Please call me Dmitri.

I snorted. Right over his head, then. Well, that was better. I thought about thumbs-upping that, wondered if he would think that was snarky, and settled for sending a smiley emoji instead.

Which was when I realized that it was late morning, closing in on 10:00, and if I wanted to be ready by noon, I needed to get out of bed.

There was a bathroom attached to my room, all gold and red inside. It had a deep soaking tub with a gleaming gold faucet and a separate large shower. It had already been stocked with my favorite beauty products when I arrived, even though I'd packed a lot of things. I was surprised to see that. Someone must have done their research well, maybe sending inquiries to my family or my family's servants, I wasn't sure.

After my shower and after I had styled my hair—I had to blow dry the front of it to make sure that it would fall in what looked like carelessly random tendrils but actually needed a bit of coaxing, though the rest could air dry if I had time, and I did today—I surveyed my closet again.

What to wear?

I wished I had a friend to text to ask, like back in high school, before I presented, when I was still flirting with the idea of Corentin. My best friend Gina and I used to text for hours, while I sent her pictures, asking her which bathing suit I should be lounging in while Corentin cleaned the pool. We'd giggle over the options for hours. Then, after he left, we'd dissect every word that came out of his mouth, looking for hidden meanings.

I think it was my fault that Gina and I grew apart.

After I presented, after Corentin left, after all of that…

She tried to reach out to me a few times, but there was nothing in me at the time, and I didn't reach back.

I don't blame her for giving up.

Maybe because I was feeling so guilty about all of that, I felt bold enough to just text Ilse without thinking that I was probably bothering her.

But whatever the case, she was there in less than five minutes, still in her pajamas, which were pink with little white kittens on them—a shorts set with a tank top. She bounced in, tossing herself on my still-unmade bed and propping herself up on pillows. "What are our options? Show me!"

"Um…" I giggled, happy to see her. "Well, he didn't give me many details. Should I text him to ask? I'm thinking a dress, though, just not a fancy one."

She nodded. "Yup, I'm with you."

"Okay, then," I said, and went to my closet to get the options. I held up a little blue sundress and a striped maxi dress and a strappy thing that was green and purple.

"You have to try them on, I think," said Ilse, getting comfy on the pillows. "Omega fashion show!"

I snorted. "Seriously?"

"There aren't nearly enough women with designations, you know?"

"There were women at the luncheon," I said.

"Betas," she said. "Married to alpha princes for status and money while all the while knowing he's guaranteed to never be faithful."

"Well…" I lifted my shoulders. "I mean, that's these kinds of marriages anyway, isn't it? It's not about real feelings."

"Which is why you're obsessing over the right thing to wear to see Dmitri today."

I sighed. "Good point."

She sat up straight. "Oh, hey, that reminds me. Johannes last night? Saying he didn't want you with Dmitri? That threw me for a loop."

I wrinkled my nose. Did I remember that? Oh, maybe I did. I hadn't been so drunk to black out or anything, but I had been very sleepy and things had gotten dreamlike later on. "I forgot he said that," I whispered. Then, abruptly, taking the dresses, I headed for the bathroom to change into one of them.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"To put these on for this fashion show you want," I called.

"Okay," she said.

I went into the bathroom and began tugging on the strappy dress. I wouldn't be able to wear a bra with it. It was backless. I wouldn't be able to make my boobs look as perky, of course, but I could pull it off, I thought.

I emerged, and Ilse was off the bed now.

Ilse raised her eyebrows. "That one. Definitely that one."

"You haven't even seen the other ones." I looked in the mirror in my closet. "I'm just thinking it was probably a bad call for me to tell Johannes to stay the night with me after he said that."

" What? "

"Oh, nothing happened. We just snuggled. He didn't even try anything," I said. "Plus, I was exhausted. I went right to sleep. But I think that probably is confusing for him."

"I don't even understand," said Ilse. "I mean, with Cole, it's different, obviously, because so many of his other alpha options are male, and I suppose it's easy to feel significant to him, because literally no one else has an internal knot to grip him, and I suppose, there must be some sense of security in it for me in that way. I must think, well, I'm irreplaceable. And it's only me and the King who've bitten him, though I think both the King and I are amenable if and when Cole needs more. We've already talked about how that'll probably become necessary when I get pregnant."

