Page 64 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

I would have hated him regardless, even if he hadn’t treated Aurelie like this.

I hated people like him on principle.

I got to the door of his room and debated between knocking or forcing the door open, maybe breaking it down.

But I never made a decision, because I caught the scent coming from within. It was her—I remembered her scent, even if I hadn’t had the heightened sense of smell that I had now when I knew her. She smelled amazing, and it practically made my knees buckle.

My own scent rose, involuntarily, twining in with hers.

And then the door opened, and there was his scent, and, uh, it was weird, because he smelled good.

Truth was, I’d always been a little bit attracted to men, something I hadn’t exactly advertised when I was young. It was the kind of thing that other men found threatening, so I was careful only to let it show in places where I knew it would be welcomed.

And yeah, I’d recognized this Prince Dmitri guy was objectively attractive, but, um, wow.

Had I ever reacted to a man like that before? I had a knot, boom, like that.

It’s from Aurelie, I told myself. Yeah, definitely. Had to be from her, not from him. I hated him.

“I scented you through the door,” said the prince. “Who are you?”

Aurelie appeared next to him, holding her shirt closed, because it was unbuttoned. I got a little hint of it, though, of the bite mark, there, on her chest.

My heart squeezed painfully. I’d been hoping it was gossip. I’d been hoping it wasn’t true.

“Corentin?” she said in a wondering voice.

“Hey,” I whispered.

Her face twisted as tears came to her eyes, and then she flung herself at me, hugging me tightly, pressing her face into my neck.

I hugged her back.

“I thought I would never see you again,” she murmured into my skin.

I just held her. She felt so good in my arms.

14

dmitri

SHE WAS STILL hugging him. She was crying, going on and on about how she couldn’t believe he was here, after all this time, that it was really him.

He had his hands all over her, touching her with this casual kind of possessiveness, and there was something about the way their scents twined up that smelled kind of phenomenal. It was making me hard. I was always hard around her, but this kind of knotted up erection, it was making me lightheaded.

He looked at me, giving me a cocky sort of grin, projecting a challenge at me.

Prior claim, it seemed to say.

I had this weird feeling, like she belonged to him in a way that she didn’t belong to me, and I didn’t like it. Partly because of my own possessiveness. She was mine. I had bitten her. She and I were bonded, connected on a level that was so deep it was impossible to fathom. But also because he made her happy, and I wanted her to be happy, and so I felt this pressure, from our bond, to care about him in the way that she cared about him, and that felt strange and odd.

I was pretty sure I didn’t like this guy.

Something about him?

He was just the kind of guy I didn’t like.

Aurelie turned, one arm still twined around this guy’s waist, wiping at her face with her other hand. “Dmitri, this is Corentin. He’s, um, he’s… we grew up together. But I haven’t seen him in a really long time, and—” She turned back to him, pulling her brows together in indignation. “Where the fuck have you been? You couldn’t call? Or text? Or send a fucking email?”

---