Page 8 of Crowned By The Blood Alphas

“Cassius,” Tovik grunts a little louder.

“What?”

“The girl.”

“What girl?”

“The princess.”

“What about her?”

“When is she arriving?”

“I don’t know,” I say, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. This man and his fairy tales. I blame his mother for filling his young head with all of those ridiculous stories of beautiful trapped princesses and the brave heroes who saved them. “She arrives when she arrives.”

Tovik absentmindedly plays with a Hollowborn figurine on my map, placing his fingertip on the head and rolling it around. I slap his hand away and return it to its proper place.

“Do you think she’s beautiful?”

“I couldn’t give one damn about it,” I snap. “And neither should you. We have our hands full here if you haven’t noticed.”

“I heard she wears jewels in her hair.”

I laugh. “I wouldn’t doubt it from those rich fools. They probably wipe their asses with gold coins.”

“I’m nervous,” he says, looking at his giant hands caked with blood and mud.

“For what?”

“To meet the princess.”

This man is unbelievable. I’ve seen his bloodthirsty wolf rip the head off of a Hollowborn in one savage bite. I’ve seen him break men’s jaws, arms, orbital bones, and even some poor fucker’s pinkie when we were younger and Tovik lost at an arm wrestling match (the one time he lost in his entire life).

And here he is, nervous, over some dumb rich girl we were forced to take in. I don’t need the hassle, let alone another mouth to feed, but the ancient constitution demands royal blood in exchange for a treaty, so we had to take in the girl.

“You’re the bloody King of Varkhar,” I shout. “You’re a Blood Alpha. You don’t get nervous. She’s the one who gets nervous.”

He doesn’t seem convinced.

“You have Hollowborn blood on your chest,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re bigger than an ox. I think you’ll be okay.”

“What if she’s the one?” he asks, getting that dreamy look in his eyes.

I sigh as I walk away from the map and head to the bar in the corner. I need a drink if we’re going to talk about this again.

“She’s human,” I say as I pour myself a very large cup of bitter mead. “It’s incredibly rare for a wolf shifter to mate with a human. And a pair of Blood Alphas have never mated with a human for their queen in all six hundred years of Varkharian history.”

“There’s a first for everything,” he says, shrugging those large, broad shoulders.

“Yes,” I say, shaking my head. “And I’m looking forward to the first day I can get through without you mentioning our mate.”

His eyes drop to the floor. I know this is harder for him than it is for me. My mind stays busy with the million problems a kingdom needs solving, meanwhile his wolf just longs for our mate.

I walk over and put my hand on his shoulder.

“She’ll come,” I say softly. “We can’t force it though, Tovik. And don’t get your hopes up about this… princess. She’s probably just some spoiled rich girl from the Jewel Kingdom who has no idea about us wolves and will spend her days locked in her room cursing the day we were born.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess you’re right.”