I’ve just discovered that my new human nanny is fantastically beautiful and the sexiest female I’ve ever encountered. I was actually considering the idea of spreading her out on the kitchen counter so I could take down those small shorts and discover if she was already wet for me.
Hazel Novak is gone but remains everywhere in the air. This is impossible. Unprecedented. My body feels enflamed. Is this…a Blood Calling? Is this what it feels like? If so, it is doing things to my body I have not felt in my entire thirty-six years of existence. I did not even feel this way for my former wife, Lily’s mother.
My fangs ache and my hands shake at my sides.
The marble of the kitchen island cracks under my right palm. A hairline fissure, spreading slowly outward like ice. A growlrumbles in my chest. I straighten and step back. Cold rainwater drips steadily from my coat onto the stone floor, the only sound in the kitchen now that Hazel has left.
It was good that I sent her away. I cannot fuck the nanny. This is wrong.
My hearing is ten times better than a human’s, therefore I know that somewhere upstairs she breaks into a run. Her door slams and I hear the soft click of a lock turning. Smart female. She has correctly identified that the male who just dismissed her from his kitchen is more dangerous than she knows.
I curse in Krovenian. Then again, longer, more colorful, because the first one wasn’t enough.
I returned home hours earlier than expected. The last three days were spent at the capital reviewing border reports with my generals. A long afternoon in the Defense Chamber with General Ulder and his lieutenants going over winter readiness on the eastern range. Humans know better than to attack us or involve us in their wars, but as we’ve learned from history, humans often behave irrationally, therefore it’s best to be prepared.
I spent an evening with the Council of Elders and my brother, Nikolai, that ran two hours longer than scheduled, because two of the three Elders cannot have a meeting without mentioning my obligation to remarry. To produce more pure-blood heirs. To strengthen the line,as is your duty, Crown Prince.
I endured their lectures as long as I could, then I walked out of the chamber while Elder Petra was still mid-sentence.
I drove the two hours home, alone, in the rain, the way I prefer. I did not expect to find, in my kitchen, at midnight, a sexy human in pajamas eating my pastries. Her lips are perfect. Her hands beg to be touched and placed on my body.
What is wrong with me? Simply being near, scenting her and speaking to her causes havoc in my entire body.
My brother recently experienced a Blood Calling for a human which caused an uproar in our country. The Council was ready to banish Nikolai’s human, but they were convinced to allow my brother and his mate to rule as King and Queen, while my daughter, Lily, is now the next in line for the throne.
And now, after I had finally made peace with the fact that the gods and my status as Krovenian royalty had made it impossible for me to experience a Blood Calling…I might be experiencing one too? The Calling is rare. Only months ago, I counseled Nikolai,“The Blood Calling is sacred. It is not to be tossed away arbitrarily.”
Heh.
I close my eyes. Easier said, when I was not experiencing the actual Blood Calling myself.
I can still see an image in my mind of this female I finally met, the new nanny for my daughter. The shapely legs. Small white slippers, ridiculous and somehow devastating. Buttons running down the front of her sleeveless top, neatly fastened all the way to her collarbone, modest in a way that should not have been arousing and somehow was. The mess of light brown hair sliding out of a ponytail at the back of her head. Streaks of a clay mask drying on her cheeks. The milk on her upper lip she didn’t know was there.
Hazel leaned against the counter like she owned the room. Her soft brow furrowed when I asked her name. And her hand trembled, very slightly, when she set down the pastry.
She had been afraid.
I felt it from across the kitchen. The small quick uptick of her pulse when I stepped into the doorway. The slight catch in her breath. The careful way she set her food down, as if a sudden movement might make me lunge.
I am the Commander of the Krovenian Armed Forces. The tabloids call meThe Dark Princebecause of my ruthless huntsof human criminal organizations. Criminals think they can hide and organize within our borders but soon find that this is an incorrect assumption.
Krovenians have been thedo not test usspecies on this continent for thousands of years. We do not start wars, invade, or interfere in human affairs. But twice in recorded history, ambitious human warlords have come for us. Genghis Khan attacked Krovenia in the thirteenth century and did not survive the winter. Adolf Hitler made the same mistake seven hundred years later. We assassinated them both.
My great-grandfather led the second response personally. I have read his journals.
I led my own response four years ago, when a large band of dangerous humans crossed our border and started a base for human trafficking. They were slaughtered within moments.
The European press called methe Dark Princeafterward and the name stuck.
It is, mostly, accurate.
In that moment in the kitchen I wanted to cross the room and put my mouth on her throat. Slide my hand into that ponytail and tilt her head back so I could scent the place behind her ear where her pulse beat fast, then lift her onto the marble island, step between her bare knees and bury my face in her neck and taste what I was scenting. I wanted to bite her. The Calling hit me like a hammer to the chest the second I stepped into the doorway.
I shake my head.
I am the Crown Prince of Krovenia, second son of the late king, brother to the reigning monarch, father to the heir presumptive of the throne. I have buried a wife. I serve in this government as Minister of Defense and command the deadliest army on Earth.
And I almost lost it tonight to a female in fuzzy slippers.
