Page 7 of Alpha's Embrace
I wanted to beinlove.
Laro puffed out some air and said, “Turn. Put your hands behind your back.”
“No one would know.” I kept my voice light and sweet. Innocent.
“Come along,” he said gruffly.
“Is it because I am of royal descent? You need not be intimidated,” I said. “We would simply be two men enjoying each other.”
“You do realize I’m married,” he said.
“You’ve told me many times.” I grinned. “I’m so happy for you. You have a lover. A mate. I can only dream of it and it’s amazing.”
“It is amazing. And I’m sorry for your plight, Misha. But please stop asking.”
“I meant no disrespect to your mate. I never mean to be a bother. I just feel so hot all the time.”
“I know you don’t mean it. And you’re not a bother.” He cleared his throat.
“The other princes are a bother, then.” I did not ask it as a question because I knew.
“Always.”
I nodded. “It’s unfortunate, to be sure. But sometimes the royal blood runs too pure, and we as mere humans are not equipped to handle it. Our minds are fragile. We teeter on the edge and some of us, the most special ones of all, I think, topple over and fall.”
“I’m sure that’s true.” Laro was the nicest of them all. He indulged me. He rarely lost his cool with me.
But through the pinhole leading to Cedric’s room I’d often seen servants lose their tempers. Even Laro. Cedric was a difficult princeling. His fire burned and burned. He couldn’t help himself. His thoughts flamed and his tantrums ruled and he had a violent streak. The staff were often forced to be rough with him.
Our usual walk back to my room bypassed halls with many doors to individual rooms. From within, I heard groans and heavy breathing, thumps and howls. Once in a while a door would be open with a servant or a nurse emerging. I stole quick peeks inside to see who was there. To put face and bodies to the noises I had heard for years.
Every room held a prince. They came in all shapes and sizes but most were small. Children. Once I saw a prince lying on a bed of blue, his hair so long it trailed off the pillow to the floor. He was made of all shades of golds and reds. He lay in slumber, so thin he was almost skeletal.
I asked Laro about him once. He told me that boy, Sari, slept nearly twenty hours a day and when he woke he was always in a daze. He could not function and required a lot of care. He could feed himself, but it wasn’t enough. Several times a year he’d be taken to the infirmary for I.V. sustenance. He was thirteen.
Sari, the sleeping prince, reminded me of a fairy tale.
“Maybe he needs a good kiss to fully wake him,” I had said.
Laro had answered with only a chuckle.
I could imagine full time sleep might be pleasurable if one’s dreams were of ecstasy and paradise. There in your sleep-visions you could be yourself without the hindrance of a body that didn’t quite work.
Today, through an open doorway, I saw a laughing child babbling in a language I didn’t know, a crying boy, and a teenager who was jerking himself off so hard his cock was bright red. In that last case, two servants rushed from the room and the nearest guard said to them, “I already jacketed him once today.”
The word jacketed chilled me. It meant you’d be fitted with a straight jacket and unable to touch yourself for the duration. Terrible!
We moved on.
While an Alpha didn’t experience the Burn until age eighteen, Sylphs felt it at the onset of puberty. And it never let up.
Cedric was very hyper-sexual, but even he took breaks. Rarely did he have to be jacketed. And myself? I’d avoided the jacket. Lucky me. But the pain of always feeling the Burn didn’t hurt any less. Simply, I had more control.
As we turned the corner to the hall where my room was, I saw the usual guard at the end. His shift went until late evening. At night, he would pace up and down the corridor keeping watch, though there was no way any of us were getting out of locked rooms. I liked to think he wasn’t there to keep us in, but to keep others out—those who might come to do all the beautiful little princes harm, for the kingdom had its enemies though there was no overt war.
In addition to the guard, I saw two more men—both strangers—and one of the nurses dressed all in white. One stranger seemed to be exiting Cedric’s room, or perhaps waiting to enter. The other stood a few feet away, leaning in a casual slump against the corridor wall. He smelled different from the rest of them, more acrid, and I sensed his bond a wavering darkness.
With the first stranger, a sweetness wafted over me. I sensed no bond at all. This had never happened before, me seeing someone like this, sensing them so thoroughly, instantly wanting them on a level I couldn’t describe.
