Page 44 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

It’s only then I realize that I am doing it because I have made a decision to do it and not because he has told me to.

The hood comes off my hair. The sweatshirt is inside out on the floor. I stand there in Roan’s gray t-shirt with my arms bare, but of course Reinhardt is not looking at my arms.

He is staring at my neck.

He comes right up to me, closer than he has ever stood, tilting his head to see it properly at the join of my neck and shoulder. I know what it looks like. I saw Roan’s. It is dark red and swollen. The two crescents of it, top and bottom. There is no doubt as to what it is.

He breathes in through his nose. I doubt he can smell much. He is a beta. They can pick up scents but their senses are dulled compared to an alpha’s.

“Who?”

I stay silent.

“Did it take?” For a moment, I don’t understand what he means. Then I realize. He wants to know if it is just a bite or if it is a proper bond mark.

“Yes.” There is no point in lying.

He steps back. He turns away from me and stands looking at the window, at Chicago, with his hands behind his back. I look at the neat silver line of his hair over his collar, and I wait.

“You have made things very difficult for me, Highness,” he says to the window.

He does not raise his voice. He never has. Reinhardt is almost seventy. He has been the prime minister, my father’s closest advisor since before I was born. I have never known anyone but him and my father to be in charge.

It is not as if the elections in my country have ever changed anything.

“Very difficult indeed.”

We both know what he means. He does not need to say it and I do not need to hear it. There is a word for what I am now in my own language and neither of us is going to say that either.

He takes his phone out of his jacket. He presses one thing and holds it to his ear.

“His Highness will need a high neck for this morning. Something with a collar to the jaw. Send the dresser up with whatever she has, and have her bring concealer. And tell the physicians they may come in now.”

He puts the phone away.

“You will keep it covered. In this room, in every room, in front of every camera, from now until I tell you otherwise. The interview is at ten. You will wear whatever she brings. You will read the cards.” He turns around. “Your Highness.”

“Yes,” I say.

He goes to the door, then stops with his hand on it.

“The alpha is dead,” he says. “In case you were wondering. He was shot and went into the river. They have not recovered his body yet but he took the bullets and the river is very cold. You will not need to think about him again.”

He opens the door. The two beta doctors are outside it, waiting, with their bags. The older one has looked after me since I was twelve. He has never once looked me in the eye and he does not now. They bow.

“Bathroom first,” Reinhardt says to them. “His Highness will bathe before you examine him. He is not fit to be touched.”

Then he is gone.

12. Roan

I slip around the back of the abandoned factory, into the back of the yard where the weeds are up past my knees and stiff with frost.

The sun has come up but although it is out and I have been walking for two hours, I am still wet.

Wet and chafing. I’m also not cold anymore, which I know is a bad sign. My arm stopped hurting a while back. That’s also a bad sign.

I stand at the fence for a long time and I survey the premises.