The Alpha’s Wild Princess

8

"Here to kill me, already?" She must have heard me approach because she seemed prepared for my arrival, unlike the other two times I'd come here. She was in different clothing, a flowery gown with a sweetheart neckline that showed a lot of skin.

The skin I could not help but be distracted by.

"Hello?" she cleared her throat once, and I realized I'd been staring at her like some dumbfounded teenager in the presence of his latest crush.

"What are you wearing?" I asked without thinking. I almost kicked myself for making it so obvious that I'd been distracted by her.

She glanced down at her dress, the movement revealing even more cleavage, and I forced my gaze away. I was in deeper s**t than I thought.

"What? Is it not to your liking? Not exciting enough for my own execution?" she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm, and I almost smiled. She was no doubt funny.

I walked further into the room and looked around. I'd come to associate the smell as inherently hers, it was like flowers and vanilla. I'd perceived the scent on that first day, but it had not been this distracting.

"I think we got off on the wrong foot," I started, looking up to meet her cautious gaze.

"My name is Nicholas Northwood." I started and paused waiting for her to say something, but she continued to stare at me. I continued,

"This is the part where you introduce yourself," I said. She folded her arms under her breasts. In the periphery of my vision, I could see the movement of her chest, but I forced my gaze to her face.

"You already know who I am. Me knowing your name is not going to change anything if you're still going to kill me," she said.

I could tell what she was doing; she was trying to get me to assure her that I would not have her killed, but I wasn’t going to play along.

"Your brother is currently allying with a faction that would not hesitate to wipe out the entire pack if we stand in their way."

Her eyes widened at the mention of her brother, but she did not look surprised at what I'd just said.

"Our marriage, even if we both might not like it will unite the pack. And a united pack makes us stronger against our enemies. How can you not see that?"

"It's hard to feel empathy for someone who has had me locked up for days, and just recently threatened to have me killed if I did not marry him."

She did not miss a beat.

"No one is going to kill you, Prairie. You have a chance to be useful to your people, to help them. No matter how much you say you hate them, something tells me you don't. So think about it, please?"

I didn’t wait for her response before I made my way out of the room,

"What will you do to me if you're not going to kill me," her words stopped me momentarily just before I opened the door. I didn't turn around, and I didn't respond.

I left her wondering and walked out of the room. I was afraid my lower body would start to misbehave if I spent any longer with her.

CHAPTER 5

PRAIRIE

I

woke up suddenly in a silent room, but I could tell something was different. It was not the silence inside the room, but I could tell that there was no one posted outside the door.

Ever since I had been thrown into this room and had been locked up there was a guard constantly outside the door. I could not see them, but I could hear their hearts beating and smell their scent so I could tell each time they had been changed. But now, there were no heartbeats and no scent.

It was suspicious, to say the least, and I did not know what to make of it. Could it be a trap or maybe a test? I wanted so badly to find out, but I knew I needed to be cautious.

Nicholas had come in yesterday- I knew his name now, and it seemed fitting for his stuffy, too-serious demeanor—— he'd come in preaching peace and kumbaya, but I could not trust that s**t. The man had killed my father. Alexander Lonsdale may not have won any Father of the Year awards, but the natural order of things was for me to feel some kind of animosity toward the one who had murdered him.

No matter how much I found his broody, dark looks distracting… and attractive.

No. I wasn't going there.

Forcing any thought of Nicholas Northwood out of my head, I got out of bed and tiptoed toward the door.

I tried the doorknob, expecting to find it locked, but it opened easily. I looked out into the hallway, left and then right.

It was empty.

I wondered if they had cast some kind of invisible spell on the hallway. There were rumors that the rebels used shamans against their enemies. The shamans had been in hiding ever since my father had run them off. But if they joined hands with the rebels, it would not be too far-fetched to think the hallway spelled. Except Nicholas was no longer with the rebels, they had conquered and overthrown my father, so they were the new government. Though I understood why, I felt ridiculous being proposed to.

I imagined being the wife of the Alpha, and my first thought was my mother.

I'd never seen her be a wife or a mother. I had no one to learn from, no precedent to follow.

And that was only if I chose to live that life.

I stretched out a hand, but nothing happened and then I walked out into the hallway and down toward the stairs to the kitchen while keeping up my guard. My suspicion was in vain when I found the kitchen empty.

Maya, our previous cook, no longer worked here. I doubted she still lived in the area; she must have escaped during the war. My father had been mean to everyone, including the domestic staff. They'd all felt the brunt of his anger at some point. It was no wonder there were no familiar faces to lift my spirits.

I opened the fridge and found it stocked. My eyes landed on a jar of Nutella. The last time I'd eaten was last night. I wondered if the door had been unlocked all night and whether or not Nicholas had forgotten to lock it when he left.

That didn’t sound like him, but if that was the case, I could not imagine him telling the guards to leave. I had no idea what to think of it.

Digging out the Nutella, I found a spoon and settled into a stool to eat. I'd barely taken two spoonfuls when a voice startled me.

"What are you doing?"

It was the voice of a child, when I didn't see any face I almost started to believe the house was haunted. I continued to search the kitchen for a face. The voice had sounded too real to be in my head, and that was when I saw him. A tiny figure, a boy, hidden in the corner between the refrigerator and the gas stove. His hands and mouth were sticky with something red. At first, I was alarmed and thought it was blood, but then I realized it was only jam.

I guessed he'd had been hungry too.

"Stealing food. Just like you, clearly," I teased him, wondering what a child was doing in this house.