Page 147 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

“Nikolai Wolff,” said the man, who was older and balding and fat, but wearing a crisp, tailored suit. “I suppose we should have expected you to get involved.”

“So,” said Nikolai, shooting him a confident grin that only made him look sexier, “you’ve heard of me.”

Was it awful that I was feeling so attracted to Nikolai that I just wanted him to knot me again right now?

It must be.

I should be more worried about Corentin, clearly.

What the hell was wrong with me?

The man spread his hands. “I don’t know why you’re here. We had a plan, a plan that involved keeping Corentin busy while we extracted money from you, but he slipped through our grasp, and—as I understood it—is back at your honeymoon castle.”

Nikolai turned to look at me.

I bit down on my lower lip.

Nikolai turned back to the man in the suit. “What are you talking about?”

“We’ll get the money a different way,” said the man. “We invested a lot in him, after all. We spared no expense getting him his knot. He wanted to be an alpha so very, very badly. He owes us, and we were getting our money back through stocks, but then he swindled us. Now, he just pays us back—one way or the other. You tell him that, all right?”

“You turned Corentin into an alpha?” I said. “With that awful weird machine thing, with the needles and everything?”

“He was obsessed with the idea,” said the man. “He would have given up anything and everything for it. He talked about you a lot. We thought you’d pay money to get him back. If he’d just have tried to get on a plane like we hoped he would. If he’d just have used his passport, we could have gotten him detained, and you’d be delivering a ransom right now—”

“Except we wouldn’t be delivering a ransom,” said Nikolai.

“Tell your prince, tell your king,” said the man with the bald head, “if they don’t want the entire world to know how we can make anyone into an alpha or omega, that we want paid back for our investment in Corentin Sejour. With interest.”

corentin

“BUT THAT DOESN’T make any sense!” I exploded. We were all together in a small sitting room in the castle, and Nikolai and Aurelie had just gotten finished explaining the entire gambit to me. Now, I understood why I’d been hacked, why they’d gone to so much effort. They’d wanted to fake a kidnapping, extract a sum of money, and that was exactly like the Banninos. It was also bullshit. I had already paid them back what they’d spent on turning me into an alpha. Probably twice over at this point, those fucking bastards. “Why would they want to expose the fact that they can make alphas to the world? It would ruin their business plan. Once everyone knows it’s possible, they will no longer be the only game in town. Other people will figure out how to do it, and they’ll undercut them. It’s insane. They’re bluffing.”

“Do you owe these people money?” said Nikolai, glaring at me.

“Oh, you know how it is when you go into debt with a family like that,” I said. “You pay and you pay and you pay, and they always insist you owe more. If I’d had the presence of mind not to get into an arrangement with them, maybe I wouldn’t have. On the other hand, if I wanted to become an alpha, they were the only choice, so…” I shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Dmitri.

“It does matter,” said Nikolai, rounding on him. “If he brought this down on our heads—”

“No,” said Dmitri. “He is part of the pack, and I have taken responsibility for him, so it doesn’t matter how it happened and there’s no reason to point fingers.”

I glanced at him, unsure of how I felt about that. Partly, it was that swelling feeling of goodness and belonging from before, which was really nice. Being his, being Dmitri’s, I liked it. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be his responsibility. I could take fucking care of myself. I’d been taking care of myself for my entire life.

“So, what?” spoke up Johannes. “We’re just going to pay them?”

“I don’t know,” said Dmitri. “I think I need to talk to the King about this, actually.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to cut your honeymoon short, you two.” I felt bad about it, actually. I still kind of hated Dmitri, and I still didn’t know how I felt about watching her with other men all the time, but I was starting to warm to the idea in many ways, and I also, well, I wanted her to be happy, and I hated being the cause of any of her discomforts.

“We’ve had nothing but honeymoon since I bit her,” said Dmitri. “It’s all right. We’ll travel back to the capital this evening, and when we get back, I’ll work on a new schedule—”

“Seriously?” said Johannes.

“No schedule,” said Aurelie.

“You should know,” said Nikolai, “that the only reason I am back is because of the omega. As far as I am concerned, I do not currently have a relationship with either of you.” He pointed at Dmitri and at Johannes. “We’ve broken up.”

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