Page 8 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

“Your knot,” I said before I could stop myself.

He grunted.

I blushed fiercely, covering my mouth with one hand, letting out a noise of horror and embarrassment.

His hand jerked across the table and his fingers interlaced with my other hand, a flood of hot warmth going into me at his touch. “Oh, so, this is what it’s like with an omega,” he said in an affected voice. “I think I’m going to like it. A lot.”

I lowered my hand from my mouth. “I’m so very, very sorry. I didn’t mean to say it.”

“You talk about my knot any time you want,” he said. “It’s yours to do with as you like. I’ve never had a knot like this in my life.”

I perfumed again. I gulped at my wine. “If… if Prince Dmitri allows me others, does that mean we could—”

“Oh, no, sweet girl, no,” he said. “Not yet.” He pulled his hand away, extricating our linked fingers.

I felt the lack of him like an empty space inside me. My face fell.

“Sorry, it’s not up to me,” he breathed. “If I could have my way, I’d have you now. I’d have you constantly.”

“Not until Dmitri has me first, then?” I said.

“Yes, and he won’t until after the wedding.”

I lifted my gaze to his, startled. “But that’s weeks away.”

“Yeah,” he said in a strangled voice. “I don’t think I realized how torturous that’s going to be.”

“I can… it’s fine,” I said. I don’t need men, and I don’t need sex. I’ve been surviving just fine without it. Why are these men affecting me so much?

“It’s tradition in Valhn to wait,” he said. “He’ll bite you that night, too.”

I nodded. “Yes, I knew that.” It was a little controversial, actually, all the firsts at once. There was another school of thought that it should be a process. Sex in one encounter, then a progression to knotting in a later encounter, and finally biting in an even later encounter. The idea was that it allowed the bond between an omega and an alpha to grow organically. It also gave them both time to back out before the bite.

The bite was a permanent life bond.

Once that was done, there was no taking it back.

But I wouldn’t back out.

I wanted to be Queen, after all.

Yes, I was very, very shallow about the entire thing. I was in it for the crown, nothing more. Dmitri wanted me, so I’d use him to get that.

Where Johannes and Nikolai fit into that, I wasn’t entirely sure, I supposed, but apparently, I wouldn’t find out until after the wedding.

I hadn’t expected to be having these kinds of reactions, I had to admit. Maybe I should have been around more alphas before this, to grow accustomed to the way it felt. Or maybe that would have been playing with fire.

It was in the contract, the one I’d signed. I’d had to initial it.

I, Aurelie Le Blanc, do hereby certify that none of my sexual orifices have ever been knotted by an alpha and that I will save myself for the knot of my husband-to-be.

Everyone had seen it, even my dad.

It had been sort of mortifying.

Eew.

But it was important to Prince Dmitri, so I made sure it was true. And I didn’t think I’d want a knot. But the more that I was in the presence of Prince Johannes’s scent, the more I began to, well, ache. I wasn’t sure what I was aching for, not exactly, but I knew I wanted—needed it.

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