Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Viktor
T he scent of her lingers.
I stand alone in the kitchen and inhale slowly, deeply, like a male starved.
I’ve just discovered that my new human nanny is fantastically beautiful and the sexiest female I’ve ever encountered. I was actually considering the idea of spreading her out on the kitchen counter so I could take down those small shorts and discover if she was already wet for me.
Hazel Novak is gone but remains everywhere in the air.
This is impossible. Unprecedented. My body feels enflamed.
Is this…a Blood Calling? Is this what it feels like?
If so, it is doing things to my body I have not felt in my entire thirty-six years of existence.
I did not even feel this way for my former wife, Lily’s mother.
My fangs ache and my hands shake at my sides.
The marble of the kitchen island cracks under my right palm. A hairline fissure, spreading slowly outward like ice. A growl rumbles in my chest. I straighten and step back. Cold rainwater drips steadily from my coat onto the stone floor, the only sound in the kitchen now that Hazel has left.
It was good that I sent her away. I cannot fuck the nanny. This is wrong.
My hearing is ten times better than a human’s, therefore I know that somewhere upstairs she breaks into a run.
Her door slams and I hear the soft click of a lock turning.
Smart female. She has correctly identified that the male who just dismissed her from his kitchen is more dangerous than she knows.
I curse in Krovenian. Then again, longer, more colorful, because the first one wasn’t enough.
I returned home hours earlier than expected.
The last three days were spent at the capital reviewing border reports with my generals.
A long afternoon in the Defense Chamber with General Ulder and his lieutenants going over winter readiness on the eastern range.
Humans know better than to attack us or involve us in their wars, but as we’ve learned from history, humans often behave irrationally, therefore it’s best to be prepared.
I spent an evening with the Council of Elders and my brother, Nikolai, that ran two hours longer than scheduled, because two of the three Elders cannot have a meeting without mentioning my obligation to remarry.
To produce more pure-blood heirs. To strengthen the line, as is your duty, Crown Prince.
I endured their lectures as long as I could, then I walked out of the chamber while Elder Petra was still mid-sentence.
I drove the two hours home, alone, in the rain, the way I prefer. I did not expect to find, in my kitchen, at midnight, a sexy human in pajamas eating my pastries. Her lips are perfect. Her hands beg to be touched and placed on my body.
What is wrong with me? Simply being near, scenting her and speaking to her causes havoc in my entire body.
My brother recently experienced a Blood Calling for a human which caused an uproar in our country. The Council was ready to banish Nikolai’s human, but they were convinced to allow my brother and his mate to rule as King and Queen, while my daughter, Lily, is now the next in line for the throne.
And now, after I had finally made peace with the fact that the gods and my status as Krovenian royalty had made it impossible for me to experience a Blood Calling…
I might be experiencing one too? The Calling is rare.
Only months ago, I counseled Nikolai,“The Blood Calling is sacred. It is not to be tossed away arbitrarily.”
Heh.
I close my eyes. Easier said, when I was not experiencing the actual Blood Calling myself.
I can still see an image in my mind of this female I finally met, the new nanny for my daughter.
The shapely legs. Small white slippers, ridiculous and somehow devastating.
Buttons running down the front of her sleeveless top, neatly fastened all the way to her collarbone, modest in a way that should not have been arousing and somehow was.
The mess of light brown hair sliding out of a ponytail at the back of her head.
Streaks of a clay mask drying on her cheeks.
The milk on her upper lip she didn’t know was there.
Hazel leaned against the counter like she owned the room. Her soft brow furrowed when I asked her name. And her hand trembled, very slightly, when she set down the pastry.
She had been afraid.
I felt it from across the kitchen. The small quick uptick of her pulse when I stepped into the doorway. The slight catch in her breath. The careful way she set her food down, as if a sudden movement might make me lunge.
I am the Commander of the Krovenian Armed Forces. The tabloids call meThe Dark Prince because of my ruthless hunts of human criminal organizations. Criminals think they can hide and organize within our borders but soon find that this is an incorrect assumption.
Krovenians have been the do not test us species on this continent for thousands of years.
We do not start wars, invade, or interfere in human affairs.
But twice in recorded history, ambitious human warlords have come for us.
Genghis Khan attacked Krovenia in the thirteenth century and did not survive the winter.
Adolf Hitler made the same mistake seven hundred years later. We assassinated them both.
My great-grandfather led the second response personally. I have read his journals.
I led my own response four years ago, when a large band of dangerous humans crossed our border and started a base for human trafficking. They were slaughtered within moments.
The European press called me the Dark Prince afterward and the name stuck.
It is, mostly, accurate.
In that moment in the kitchen I wanted to cross the room and put my mouth on her throat.
Slide my hand into that ponytail and tilt her head back so I could scent the place behind her ear where her pulse beat fast, then lift her onto the marble island, step between her bare knees and bury my face in her neck and taste what I was scenting.
I wanted to bite her. The Calling hit me like a hammer to the chest the second I stepped into the doorway.
I shake my head.
I am the Crown Prince of Krovenia, second son of the late king, brother to the reigning monarch, father to the heir presumptive of the throne. I have buried a wife. I serve in this government as Minister of Defense and command the deadliest army on Earth.
