9

aurelie

HE WAS LATE .

I didn't know why I'd expected him to be on time. It was stupid of me.

Around 11:45, a servant came to fetch me from my room. I was taken down to a little spot on the grounds where an elaborate picnic had been set up near a stream that wound through the gardens. Though it was a picnic, there was a small metal table flanked with two folding chairs. The food was set up on another table nearby, and there was much more than we could ever eat.

Near the table was a small waterfall and a bank full of wildflowers, and everything was beautiful.

I sat out there, by myself, eyeing the croissants hungrily, until 12:20.

Then Dmitri arrived.

He sat down across from me and said, "I don't want him in your bed again."

I sat up straight in the little strappy dress, which I had ended up deciding on because it did make my boobs look good, even if they didn't look that perky. I had a lot of cleavage, which Ilse assured me was a good thing. "You know about that," I said.

"Tell me the truth. I just want to know. There won't be any consequences. I promise. Did he fuck you?"

" No! " It was immediate and insistent, and I wondered if I'd protested too much. I wasn't lying, but I was afraid it sounded like I was lying.

He looked me over. He did not look as if he'd put care into his appearance. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a gray AC/DC shirt that read, Back in Black . It was faded. It was hard to read the words. I wondered if it had once been a black shirt.

"You said, at the luncheon, that if I needed alpha tending—"

"I know I said that but that was before I realized he was sabotaging me on purpose." Dmitri studied his knuckles.

I realized they were scabbed up. "Did you hit him?"

"I'd do it again," he muttered, seething. "Nothing came up last night, you know? He told me that I was being controlling and that I should honor your plans with him. And then I find out—"

"Yeah, well, I guess I shouldn't have asked him to stay," I said. "In my defense, I was half-asleep, and I didn't really think he'd do it. I'm not used to alphas, with the whole doing-whatever-pleases me thing. Nothing happened, I swear! We just slept. And I'll try not to, um, to encourage him anymore."

"No, it's not your fault," said Dmitri.

I bit down on my lower lip. Wait. "Nothing came up?" The sensation that leaped inside me was like the waterfall, a froth of hope. "You wanted to see me?"

"Obviously," he said, but he wasn't looking at me.

I couldn't help but smile.

He sighed heavily. "I know what he's like. I'm not asking you to… to give him up. Just to wait."

"It's not like that," I said, but maybe too quickly.

He lifted his gaze to mine. "You don't have to love me or anything like that, omega. What you do have to do is submit to me. I am your alpha, and I will be your bonded mate. On our wedding night, I will have you. I will knot you. I will bite you. You will be mine, and someday we will be King and Queen of Valhn together."

This speech made me feel all shivery and excited for some reason. I was pretty sure it should have made me annoyed, however, because he was ordering me around. I had to submit to him? Seriously? What guy said that, alpha or not?

He got up from his chair. "Fuck. I thought if we were outside, the perfume wouldn't—" He stalked away from the table, shaking his head.

Oh, I guess I had perfumed. Embarrassing, really, to perfume when a man jerkishly tells you that you have to submit to him. I scrunched up my shoulders, ducking down my head, trying to get myself under control.

He came back and sat down.

"Does it… smell bad?" I said in a tiny voice.

He scoffed. "Are you insane?"

"Well, you don't seem to like it," I said tartly. "So, it's not out of the realm of possibility—"

"Of course I like it, idiot girl."

He'd just called me an idiot? My lips parted.

He cleared his throat. "I didn't… I'm sorry."

I lifted my chin. "I'm not an idiot, Your Highness."

"I didn't mean to call you that. It's only, when I'm around you, I'm incredibly flustered. Everything about you throws me off balance." He was annoyed about this, his voice rising in indignation. "Everything I say comes out wrong. Obviously, you'd prefer him, obviously. I thought he'd recognize his own superiority and have pity on me, but he's just not playing fair."

"This is Johannes?" I said, glaring at Dmitri. "Right, well, he is considerate, and he doesn't call me names, and he doesn't tell me that I need to submit to him, and—"

"You do need to submit," countered Dmitri, his voice a growl.

Damn it. I perfumed again.

His eyes went wild and he was on his feet again, but this time he didn't walk away. Instead, he grabbed me and pulled my body up against his.

I gasped, struggling against him.

He didn't let me go. He smashed me into his chest, one hand migrating lower to seize a handful of the curve of my ass. He squeezed that and then pressed me into his erection as he bent down and claimed my lips.

His kiss was harsh, frenzied, overwhelming.

I cried out, into his mouth, seizing a handful of his faded AC/DC shirt, my whole body feeling as if it had spontaneously combusted at our touch.

He shoved me away.

