Page 12 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

“No,” I said. “We have that luncheon tomorrow. You went on and on about it five times, and there’s no way I’m staying up until dawn and crawling into that like a drowned rat.”

“Please?” He gave me a truly pitiful look, one that sometimes melted me.

“You’re acting like this is a game,” I said. “Not everything is a game, Johannes.” I picked up the pace again.

This time, he didn’t catch up with me.

I got to our room and threw the door open. I hurried inside, feeling antsy as I checked everything. The windows. The closets. Under the beds. Behind the shower curtains.

He was in the kitchen as I was looking inside the oven.

“Who’s going to hide in an oven, Nik?” he said, amused.

I straightened. “Don’t,” I said, hurt.

The thing about being obsessive is that you know you’re being obsessive. That’s what people don’t understand about it. They think you really think there’s danger. I knew there wasn’t any danger, but I had to look for it anyway.

It was habit, that was part of it.

It was ritual also.

I do my rituals, and then I am safe, and then I can relax.

Except, of course, I never did actually feel safe, so I knew the rituals were just a bandaid. They held it all off, like a dam against the rush of horror that was the entire outside world, except there was no way to hold all that off. The outside world was there, and it was a horror. And the thing about that kind of horror is that it strikes when you’re not expecting it. It surges up out of the shadows and stabs you when you’re thinking about other things.

And you were left gasping, wondering why you weren’t looking for danger, why you’d let your damned guard down.

He bowed his head. “You’re actually angry with me.”

I slammed the oven closed.

I was angry.

Was it Johannes that I was truly angry with, or was it that omega? Or myself? Or Dmitri?

Maybe it was Dmitri for doing this to us. What kind of sadistic asshole did this to his lover and his friend? He must have known what it would be like to be in the omega’s presence. After all, he’d had that dinner with her, and he hadn’t even managed to go back to her after he’d been called away. He knew.

I clenched my hands into fists and released them.

Then I looked Johannes up and down. “All right,” I said with a sigh. “Take off your shirt and go kneel next to the bed with your arms behind your back. Do not move. Do not speak.”

He sucked in a breath. “Okay, okay, good. I thought… you said it wasn’t a game—”

“We’re wound up and we need a release,” I said.

“Fuck yes, we do,” he breathed. He held my gaze, his scent rising.

“Go,” I said in a quiet voice.

He went.

I stayed in the kitchen, running my fingers over the countertop. What was the purpose of these elaborate suites? No one who stayed here cooked in these kitchens.

I opened up several of the drawers, not because I thought anyone was in them, necessarily, but because… well… there could be explosives? There could be surveillance devices? There could…

No one’s after you, Nikolai, I told myself.

Funny how knowing that didn’t make any difference, though.

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