Page 22 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

Johannes laughed. “Exactly like that, I tell you. Is that what you and the King do?”

Ilse laughed, too. “Oh, yes. We divide Cole up by body parts as well. I get the arms and the right side of his neck and the king gets his legs and his ass.”

I furrowed my brow. Cole was the King’s omega. His formal title was King Consort, as I understood, but he was addressed as Your Majesty, just like the King. I hadn’t been aware that Ilse was connected to Cole, but now that I thought about it, it wouldn’t make sense for the king’s omega not to have more than one alpha servicing him.

Ilse turned on me. “We’re likely scandalizing you, poor thing. I assure you, no one is dividing up omegas in that way at all. It won’t be like that for you. You’re just…” She looked me over again, admiringly. “You’re just perfect. It’s like if I looked up ‘omega’ in the dictionary, it would be a picture of you.”

I shook my head. “I’m not perfect.”

“Well, I’m allowed to be effusive, since I’m very, very spoken for, of course. Devoted to Cole, body, soul, and internal knot. Also, it’s a benefit to being a female alpha. You get by with being remarkably aggressive. People think it’s cute, and I use that to my advantage.” She gave me a smile now that was downright feral.

My eyes widened, and looked up at Johannes, who grinned down at me.

“Yeah, don’t make Ilse mad,” he said. “Objectively terrifying, am I right?”

She elbowed him, snickering. “You’re horrible, Johannes. Just the worst.”

“Bad boy prince,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a hard job, but someone’s got to do it.”

She snorted.

I bit down on my bottom lip and eyed him. Bad boy prince, huh? And he was mine. Sort of.

“Where is Cole?” said Johannes, looking around. “Where’s the King?”

“Not here,” said Ilse. “Off together on some romantic overnight, because the King thought that Cole wouldn’t want to be upstaged by another omega, a female omega.”

I furrowed my brow.

“He’ll like you,” said Ilse to me. “He’ll love you. But the gossip sites will have snapped eighty thousand grainy pictures of you getting out of the car here or at the hotel in Ludwig, and they’ll definitely compare you to Cole, and he’ll be wanting. The press is not overtly homophobic, but there’s always an undercurrent. It’s disgusting.”

“Right,” I murmured.

Johannes snorted. “Just don’t look at the tabloids, omega.”

“Definitely don’t,” said Ilse.

“Let’s change the subject,” Johannes said, giving me a conspiratorial grin. “I wanted you to know, I talked to Dmitri, and he’s fine with it, what we discussed earlier.”

“Really?” I said, thrown by that. “The, um, the—”

“Yes, with Nikolai and me,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. His scent changed, and mine did, too.

“Oh, you smell nice together, you two do,” said Ilse. “Very nice.” She sighed, smoothing at her dress. “It’s so nice to have another omega at the palace. This place, do you sometimes feel like it’s just alpha energy on steroids? You could get smothered in it. We need you. We need some softness and light and brightness.”

Brightness? But they were all so… blond.

I turned back to Johannes. “You talked to him? Already?”

He sighed heavily. “I could slug him, really, for the way he’s being to you. I really could. I think…” He groaned. “It pains me to say this, because he’s really disgustingly perfect, but I think he might be a bit insecure, if you can believe that. Maybe after you sit next to each other today, and he’s close to you, he’ll stop being phenomenally stupid.”

Insecure?

Well, why hadn’t I considered that? Obviously, it would be daunting for him, mating an omega, finding his future queen. Maybe everything would be all right. If he needed reassurance, I could do that. I was good at that sort of thing, making people feel at ease.

I smiled a small smile, pleased and reassured.

We chatted a bit more. Well, mostly, I watched Johannes and Ilse tease each other. They also made plans for that evening, talking about going to a club in the city, and they both said I should come along.

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