Page 155 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

“Well, sort of,” I said. “Except, I don’t know, everything has to be on his terms. He wants to dictate everything, and the biggest problem is that all of us—the other members of the pack—get really turned on when he orders us around. But we also don’t like being ordered around. And he’s being unreasonable about everything. He’s trying to force us to follow some schedule he cooked up and when we’re all in bed together, he’s, like, directing everything—”

“Oh, really?” said Cole with a laugh, waggling his eyebrows.

I blushed. “Okay, that’s… not necessarily a bad thing. But I can’t help but feel, I don’t know, imprisoned. Like I’m never going to be free, and he’s going to control everything forever.”

“But you’re ignoring how much progress you’ve already made with him,” said Ilse. “He gave you all the alphas you’ve asked for. He’s willing to let them bite you, right? He even seems to be all right with Corentin, isn’t he?”

“I mean…” I squirmed. “Yes, okay. He is changing his mind.” I sighed. “I guess he does this thing where he makes it like he didn’t change his mind, like it was his idea all along, and—”

“He’s an alpha,” said Cole. “Of course he can’t acknowledge that he’s being influenced by someone else.”

I tilted my head. “You’re saying it’s about manipulation, then. I don’t overtly challenge him, but I subtly make him do what I want him to do?”

“Yes,” said Ilse. “It’s what omegas do. Alphas like it, even if they claim they don’t.” She lifted Cole’s hand and kissed his knuckles.

“I don’t do that,” said Cole, looking at her sidelong.

She snorted, letting go of his hand. “Baby, you do it all the time.”

He looked at her. “This is what you think of me, love, that I’m manipulative?”

“Oh, no, she said that word. I didn’t say anything about manipulation.”

“But you didn’t disagree,” he said. He crossed his arms over his chest, but he wasn’t angry, just thoughtful. “I think it’s a particularly alpha way to look at things.” He gave me a look. “You know how it is, with alphas, everything’s about hierarchy and domination and who ranks higher than whom, and I couldn’t give a flying fuck about any of that.”

I nodded. “No, me either. I just want them to be happy and confident. If they need to feel like they have some dominance for that, fine. But I don’t care about any of it.”

“That’s why, I guess, sometimes, you do sort of play the game with them?” Cole tapped his chin. “They live in this artificial world with all these dominance rules that don’t even matter, that aren’t even real, if you know what I mean. They’re making it up.”

I shook my head. “Dmitri’s dominance is real. He orders me to do things, and it’s hard to resist. Sometimes, it seems impossible.”

“Really?” said Cole.

“Is it not like that for you?” Now, I was worried.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Are you talking about in bed?”

“Not just in bed,” I said. “We were having an argument, before I ‘ran off’ and he ordered me to sit down, and I didn’t want to, but I just did it. Like he had taken fucking control of me, and I don’t like it. I feel conflicted, because in some ways, I like submitting to him and that feels really good and natural, and in other ways, I feel like I shouldn’t submit to him, and I’m afraid of what he’s going to make me do.”

“You don’t trust him,” said Cole.

“Of course I do!” I said immediately. And then I thought about it. My chin ducked down. “Oh, fuck, I don’t trust him.”

“It is a very new relationship,” said Cole. “Trust takes time. It might make sense that you need time to form that trust with him. And it’s true that he has a sort of reputation for being…”

“A jackass,” supplied Ilse.

Cole inclined his head.

“He’s not really a jackass,” I said.

“Well, that’s good,” said Cole, nodding. “That’s very good. The Queen of Angleford, I spoke to her once at a function. She’s an omega, you know. An omega queen, hardly a common thing. Her first alpha, the one who passed away, she told me he was a tyrant. He was so angry that they would not crown him king and that she was ranked higher than him, that he punished her for it. I think she was miserable for a number of years. There are alphas like that, after all. Being an alpha, it is power in certain ways, and people can be corrupted by power. They can get twisted on it. If you think Dmitri is that way, I don’t know if I can help.”

I bit down on my lower lip. “He’s not.”

“You have other alphas,” said Ilse. “You need their bites. If you have their bites, you have their power also. It will balance things.”

“But that’s it, then?” I said. “I just have to pit them against each other. This is my new life? It’s strife and conflict and them fighting over me forever and ever? It’s all of us against Dmitri? That’s not the life I want.”

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