Page 116 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

johannes

THEY WERE ALL waiting when we got back.

Corentin, Dmitri, and Nikolai were standing in front of the stables, none of them looking pleased. Well, Corentin was on his phone right when we galloped up, but when he saw us, he ended the call, and then they all stood there, stony-faced, arms crossed over their chests. I knew this had been the right thing. I knew Aurelie and I had both needed this.

But I wasn’t exactly relishing the consequences of all of this.

I helped her down off the horse and she leaned into me, scenting a sweet, satisfied scent that was all tangled up with mine. I loved that my scent was all over her. I put my arm around her. I never wanted to stop touching her, truth be told. I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a rumbling purr as she smiled up at me.

Dmitri growled.

She turned to him, her body responding to him, probably through their bond.

I didn’t want to let go of her.

But I did.

She went right to him. He put his hands all over her, and when he spoke, he didn’t sound angry. More… agonized.

“Did he bite you?” he said in a strangled voice, lifting her chin, inspecting her neck.

“Oh, Dmitri.” She soothed him. She moved his hand to his mark, her fingers over his as he had him stroke it. “Not yet, no.”

Dmitri looked devastated. He stopped touching her. He backed up. He gave me a look, and it was pained.

I flinched. Maybe this was worse than his being angry.

Corentin stepped forward and pulled her in against his chest. He kissed her, a quick kiss. “Love, I think I have to go. I have issues with the business.”

She jerked back from that, surprised. “Oh.”

“I know. But I’m not like your idle rich prince boys, with people paying me an income just because I sported a knot,” he said.

Fuck him. I rolled my eyes.

He kissed her forehead. “I’ll be in touch.” He backed off. “Maybe it’ll be better this way, anyway? You and I can have something, just us, when I can steal you away, and the three of you—” He gestured to me, Nikolai, and Dmitri. “Can work out whatever’s going on there. I don’t need to be part of it.”

Aurelie stiffened. “Yes, you do.”

Corentin sighed. “Well. Later. I really do need to go. It’s a bit of an emergency, or I wouldn’t, I promise.”

“Well,” she said, “if it’s an emergency…”

He kissed her again. “Goodbye, my love. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.” Then he gave the rest of us a careless wave and walked off in the direction of the castle.

Aurelie looked from Dmitri, who’d stopped touching her, to Corentin’s back, and then over to me.

I closed the distance between us in two steps and wrapped my arm around her again. She sighed into me, relaxing immediately.

Dmitri’s nostrils flared. “We need to have a discussion about how this works.”

Well. He wasn’t wrong, I supposed.

aurelie

WE WERE SITTING in a room on the first floor of the castle with a big screen, and Dmitri had hooked a laptop up to it and was in the middle of what was essentially a Powerpoint presentation on “How We Will Share the Omega.”

I was sitting in between Johannes and Nikolai on a couch, but none of us were touching.

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