I landed on my ass, letting out another cry.

He threw both of his hands up. " Fuck. "

I mewled.

His hand was there, in front of my face. "Here. Let me help you up."

I shoved his hand away and got to my feet, angry now. "You… you…"

"I know ," he roared. "I'm not exactly graceful and measured in the best of times, omega, but you make me…"

"What do I make you?"

"An uncivilized beast," he breathed.

I perfumed.

He went cross-eyed. He turned on his heel and walked off.

I sat down at the table and snatched up a croissant. I bit into it and glowered after him.

I stayed there for ten minutes, eating all the food at the table, thinking that maybe Dmitri was going to come back or something. I couldn't believe every single one of our interactions were going to end with him running off like that.

I was now downright annoyed with Dmitri, I had to admit.

And also, well, clearly very attracted to him.

After ten minutes, someone did appear to join me, but it wasn't Dmitri.

"Nikolai," I said, grinning widely. "It's you. I haven't see you since we got here."

He tossed himself down in Dmitri's chair. "I'm only here to convey apologies from Dmitri for leaving you, I'm afraid. They've both gone insane. What have you done to them?"

"Nothing on purpose," I protested. "Don't you be on his side. He hates me."

"Who?"

"Dmitri," I said, as if this was obvious, and ate a strawberry.

"Omega," said Nikolai, "he does not hate you."

"He acts like it," I said.

Nikolai sighed. "We're going to try something, and you're never going to tell him about it."

"So, we're entering into a conspiracy together, you and me?" I said.

"Mmm," he said and climbed under the table.

"What are you doing?" I said.

Nikolai crawled over, under the table, and knelt in front of me, putting his head under my skirt. "These are handy pieces of clothing, actually. I see why men made women wear them."

"Nikolai," I said in a tiny, embarrassed voice. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing. I'm not here. You act as if nothing is going on, just… relax. Maybe you're wound tight. We'll get you a little, you know, loose, and then go talk to him." Nikolai's fingers pulled my panties aside, which were the thick, slick-absorbing kind. I'd been perfuming, so I was wet there, wet and eager and ready.

I gasped. "I don't think Dmitri would like this."

"I told you we're never going to tell him," said Nikolai, his breath hot on my thigh. "It's, um, it's been a while since I've done this with a woman. Give me a minute to get reacquainted, all right?" His fingers were touching me. "There, outer labia, inner labia." He was parting me. "Vagina. Mons. Clitoral hood."

I sucked in a breath as he touched me there.

"Clitoris." His voice was silky. He kissed me there.

I moaned softly.

He licked me.

I made a noise like a sob. Oh, it would probably take me no time at all to come if he did that, because—whatever it was Dmitri had done to me—I was wound up very tightly.

"Good girl," said Nikolai. "Let me take care of you, then. Think of him, not me, and it's utterly virtuous, hmm?"

I shut my eyes.

Nikolai began a steady rhythm, licking up and down over the most sensitive part of my body, and I thought about being told to submit to Dmitri. I thought about the way he'd roughly grabbed my ass, the way he'd manhandled me into his hard, throbbing cock, and the way he'd kissed me roughly, the way he'd shoved me away like I was too much to take.

I came like nothing, letting out little tiny sobs of breaths as I clenched on Nikolai's tongue.

"Huh," he said in wonder. "I remember that being much more difficult, really. Do you come easily, omega?"

"I… I don't know," I gasped.

He moved my underwear back and gave me a little pat. "There."

Tremors went through me and I let out a whimper. " Nikolai. "

"Mmm." He kissed me through my panties. "You taste divine. You have no idea what it's taking to keep me from lapping you up like dessert."

I shuddered.

He kissed both of my inner thighs, and then my knees as he pulled my skirt down. Then, he reappeared in the seat opposite mine, licking his lips, licking his fingers, looking at me with a steady kind of adoration.

I whimpered again.

"Now, let's go find Dmitri," he said. "Look at me."

I was looking at him.

He did that trick again, the one that ebbed out my arousal.

I let out a breath. "Thank you. Why aren't you always around to do that for me?"

"I certainly can be," he said, getting up from his chair and offering me his hand.

I put my hand in his.

He escorted me across the grounds, all the way across them, to an area where there was a target, and Dmitri was throwing knives at it.

He stopped when he seemed to catch my scent, though. He went stiff and turned around, his whole body on high alert.

Nikolai made me look at him and ebbed everything out again, which must have made my scent a bit less.

When we finally closed the distance between us and Dmitri, Dmitri only looked mildly murderous.

"What is this?" he said to Nikolai.

"You could just order her not to perfume," said Nikolai. "I can attest to how effective it is when you order anyone around. People just obey you, Dmitri, even other alphas. She's your omega. Give her an order."

