Page 73 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

THEY WERE ALL really stupid.

I should have expected this, though. I’d been around rich people my entire life. They had this idiotic sense that they were safer than they were. They tended to believe that things were going to work out for them, and I guess it was because—when you have that much money and power and influence—you usually can make it so that you don’t have a lot of real problems.

But it made them stupid when people were plotting against them.

Prince Dmitri let me walk off, out of that room, and run free in the castle. He was a dumbass.

Even if he’d tried to have me removed, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d spent my first day working in the kitchen surreptitiously stealing the keys from where they hung in the pantry and then I’d had copies made on my lunch break and brought them back without anyone being the wiser. So, I could get into the servants’ entrance anyway, anytime I wanted. If they’d escorted me out, I would have just come back in.

Because I wasn’t giving up on this, not yet.

Aurelie was right about the way I left. In my defense, it was a bad situation for me. I’d had to cart her, in heat, to her family’s doorstep, while she was begging for my cock, and tell them, like, “I think your daughter is an omega.”

Which I really should have figured out before, during that situation, but I think I didn’t want to figure it out, because I knew that would mean we couldn’t be together.

Even though I’d tried to tell myself, only a thousand and a half times, that there was no way we could be together.

The thing about me and Aurelie is that it was always there, always, in some weird way that seemed to defy all sense. When my mother first told me that I had to come to their huge house after school every day because she didn’t have anyone to watch me, I was pretty intimidated.

I remember the first time I saw Aurelie, though. Her hair had been put into pigtails, but one of them had nearly fallen out. She was wearing pants she’d rolled up to her knees, but they were wet at the ends anyway. She had two mermaid dolls clutched in the other hand, and she had these enormous big brown eyes, so big they took up her whole face, and she was just beautiful.

The minute I saw her, I couldn’t look anywhere else.

She started chattering at me right away. “Hi, I’m Aurelie, do you like mermaids? I do, and I’m making them swim, but then I got wet, and I’m not supposed to get my clothes wet, oops. I heard you were coming and that your name is Corentin. I’m six, how old are you? Do you like to swim, because we have a pool, but I’m not allowed to swim without adult supervision because they think I could drown, but I won’t because I’m a good swimmer, but they don’t care.” Like that. On and on, asking me questions, but never pausing to let me get a word in edgewise. Constant chatterbox.

She should have been annoying, because she was vain and self-centered and thought too much of herself.

For some reason, she wasn’t.

I followed her around all the time when we were there. I would do whatever she wanted. I played mermaids and ponies and even Barbies a few times. But, to be fair, she liked to play with my toys, too. I’d bring over toy cars and trucks and water guns, and she thought they were fascinating and fun.

When I was around her, it was better. That’s what it was like. I always wanted to be around her, and when I was around her, it soothed something inside me. It made me feel connected and safe and happy and… and complete.

I started thinking about having sex with her from the moment I hit puberty. She was a girl, and we were the same age, so she shot up taller than me when were twelve, and then she started to look, you know, woman shaped, and I was frightened, because I still looked like a little boy, and why did that happen that way? But then the next summer, I had a growth spurt, and then I towered over her, and every time I was around her, I started getting these awfully embarrassing erections out of nowhere. Touching her was all I thought about for years, even though I never did anything about it.

If I hurt Aurelie, it could have ruined my mother’s life. She needed that job, and Aurelie’s parents had been really good to my mother, and to me by extension. The last thing I wanted to do was to taint all that by putting my grubby hands all over Aurelie Le Blanc.

I swear, I never would have. Too much was at risk. It wasn’t worth it, especially since we had no future, none at all.

I mean, okay, yeah, I kissed her after she started pursuing me, figuring out where I hung out and with who and then showing up there. And after that kiss, maybe I started to think that maybe somehow there was some way I could make it all work, maybe I could find a way to get money somehow, and that if I had money, maybe then things would be different.

So, when she showed up that night, at my window, all breathless and a little sweaty—and even then, the way she smelled drove me out of my head—and said she knew she was ready to lose her virginity, and she wanted it to be me, that it had always been me, I…

I should have said no.

I should have known it wouldn’t work.

I should have realized something about that was off, that girls didn’t do that unless they were omegas, but I was so in love with her that I didn’t think that way. I just wanted it. Wanted her.

I remember pushing her back through the window of my bedroom, which was the way I usually went in and out at night, since my mother didn’t know I left after my curfew all the time. I remember driving off with her in my car.

She was sitting in the passenger seat, squirming a little, letting out these breathy sort of moans, and I think I knew then, deep down, what it was, I think I did. I didn’t allow myself to really acknowledge it, and I guess I hoped, somehow, I was going to be enough for her, even though, uh, I was a virgin, too.

Did I save myself for Aurelie Le Blanc?

Not exactly, but it was hard to compete with her. When you’ve experienced a connection with someone that had a foundation of feeling complete when you’re around her, one that’s so strong that it doesn’t matter what you’re doing together, whether it’s playing with unicorn dolls or listening to her talk to you about makeup or whatever the hell she would babble on about, when you’re dazzled by a woman to the degree that I was dazzled by her, then other women simply seem like pale imitations.

I’d had chances with other girls. I knew it, but I’d never taken advantage of any of them.

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