Page 39 of Alpha Hunger

My heart’s gonna come out of my chest. I thought I was alone. “Yes, sir,” I manage.

“Alpha.”

“Yes, Alpha. What’s going on?” He’s alert, metal armor covering his shoulders and arms, so it can’t be good.

“District six needs my attention.”

“That’s my district.”

“Grab your shoes,” he says.

“Huh?” His armor and maleness make me both horny and dread filled that he’s going into district six. We haven’t seen the prince there since… ever. Nobody misses him.

“Ride with me.” He spins on the heel of his boot and leaves.

Shoes on, I rush after him. At the elevator, he holds the door, and I walk inside. The prince punches the ground floor and removes his hand from the doors, which promptly close in front of my face. While I realize I’m the personal assistant to the prince, I hoped he wouldn’t need a PA when he went for one of his visits. Those things are the stuff of legends, not the good kind parents can tell their kids before bedtime, but the kind they tell their kids when they’re misbehaving. “Eat your veggies, or Hunger will come for you.”

Hunger never came for me, though. I came to him on my own. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve made a mistake, but I don’t give up easily. Downstairs, I wait for him. I think he’s using the stairs, climbing up and down daily. I tap my foot. Ah, here he comes, and oh, boy, he’s marching with long strides, determination etched on his face.

The prince heads out of the building.

I follow. “Do you not use elevators?”

“Lifts are for pussies.”

Okay, then. In the courtyard, Horde Alphas in the kilts they calltilsengraved with a white hound, mingle. They’re about to kill something. I just feel the…no, I smell the scent of Alpha maleness in the air. It makes my pussy flutter.

The prince extends his hand.

I put mine into his.

He doesn’t bother with introducing me to anyone but pulls me alongside him and “helps me” up and onto the girl hound. A whine comes from my throat, and I can’t stop it. The prince closes his hands over mine and puts them on the saddle. I hold on for dear life. “Her name is Loyette. Offspring of Loyo, the finest Horde hound. It is an honor she lets you ride her.”

I don’t know why riding a girl hound verses a male hound makes me feel better. Or perhaps I’m sexist toward animals. All my pets are girls. Come to think of it, I pick girls on purpose. In my experience, they’re less aggressive, though I could be wrong and judgy.

The prince mounts Junior and clicks his tongue. Junior takes off down the street. Loyette sprints after Junior, and I’m hanging on to her saddle, screaming at the top of my lungs like I’m riding a roller coaster. I never even spun in the cups at Disney, the happiest place on Earth. One can meet and greet makeshift Hordesmen and hounds at Disney. Mom took me there and made me ride a horse dressed in hound gear. Loyette is no horse, not that I know shit about horses, but I do know a horse is soft and muscular, whereas Loyette’s got sharp hard scales on her body and moves so fast, I can barely make out the buildings as we zip by them.

Finally, she slows down and stops.

Beside me, Hunger says, “Quiet, female.”

I’ve screamed myself hoarse. Pun intended.

The Horde surrounds me and dismounts. They leave the hounds with me and disappear into the run-down homes of district six. I live a block away. Though the Horde patrols, the prince has never been here that I can remember, and the last time we heard the horns blare was seven years ago, when I was seventeen. We locked the house and stayed inside until the two Hordesmen left the district.

The horn blares. Next to me, the prince looks up and closes his eyes, his rattle growing louder until it’s the only sound on the street. From his profile, I see his smile, gleaming white canines over his bottom lip. I don’t believe the papers or anyone at the office sees this side of him. There’s something raw about the way he sits on the hound, the way he looks at me like I’m prey and he the hunter. “Take me to your house.”

Oh my God.

Chapter 14

Raven

Prior to becoming the king of Regha, my father was an Alpha Collector, a legendary one who could tell an Omega from a distance of hundreds of miles. Identifying a Regha Omega is easy. Physically, they are different from Betas and Alphas, with clear markings on their faces. A human one? Not so much, and certainly not when they ingest Betaren and mess with their dynamic.

Where there is one Omega, there might be another. Anna doesn’t have a sister, but she might come from a bloodline of Omegas. I need to scent her parents. I’m going to kill two birds, or two humans, with a single visit. It optimizes the use of my time.

The clock on the siege ticks, and I click my tongue for Junior to hurry along. He needs no guide. He has sniffed out my PA and knows where she lives, even if I didn’t know her address.

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