Page 5 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

I noted little things about her, the shape of her fingers, how graceful and elegant they seemed. I imagined kissing them. I imagined those elegant fingers on my own skin.

I had a knot. There was that.

It was like a knot I’d get for an alpha and yet not. It was different in some way that intrigued me. I was forcing myself not to pay too much attention to it, of course.

One rule about this omega was that she could never have been knotted, never once.

Dmitri wanted to be the first.

So, I would be allowed to knot the omega eventually, but not for some time, not until after the wedding night, which was when Dmitri wanted to do it. It was best if I didn’t let myself get out of control. Alphas could control themselves. Sometimes, they did bad things and said it was because they couldn’t help it, but that wasn’t the case. They could help it. Sometimes, they just didn’t.

She was very pretty in that way of Castillian women. Small and dark, with long lashes. She was shaped like an omega, with a figure made for lust. She had a pleasant voice, and she smelled luscious. I wouldn’t mind bathing in that scent of hers, rubbing myself all over her, getting myself drenched in it.

But these were all surface things, in the end.

There wasn’t much chance to really get to know her, not while Johannes was flirting with her mother, complimenting the comtesse’s taste in decorating, and laughing at the omega’s sister’s jokes.

So, I got up from his chair and motioned for Johannes.

Johannes smirked at me in a particularly Johannes way. Johannes was always smirking, always smiling, always laughing. Johannes never took anything seriously, and I lived for the moments I broke that cavalier air and made the other man react. “One moment, comtesse,” he said to the omega’s mother, and came over to confer with me.

“We should get going,” I said softly.

“Oh, should we?” said Johannes. “You want to be alone with her, I see.”

“It’s hard to know anything about her with all the extraneous… noise.”

“The scent will be more intense in the car, you know.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, we’ll break in two hours to stay at the Grande Suites in Ludwig.” It was a good thing we weren’t doing the entire four-hour trip at once, I thought. A very good thing. I could control myself, of course, but I’d have my hands full pulling Johannes off the omega.

“True,” said Johannes. He turned back to everyone. “Nikolai has reminded me we are on a tight schedule, and how it has been impressed upon us that we must not miss dinner in Ludwig. I’m afraid we need to be getting on the road soon.”

“Oh, of course,” said the omega’s mother. “We are so sorry to have kept you. You must be on your way.”

But we weren’t on our way, not for another forty minutes, because there was a lot of talk—the omega hugged everyone in her family and they all said goodbye, and then they stopped and talked for ten minutes and then she excused herself to do one last look over her bedroom and then more talk—but finally, we all exited the house together and climbed into the car.

I sat in the front seat, leaving the back seat to the omega and Johannes, which was proper. I was a commoner, after all, but I turned back to them and said that if they felt it necessary, the omega could come up front, to keep some distance between all their scents.

The driver was a man named Jerome. He knew all our secrets, including my designation. I had vetted him myself before he’d been trusted with such information.

Finally, however, we were all arranged, and the car pulled away, the omega waving out the window to her family.

She rolled up the window and sagged into the seat, shaking her head slowly. “I wonder, why send you at all? I could have been delivered to him by my family just as easily.”

“No, it’s by design,” I said. I was turned round from the front seat to look at her. “He wanted Johannes and I to get to know you.”

“Is that what he wanted?” Aurelie looked back and forth between us. “The three of you? It’s some sort of menage a trois?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Him and me and me and Johannes. Not the three of us.”

“Oh,” she said, furrowing her brow. “So, then, all of you at once with me? That’s not happening, I suppose.”

“Hmm,” I said, sucking in a breath at the possibilities of that.

“Sorry.” The omega laughed. “I don’t know why… until only an hour or so ago, I assumed I was going to him, only him, except maybe if I was very needy in heat or something, so, I don’t know why I’m disappointed.”

“I’m disappointed, too,” I said. “What do you think, Johannes? Could you ever see him that way?”

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