Page 4 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

“That’s a good thing,” said Johannes, his voice dropping to a velvet tone. “I’m glad. But when it comes to Nikolai, if you could do your best not to let on.”

“He is an alpha?” I said

Johannes inclined his head. “A secret of the Valhn nobility, I suppose. A commoner with a knot. He’s been a sort of, I don’t know, companion to various alphas since he was young, too young. But he’s ours now, Dmitri’s and mine, more mine than Dmitri’s these days, truthfully. He likes you, and we tend to let him have whatever he wants, so…”

My lips parted. Did I understand that the way I thought I did? I blinked.

“We’ll talk all about it later,” said Johannes. “The point is, it’s best if others don’t know about his designation.”

“Prince Dimitri will allow me others?” I said. “I had heard that the princes of Valhn were not so inclined.”

“Other bites? No,” said Johannes. “Other knots, certainly. A bit of discretion may be required, since we don’t like it splashed all over the gossip sites and the tabloids, but it’s always been done that way. There’s no omega on earth who’s satisfied with one alpha. If Dmitri tried to keep you to himself, he’d end up ragged and ill trying to keep up with you. He knows very well he needs assistance, and that’s me and Nikolai.”

I smiled.

“If you’re agreeable, of course,” said Johannes. “I promise nothing is against your will.”

“I’m agreeable,” I said, feeling a blush steal across my cheeks.

He winked at me. “Excellent news.”

nikolai

I’D NEVER BEEN so close to an omega.

When Dmitri’d invited her for that dinner, I’d wished to inspect her, because I thought of her as a threat to him, and that was what I did. I protected Dmitri from threats, when I could. I’d been trained, long ago, to assess threats and destroy them. Nowadays, my situation had changed, but that didn’t mean I didn’t still see threats everywhere.

But Johannes said that I couldn’t inspect the omega then. The omega would scent me, know my designation, and we couldn’t be sure she was the one for Dmitri. Until we were, they would rather not out my designation, for my own safety, Johannes said.

It wasn’t a situation I was much used to, anyone worrying about my own safety.

Dmitri and Johannes were the only people who ever cared.

Maybe my mother would have, I don’t know. But I’d never met her, or—if I had—I’d been so young I didn’t remember.

The princes were my family. My pack.

I protected them. They protected me.

It was a good arrangement.

I didn’t think I’d like the omega. She was an interloper into our perfectly formed arrangement, I thought, though I had to admit that, lately, Johannes kept me too busy, and that Dmitri probably needed someone else to warm his bed. There was only so much of me to go around. Still, in some ways it felt as if she was supplanting me, and I wasn’t keen on that thought.

So, I thought I’d dislike her, maybe even hate her.

But…

Well, she was pretty.

If asked this morning, I would have claimed that I wasn’t much attracted to women, but the truth was, I’d presented as an alpha when I was only eleven years old, and I’d been immediately put to work seducing other alphas, almost exclusively male alphas. I’d knotted for them easily, had been enthusiastic about going to their beds. It hadn’t seemed like a hardship at the time. Being abused physically was awful, of course, but being abused inside your mind—feeling as if you didn’t know what part of the abuse you brought on yourself, feeling as if you took pleasure from your own degradation? That was where the deepest scars were.

Back then, I spied on alphas, found out their secrets. My organization, a sort of rogue black ops outfit called Sector Unius, sold those secrets to the highest bidder. From time to time, I was bought and sold as a bodyguard of sorts, someone who could be intimately close to an alpha at all times, even in his bed. I was paid to do whatever it was that alpha wished.

Sector Unius didn’t exist anymore. Dmitri had seen to that. He’d saved me from that life.

Anyway, point being, I had little experience with omegas or women, and she was… alluring.

I sat far away in her sitting room, just gazing at her. Johannes sat with her, flirting shamelessly with both her and her mother and her younger sisters. They were all charmed by him.

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