This surprised me. For some reason, I'd latched onto her designation and forgotten that she was a woman, totally capable of having babies. I felt embarrassed.

"It'll be a pack baby," she said, with a grin, thankfully oblivious to the fact that I had been stunned. "Which suits me fine. The King and Cole would need a surrogate, anyway, and here I am, and the king can even be involved in the conception if he wants."

"Do you do it that way?" I said. "All three of you?"

"Sure," she said. "Are you hoping for that?"

I sighed. "Well, if Johannes is being the way he is, I don't know if it'll ever happen. But, anyway, Dmitri and Nikolai have something, so I guess the two of them—"

"Nikolai?" She raised her eyebrows. "He's part of this with you? They're going to let him touch their omega, hmm?" She shrugged. "Well, I guess he is an alpha, but it's all so confusing."

"Yeah," I said. "I don't understand any of it. Johannes told me some things, but they didn't make sense."

"Here's what I know," said Ilse, sitting back down on the bed. "He was trained by some kind of private secret service group or something, like the KGB on steroids, but for profit, not for a government. He was trained to honey trap and kill. An ultimate weapon against alphas all over the world."

"Who wants to kill alphas?" I said.

She shrugged. "When you're rich and famous, someone always wants to kill you."

I felt cold all over. I swallowed.

"Anyway, no one understands how he's an alpha, of course, but that made him twice as appealing than if he hadn't been. His designation was part of his ability to seduce. The group, whatever they were called, they him sent to Dmitri for whatever reason."

"He was supposed to kill Dmitri?"

"I don't know." She shrugged. "Maybe just spy on him, get close and find out secrets so that the weird group could sell those secrets to people who wanted to blackmail the next King of Valhn? Whatever the case, I guess Dmitri is too lickable to hurt."

"So, he didn't do it?"

"Nope," she said. "He betrayed the organization to Dmitri, who had them all hunted down, brought up on charges, and sent to prison."

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah, he's got a protective streak, I guess, even though he seems outwardly like nothing but a jerk. Anyway, now, Nikolai is sort of the pet alpha of our generation of alphas. Except me. I was told he doesn't like women."

I bit down on my lip.

"No, it's fine," said Ilse. "It's not unheard of for those of us with designations to throw all our gender preferences out the window, especially for an omega." She winked at me.

My body lurched a little. I didn't feel drawn to Ilse the way I felt drawn to Johannes or Nikolai or Dmitri, but I knew that I was attracted to her. Her alpha designation mattered more than what was between her legs. In some ways, my designation simply didn't care.

She was still grinning at me.

I looked away, shy.

"Oh, I'm only teasing you, omega," she said. She drew in a breath. "Anyway, Nikolai. I've always thought he was creepy. You like him?"

"I do," I said. "A lot, actually. But I haven't seen him since I got here." I fiddled with the skirt of my dress. "I feel like I need to make this lunch with Dmitri work today. I feel like everything will get easier if I do."

"Work in what way?"

"Oh, in all the ways," I said.

"Well, I think that dress is a good start."

"I have to try on the other ones," I said. "Sorry. If you don't want to hang out while I obsess—"

"I said I was here for the fashion show, didn't I?" Her grin widened.

nikolai

I TRAILED ALONG behind Dmitri as he stalked through the hallways of the castle. I had tried to calm him down, but I had to admit that I hadn't had enough information to really know what had happened.

There was one incontrovertible bit of evidence, and it was that Johannes had gone into Aurelie's room at 2:00 in the morning and he hadn't come back out until 6:00. So, he'd been in there for four hours doing something .

I tried to tell Dmitri that Johannes wouldn't, but I wasn't sure anymore.

I tried to tell Dmitri that even if he had, it didn't matter, because these things were going to happen eventually, and it wasn't as if he was signing on for a monogamous relationship with her.

I tried to say a bunch of things, but Dmitri was already heading out to find Johannes at that point.

So, now, I trailed along, quiet, hopeful that if it came down to it, I could calm them down.

I wished I would have had the chance to talk to Johannes alone before all this, but that wasn't possible. Dmitri wanted to talk to him now .

Johannes wasn't in his bedroom.

He wasn't in the breakfast parlor, which was a room in our wing where the staff would lay out a serve-yourself breakfast each morning.

