Page 159 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

“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.”

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