Teasing My 7 Hot Alpha Stepbrothers at the Royal Academy novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: The Rink at Night

The Commander didn't shout.

That was worse.

He folded his newspaper in half, then in half again, and laid it beside his plate.

"On your mother's ring," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Eight days."

"Yes, sir."

"I asked you for one thing." His voice was low and rough. "One thing, in nine years."

Nero's knuckles were white on the back of the chair.

"I know, Dad."

"Do you? You think this is a game. The pool. Your brothers' little ledger."

He looked down the table at the twins, who suddenly found their pancakes fascinating.

"She is my wife's child. She is under my roof."

"She's twenty-five," Mom said quietly.

"I heard you the first time, love."

He started to cough.

It went on too long. He pressed a napkin to his mouth.

The bitter green came off him so sharply my eyes watered.

Hadrian half rose from his chair, then sat back down when his father waved him off.

I stood up.

Everyone looked at me.

"It's my trial," I said. "I started it. I teased him on purpose, for a week, with a notebook."

"I told all of you at this table that I would."

"Romy," Mom said.

"If you're angry, be angry at me, sir. He came and told you to your face. He didn't have to."

The Commander looked at me for a long time.

His eyes were gray and very tired.

"Is it real?" he said finally. "This wolf business."

"Something moved," I said. "Last night. For the first time in my life."

Mom made a small sound and put her hand over her mouth.

The Commander looked at Nero, then at me, then at the brown glass bottle on the windowsill.

He reached for his coffee instead.

"The pact stands," he said. "For the other six."

He turned his head slowly down the table.

"Hadrian."

"Sir."

"Titus."

"Never been easier," Titus said, and stabbed a pancake.

The twins nodded together. The cook nodded. The quiet one nodded without looking up from his pencil.

Hadrian said nothing at all.

He pushed his chair back and walked out of the kitchen with his coffee still full on the table.

The Commander watched him go.

Then he looked at Nero.

"You'll treat her like she's the Queen."

"Better," Nero said.

"Sit down and eat."

Under the table, Mom found my hand and squeezed it twice.

At eleven that night my phone buzzed.

"Rink. Midnight. Wear something warm."

"I don't skate."

"You don't have to. I've got you."

The rink was dark except for one bank of lights over the far end.

The ice was smooth and black and empty.

Nero waited by the bench door in sweatpants and his Academy hockey hoodie, holding a pair of white skates.

"Borrowed from the figure skaters," he said. "Size seven. I asked Roxy."

"Roxy's been in on this?"

"Roxy's been in on this since the café." He knelt and laced them for me. "Up."

I wobbled out onto the ice holding both his hands.

He skated backward in front of me, slow, easy, pulling me along.

"Don't let go."

"Never."

"Your ribs."

"Are taped by the best doctor on campus."

He took me around the whole rink once, twice, his breath white in the cold.

On the third lap he let go of one hand and spun me under his arm.

I screamed and laughed and grabbed his hoodie, and he caught me against his chest.

We stood still in the middle of the ice.

"I've watched you at this rink for a year," he said. "Rinkside, every home game. Taping idiots. Telling refs off."

"You never said anything."

"You were with Delacorte." His jaw moved. "Then you weren't, and I didn't know how."

"So you got yourself boarded?"

"Best hit of my life."

I kissed him in the middle of the ice, under the one bank of lights.

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