We asked around, and we found out that he'd gone riding.

Great. He might be out on the horse for hours, then. I was hoping we weren't going to get on horseback and go after him. I wasn't afraid of horses, per se, but it seemed to me that getting on the back of a huge animal with huge hooves who couldn't really be fond of having you on its back was a kind of singularly stupid thing to do.

No thanks.

Luckily, when we got out to the stables, Johannes was brushing down his mount, something he liked to do himself instead of allowing the staff to do. He said it was zen or something.

He grinned up at both of us. "What are you two doing out in the stables?"

Dmitri was a stormcloud. "Looking for you, obviously."

"Right," he said, coming out of the stall. "Look, Dmitri, I think I screwed up last night, and—"

" Did you." Dmitri's voice was lethal.

"Yeah, I shouldn't have told you to back out of it," he said.

"I told you it would only hurt her feelings," I said.

"She wasn't hurt," said Johannes. "More resigned, I think, but even that—I don't like being the cause of her disappointment in any way. That feels pretty crappy. I'm not getting in the way of her and you, Dmitri, not at all, not anymore, and it was crazy to even think that I could, because—"

"Getting in the way?" Dmitri interrupted. "Did you fuck her last night?"

"What?" Johannes pulled back. "No." He considered. "Oh, ‘cause I slept there. Yeah, but nothing happened. I might have wanted things to happen, but also I didn't, because… I don't know, but there's this way I'm getting with her, where whatever she wants is what I want, and it's kind of perfect, in this amazing way, and—"

"You slept there?" said Dmitri.

"Just slept," said Johannes. "She wanted me to."

Dmitri was trembling.

"Should I have not done that?" said Johannes.

Dmitri slugged him.

Johannes jerked back, hand coming up to his chin, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring.

One moment passed, both of them simply glaring at each other, and then Johannes started to move forward.

That was when I shoved myself in between them. I put one hand on Johannes's chest, shaking my head at him.

Then I turned to Dmitri. "Seriously?" I said to him. "What are you doing?"

Dmitri lifted a finger. "I ask for one thing. One fucking thing. Just one." He turned his back on me and stalked out of the stable.

I stared into his wake, debating if I should go after him or stay here with Johannes. Considering I'd spent all of last night and this morning with Dmitri, I decided to stay. I turned back to Johannes.

He was still holding his jaw. "Nothing fucking happened!"

"You told him to cancel his plans with her so that you could sleep in her bed? "

He groaned. "Yeah, but then I changed my mind about all of it. Something about watching her… I just want her to be happy, that's all. I swear."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm going after him," said Johannes, pushing past me.

"I don't know if that's a great idea," I called. "After he gets mad like that—"

"I have to explain."

So, then I was reluctantly following Johannes around until he caught up with Dmitri, who was halfway to the knife-throwing target area by the time that Johannes got there.

"I've never experienced anything like it before," said Johannes to him. "It's like some kind of omega witchcraft. But I was lying in bed with her, and she was sleepy, and I knew that I wouldn't try to do anything that she didn't want. If she wanted to sleep, I wanted to sleep, and it was just… I don't know… bigger than me, somehow? It was kind of amazing, and I'm telling you—"

Dmitri hit him again.

Johannes staggered backward. "What the fuck, dude?" he practically screamed. "I'm trying to explain to you—"

"She's. Not. Yours," said Dmitri in a very low voice. "I'm letting you have time with her, and I can stop that at—"

That was when Johannes tackled Dmitri and they both went sprawling on the lawn.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that someone from the castle security had taken off at a run, coming directly for us. He was probably on his walkie-talkie, calling in reinforcements.

Dmitri punched Johannes again, and Johannes tried to punch Dmitri, but Dmitri wriggled away, under Johannes, and then security was there, pulling them apart. At first, it was just one guy, but soon there were about six of them.

Dmitri kept trying to get at Johannes, but Johannes gave up pretty much immediately. I wasn't really surprised. Johannes wasn't much of a fighter. I don't know that he'd ever been in a fist fight in his life. But now, he was going to have a very bruised face.

I sighed heavily.

I hadn't even had a chance to see the omega since we got here.

Was this how it was going to be from now on? They were going to hate each other? I really hoped not.