Ooh, why did I want Dmitri to give me an order? Why did that sound so amazing?

Dmitri scratched the side of his neck, looking sheepish. "Seems like such a dick thing to do."

Nikolai cleared his throat.

"Right," muttered Dmitri. "Guess I'm being a dick?"

Nikolai nudged me at Dmitri.

Dmitri let out a breath, but he held my gaze.

I felt myself falling into it, and it wasn't like with Nikolai, it was far more intense. My whole body felt floaty, sensitive, strange.

"Omega," said Dmitri in a very husky voice, "do not perfume."

My body surged at this order, surged in a way in which I felt myself nearly crest, like the edge of an orgasm, and I let out a breathy little sigh, but I didn't perfume.

He went cross-eyed anyway. But he didn't move away. He staggered closer to me, and we collided again.

I went into his chest, and both of my hands splayed out on his shirt, and he grabbed my ass with both hands. My body crested again, nearly clenched. I relaxed into him.

He crushed me in close, letting out a throaty, male noise.

I looked up at him, smiling, flushed. This felt good. This felt right.

"Hey," he rasped.

"Hey," I breathed.

He bent down and captured my lips with his—gentle, perfect, just a brush of our lips, like the wisp of the Sugar Plum Fairy's wings.

I sighed, pressing up against him.

His arms tightened around me. "Here's the thing, omega," he breathed. "I don't want to wait."

"No," I said.

"So, I don't think I can see you," he said. "Until after the wedding."

"Oh," I said, disappointed. "That's… that's a long time."

"I know," he said. "And… and I know that Johannes… but I'm so jealous of him I can't see straight, and you belong to me."

I nodded. "I do. I'm yours, alpha."

"Yes, you are," he hummed, kissing me again, more firmly, this time with a hint of tongue.

I moaned, keeping my eyes shut in the wake of it, even after he'd moved his lips away. "I belong to you, Dmitri."

"Fuck," he growled, grinding into me, and his cock seemed even bigger and even harder than it had down near the waterfall.

I opened my eyes. "I'll wait for you. I want to."

"Yeah?" he said, his voice gravelly.

"Yeah," I said.

"No Johannes?"

"No," I breathed.

He kissed me again, a hard, claiming kiss that felt too good for words. "Good girl," he said in a hoarse voice. "Good omega."

nikolai

"WHAT DO YOU mean, she said she wouldn't see me?" Johannes said to me, his face swollen, purplish, bruised.

"Exactly what I said," I muttered. I had not thought it was going to go like that when I'd brought the omega to Dmitri, admittedly. I had not thought she'd go into his arms like that and get all dazed, like she was under a spell, and then just do whatever it was he wanted her to do.

She'd barely looked at me when I'd escorted her back to her room right after that. She wouldn't have left Dmitri if he hadn't grudgingly ordered her to do it.

Then, after that, Dmitri texted me to come meet him in his quarters, where he'd pressed me face down into the bed and pushed his cock into me—with not nearly enough stretching or enough lubing, to be honest—and fucked me like a man gone out of his head. The noises he'd made while he was inside me?

Anyway, now I was sore and not in a great mood.

I could tell Johannes wanted me to be there for him, but I wasn't in the right headspace for it. I was beginning to feel as if this omega was going to destroy us all. Everything was going badly.

"What did he do to her?" said Johannes.

"I think we need to consider they might have something," I said. "Something extra, something—"

"You mean one of those weird fate things that people are always going on and on about?"

"I've never seen him the way he is with her," I said. "And she doesn't get like that with either of us."

"Yeah, but…" Johannes's face twisted. "She said she wouldn't see me? At all? Not even to do something friendly?"

"I don't know. She was distant when I took her back to her room, and this was after I…" Well, I probably should not tell Johannes I'd licked the omega's perfect little pussy, either, because Johannes would be massively jealous.

No one could know I'd done that, definitely not Dmitri.

She'd tasted like, well, everything I ever wanted, wrapped in bacon and dipped in chocolate.

Fuck, I was ruined now.

I wanted to bite her, too.

We wouldn't get to, of course, so… no point in thinking about it, but I was starting to understand why it was killing Johannes.

"I'm texting her," said Johannes, decided. He got out his phone and began to type.

I sat down gingerly in a chair to wait to see what came of this text.

Johannes noticed. "What's up with you?"

"Dmitri, he was… thorough."

"What the fuck does that mean?" said Johannes, nostrils flaring.

I sighed heavily. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Johannes, look at your face. Don't go attempting to defend my honor."

"He hurt you?"

I shrugged.