And I almost lost it tonight to a female in fuzzy slippers.
The Calling has not lessened. If anything, it is worse now that she is gone.
It is reaching for her through the walls of this castle, mapping the route between us—down the corridor, up the stairs, past the nursery, second door on the left, where she has locked herself in. My body knows exactly where she is.
Her room is close to Lily’s room and my room is also close to Lily’s. Therefore, the new nanny’s room is not that far from my own.
I stop pacing and think of my dead wife, Elara.
I took her death hard, as did Lily. We did not have a proper Blood Calling, but she was still my best friend.
I enjoyed her presence and losing her in such a sudden and shocking manner was difficult for us all.
She was a kind female. Our marriage was arranged when I was twenty-six and she was twenty-four, and we built a life together with the gentle efficiency of two well-bred Krovenians who understood our duty.
She was my friend and the mother of my daughter.
Elara laughed at my dry humor and tolerated my long silences.
I never burned for her. Not once. Not even in the early days when I would have given anything to feel for her what the poets described. And it was the same for her. We were not a Blood Calling match, but a political match and we had to drink Elixir in order to mate.
And now, tonight, a stranger walks into my kitchen and my body knows her in a way it never knew the female I married.
The Bellamy Group sent her here. Her contract ends a year from now.
For all I know, there is a human male waiting for her in America, counting the months until she comes home with her completion bonus and falls into his arms. She probably has every intention of leaving Krovenia the moment she is paid.
I will not act on a scent. I refuse. If the Calling has chosen, then so be it.
But I have not chosen. Not yet. Not until I know what kind of female my body has decided to bind me to.
Not until I know whether she is gentle with my daughter when she does not know I am watching. Not until I know whether she will stay.
There is also the matter of what I am, and what she is.
What I want from her, in the privacy of my own thoughts, would terrify her if she knew the full picture. I will not be the male who frightens her into yielding to him.
And there is the other matter. She is in my employ.
Hazel works for me and lives under my roof.
The power imbalance is staggering. I could ruin her career with one letter, end her placement with one word.
She knows this. Every staff member who has ever worked for the royal household knows this.
To even imply interest in her would be coercion. Whether I meant it that way or not.
The thought twists something cold in my chest. I will not be that male. I will not be the male who collected a female because she had no leverage to say no.
If there is ever to be anything between us—and I have not granted that if even the dignity of a yes —then it cannot begin while she is my employee.
Lily needs her. Three Krovenian nannies failed at what this human has accomplished in five days. Madam Petrova has been sending me messages, which I read on my tablet, letting me know that my daughter is warming to this human like she hasn’t toward anyone else, since her mother passed away.
I cannot jeopardize this relationship that is already working so well for my daughter.
I will keep my distance. I will not touch her, nor will I be alone with her in any room small enough to scent her in.
I will watch how she is with Lily when she does not know I am there.
I will see who she actually is, beneath the agency profile and the careful politeness of a female on a one-year contract.
I will let her existence in my home settle into me, the way new weather settles into a country.
And then, and only then, when I know what kind of female the gods have chosen for me and how she feels for me too— Then I will decide.
I peel off my soaked coat and drape it over the back of a kitchen chair to dry. The leather is heavy with rain. My shirt beneath is damp at the shoulders. I run a hand through my wet hair and try to gather myself for the walk upstairs.
The corridor is dim, the sconces burning low. Rain whispers against the high windows, summer-warm and steady. The castle sleeps around me as I climb the stairs toward my rooms.
I do not turn toward my chambers. Instead, I turn, as I always do, toward the nursery. Lily’s door is the second one on the left at the end of the family wing. I have walked this corridor a thousand times.
I reach Lily’s door and pause. Every night I am home, I check on her. It is a small private thing. She does not know I do it. The staff has not been told. Madam Petrova suspects, I think, because she finds the door ajar in the mornings sometimes, but she has the grace not to mention it.
I turn the handle, slowly, silently, and ease the door open.
The nursery is full of soft moonlight. The rain at the windows casts faint silver patterns across the lavender walls.
The canopied bed glows pale in the dark.
The reading nook is exactly as Lily left it before sleep, a small stack of books piled on the cushion, her tiny silk slippers placed neatly side by side on the rug.
My daughter is curled on her side under the pale pink coverlet. Max, her favorite stuffed animal, is pressed against her chest, his floppy ear half under her chin. Her lips are slightly parted, and I can see the tiniest gleam of her milk-fangs in the dim light.
I stand in the doorway and look at her sleeping, and something quiet and hard cracks open in my chest. She has not been peaceful in two years.
If I move too quickly, I lose Hazel. If I lose Hazel, I lose this peace.
I will not be the male who took this away from my daughter to satisfy his own need.
I cross the room on silent feet and bend over the bed.
I brush one curl back from her forehead, lightly, lightly, and her breath catches and resettles.
I press the lightest kiss to Lily’s temple. Then I straighten and back toward the door, and as I close it behind me, the smallest involuntary smile pulls at the corner of my mouth.