Page 8 of Alpha's Embrace
My breath caught, for this unbonded stranger, this visitor, fairly glowed in the sodium lights reflecting off the beige, brick walls. His hair was made of a lot of brown colors merging at once and very straight. He had it sprayed back from his face, but strands from the front fell in single locks on either side of his forehead as if to frame the beauty of his face. His forehead was broad and tan, his cheeks full at the tops but tapered, and his jaw firm making his lovely pink mouth turn down in a slight but pretty frown.
When his eyes met mine I nearly swooned. I saw the lovely colors of the green pirate sea there, and deeper still, a solid kindness that would easily give over to strong determination, if necessary, to protect those around him.
His bearing communicated everything: straight back, broad shoulders, stance balanced and controlled. He was an Alpha, and a foreign king. No doubt about it.
My body responded in kind, telling me to submit. Not just as a prince to a higher title, but more. I wanted him as mine, and to be claimed as his in return.
The unbonded Alpha began to speak as if he’d been caught in mid-sentence before Laro and I came up. “And this would be--”
Ah, his voice, like slow, murmuring water, low and deep.
Instantly, I bowed. “Misha, Your Grace.”
Softly, to the nurse who was looking at a tablet, the man said, “He’s the eldest I’ve heard about?”
“Yes. The twenty-year-old, sir,” said the nurse. “A first in the history of this establishment to live so long, I do believe.”
“Is he able?” The king’s eyebrows went up. “To do an interview?”
An interview? With me? No one ever came to visit me!
“Fully able,” the nurse replied.
The king said, “I knew we had some of the rarer older ones, but I didn’t realize he was so—uh—healthy.”
“He has never been violent like the others. Not a day in his life,” the nurse said.
I realized I knew the nurse who was talking. A distant memory from childhood came to me. He’d fed me and held me until I grew big enough to have my own room. I tried to remember his name. Prado. Or something like that.
“Let me see.” The king grabbed the tablet from Prado. “And mentally?”
“Stable, sir. An I.Q. of 135 and that’s without a proper education. Sylphs such as he are point one of a percent of the Sylph population, testing within all the normal human ranges, but he remains here because he is a Sylph and thus in a constant Burn.”
The king looked up at me again.
I said to him with a smile, “You do know I can hear everything you are saying about me, Your Grace. I’m standing right here.”
“I’m sorry. Misha is your name?”
I nodded.
He held out his beautiful hand. Blue-green veins mapped the back in such a pretty pattern I was almost dizzy. “My name is Geo. I’m the new chief of staff.”
I bowed again. “I see that, Your Grace.”
I did not take his hand. It was ungloved. And I was still cuffed.
His hand wasn’t supposed to be ungloved. Everyone who deal with me wore gloves. But maybe he was special, different, and didn’t need to wear the gloves.
Geo turned to the nurse with a raised eyebrow.
The nurse said quietly, “I assure you, he is not schizophrenic.”
“May we talk in your room, then?” Geo asked, his hand falling as he turned toward my doorway.
“I would be honored to have you as a guest in my chamber,” I said. “I am sorry I have no ability to offer you tea or coffee or a drink. You’ll forgive me?”
“Nothing to forgive. I’m not thirsty anyway,” he said kindly, indulging my silly manners, manners that meant nothing here, but who didn’t like a little pretend?