Johannes turned back to his phone, determined. He began typing.

"Are you texting Dmitri?" I said.

"I'm not trying to get into a fistfight about it," said Johannes to me. Back to the phone, "And send." Back to me, "But he needs to understand that he can't use you like that without any thought. He needs to try a little harder not to be a jackass, that is all I am saying. I know you make all these allowances for him that you don't make for me, but let's just be clear that I have never knotted—"

"He didn't knot me," I said. "He kept that out. It was just quick." Quick and brutal, and he seemed like an unhinged savage thing inside me. It had been… maybe it should have been hot, maybe it even was. Mostly, it was kind of frightening, though.

"I don't like the way he is with you," said Johannes. "I don't like the way he is with the omega. I don't like anything about that, and I just let him know that."

Johannes's phone beeped. He glared at it.

"What did he say?" I said.

He shrugged.

My phone beeped. I pulled it out to look at it. It was from Dmitri.

Nik, you can talk to me, you know. You don't have to go to him.

I didn't. It's fine. He's taking it out of context.

Are you in pain?

I hesitated.

Nik, do I scare you?

No, I texted back.

Hey, I'm sorry, he sent.

I started to type something back, telling him it was fine, but he was typing something else. I gazed at the three little dots and waited.

I love you, too, you know? he had typed.

My heart skipped painfully. My breath caught in my throat.

Sorry, really, he said. I'll do better. The omega is fucking with my head, but this won't be this way forever.

"What did he say?" said Johannes, annoyed.

I shook my head. I wished he hadn't said it the first time in a fucking text message. Sometimes, Dmitri was kind of idiotic about relationships, I had to admit.

Still, he'd said it.

That was progress, right?

I texted back, I know. It's okay. I was debating over a heart emoji.

But Johannes snatched the phone away from me.

"Hey," I said, reaching for it.

He pulled it up out of my reach.

This time, I got it back from him. "Not cool, Johannes. Not even a little bit cool."

He was hurt, and I could see that.

But I didn't care. "You can't take my phone and read my private conversations with him. That's not your business."

"Okay, but you're my business, Nik, and I'm your business—"

"No," I said. "No, it's not like that. We're not some monogamous couple who shackles each other down. You do not own me. We agreed to this at the very beginning, and you said you didn't want to know about what went on with him and me. I agreed to that, and so I keep it to myself."

"Well, maybe now I want to know," he said with a shrug.

"Why?"

He didn't say anything.

It was quiet for a long time.

Finally, I said, "I need you to promise me you won't invade my privacy like that, okay?"

"Nik, come on."

"Promise," I said.

"I'll promise if you can get me to even understand it."

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you see in him?" he said. "What does she see in him? He ignores her. He orders her around. He makes rules that she's not allowed to see certain people. You say it's some fate thing, okay. Maybe I can buy that. But why do you love him?"

"He saved me, Johannes."

"Oh, whatever. He threw around his money, made some phone calls to law enforcement? I could have done that. I could have gotten those jackasses locked up—"

"But you didn't," I said, and that was shitty of me to say it like that. We'd hardly even been introduced at that point.

"I didn't even know you," he said. "You came here to seduce him, and that was what you did, and I barely even saw you—"

"I know," I said, shaking my head. "That was a shit thing to say to you."

"He's an asshole," said Johannes. "He doesn't even have common decency, and he uses people, and his entitlement, it's enormous. I would have gotten you free from those people. I would have done anything in my power for you, but I didn't know you—"

"He's just Dmitri," I said.

He sighed.

"I can't explain it," I muttered.

Johannes collapsed into a chair, looking sulky. He gazed off into the distance. His phone beeped, but he didn't make a move to look at it.

"It might be the omega texting you back," I said.

He got out his phone and looked at it. He rolled his eyes and shoved it away.

"What?" I said. I got the urge to grab it from him and look myself, but that would have been extremely hypocritical of me, so I resisted.

I just waited.

Finally, he said, "She told me she's sorry but she promised Dmitri to stay away from me until after the wedding. But that she really likes me and Dmitri makes her livid and she really is sorry."

I furrowed my brow. "Is it supposed to be like this?"

"What?" he said.

"Is she supposed to be drawn to him against her will? Is that how designations work?"

"I don't know. You tell me. You can't even explain why you like him."

I leaned back in my chair, which reminded me how sore I was from Dmitri's thick log of a cock. "You might have a point," I whispered.

"Do I? You like him against your will?"

"And you're so far gone for the omega because? What? It makes sense? And me too, for that matter. She's in me now in some way. I can't even explain it, but I feel itchy not being close to her—"

"Yeah," he said darkly. "Let's get drunk."

"Excellent idea," I said.