Page 63 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

He whispered into my skin that he’d find some way to make it work, to get enough money that he could take care of me the way I wanted to be taken care of, in the way that I was accustomed.

I said it didn’t matter; he swore it to me.

I don’t know at what point he knew I was an omega.

I didn’t figure it out, didn’t really understand it, until it was over, until he’d taken me home to get help from my parents—I’d screamed at him until I was hoarse not to do that, because I was mortified.

Even after that, after the injection, after finding out what I was, after knowing it was impossible, I still…

It hurt that he disappeared without ever saying goodbye.

It hurt that he just left me.

I never got over that.

corentin

SHE WAS GETTING married the next day. Talk about cutting it close.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t been trying to get to her already, though. I’d just been, well, failing.

My first plan had been to sneak in and climb up a trestle or some shit to her window. I don’t know what I imagined, like, swinging out on a rope that was fastened to the top of some turret or something? Swashbuckling, like I was some romantic hero come to save the love of my life from this life she’d been sold into by her family?

Anyway, I couldn’t get past security, and then they knew what I looked like, so it all took some doing.

But eventually, I managed to get hired working in the castle, because they needed extra help for the wedding. Getting a job as security would been ideal because I would have had more access to the castle. But since I’d already been caught trying to sneak into the castle, that was out.

So, I ended up getting a job in the kitchens.

I did prep cook all day for the wedding, and then I hid in the pantry when everyone was leaving for the day. I waited until the lights went out, and then I was able to sneak out into the kitchen and make my way through the castle, looking for her.

I’d heard some gossip, bad gossip, gossip that had made me feel devastated.

That he’d already bitten her.

That he was keeping her captive in his bedchamber, basically never letting her out of his sight, that he was guarding her like some dragon guarding a hoard.

But it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. The way I understood it, omegas could have multiple bites from multiple alphas, and he was a stuffy, stupid prince who thought of her like property anyway. He’d negotiated for her. He’d made her sign contracts, like she was a plot of land.

He’d give her up easily enough, I thought.

If not, well, maybe I’d just kill him.

That was really a B plan, because it limited our options once I was a wanted murderer, of a crown prince, no less. We’d have to go somewhere far, far away, somewhere that didn’t have an extradition treaty with Valhn, but the good news was that those sorts of countries tended not to be expensive to live in and have temperate climates. Sure, some of them were ruled by fascist dictators, which was less than ideal, but…

Well, maybe it wouldn’t come to that.

I went to her room, anyway, because it was the night before the wedding, and I was hoping there was some kind of tradition in place, that a bride-to-be can’t spend the night with her husband-to-be or something?

She wasn’t there.

So, I had to go to his room.

The whole way there I was psyching myself up to fight him. Hopefully not kill him, but maybe knock him out or tie him up or subdue him in some other way. I was positive I could take him in a fight. I’d seen him, and he looked huge and strong, but I knew about that kind of strength.

I actually read an article about it once, about how muscles that are honed from lifting weights in gyms might look impressive, but in terms of actual feats of strength, people who got muscles from doing functional labor tended to be stronger. Why that was, I didn’t even know, but when I read it, I sensed its truth.

I hated this Prince Dmitri.

---