Page 85 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

It should be, really. Most people were happy enough with one significant other. But having a designation made things more intense, and maybe it was harder to be satisfied as an alpha.

I stood at the front of the cathedral, watching the wedding ceremony, until it was my turn to intervene. As one of the groomsmen, I had to bring forward Dimitri’s pelt.

Back in the day, this would have been an animal he’d killed and skinned himself just for this occasion, but nowadays, it was a very old bearskin that had been in the family for ages.

I brought it to him, folded up.

The attendant told Dimtri to wrap it around his bride and put her under his protection.

Then they both put their hands on the pommel of a sword and stabbed it down into a hole in the altar together, while there were vows in ancient Valhnish that they repeated.

Then they did the traditional wedding vows, her still wrapped in the pelt, and the kiss, and then I came forward to take it off her shoulders because it wouldn’t look nice in the pictures if they walked up the aisle like that. It was kind of an ugly bearskin.

Traditionally, she would wear it until the wedding night, when the groom would remove it, but that tradition had been waved long ago.

We went back up the aisle, then. Ilse went first, and then I followed. The bride and groom would come behind us. I stood on the steps outside the cathedral, and then Nikolai was there, nimbly making his way to stand next to me.

Nikolai’s voice was soft. “He’s here.”

“Who is?” I said.

“Corentin,” he said.

I looked around. “Where?”

Nikolai nodded at the other side of the street, behind the police barrier. There were all sorts of people out here, watching the prince and princess as they came out of the cathedral. I was standing here next to Ilse on the groom’s side (Aurelie’s sisters, the bridesmaids, were on the other side in matching pink dresses) and they’d be coming out at any minute.

Aurelie and Dmitri were going to get into a gilded horse-drawn carriage at the bottom of the steps, where they’d be taken back to the castle, where the reception was taking place on the castle grounds.

I couldn’t make him out, Corentin. There were too many people.

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to tail him,” said Nikolai. “So, don’t wait for me in the car. Just go.”

“Okay,” I said. “Do you think he’s… dangerous?”

“Well,” said Nikolai, “he supposedly owns Euphoric Wheels—”

“The skateboard company?’

“They have a ton of ties to organized crime,” said Nikolai.

“Do they?” I said.

“And no one understands how the hell it is that he somehow turned himself into an alpha,” said Nikolai. “So, I don’t know if he’s dangerous, but I don’t think we should trust him.”

“Okay, good point,” I said.

Nikolai patted me on the shoulder and then disappeared, melting between people in the crowd until I couldn’t see him anymore. It was eerie how good he was at that.

At that moment, Aurelie and Dmitri burst out of the doors, and everyone cheered. Aurelie was glowing, smiling and waving, and I got a lungful of their combined scents, and it was powerful. They mingled nicely. She did something to the intensity of Dmitri’s scent, mellowing it in a way that brought it down, and he made her scent more intense in a way. Together, they gave me the craziest damned knot.

Ilse elbowed me. “They scent like that?”

“I know,” I muttered.

“Geez, that’s almost as good as Cole and the King together,” she said. “I’m not even attracted to either of them and… geez.”

I chuckled.

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