Teasing My 7 Hot Alpha Stepbrothers at the Royal Academy novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Pact

The Commander makes his seven sons swear on their mother's ring never to touch her, Romilly smells something bitter under his scent, and she comes home to find she's been locked out of her own apartment.

I kept my eyes on my plate.

"I said somebody smart," I murmured. "You must have skipped that part."

"I didn't skip anything."

He sat down beside me.

His knee was an inch from mine under the tablecloth, and he didn't move it.

Neither did I.

Mom tapped her glass with a fork.

She was glowing. I hadn't seen her glow since Dad died.

"Everybody, this is my Romy," she said. "Be nice to her."

"They'll be nice," the Commander said. "Sit down, all of you."

Seven alphas sat.

Every one of them smelled like cedar and cold air and something wild underneath.

My nose doesn't come with a wolf.

It comes with everything else.

"Titus you know," the Commander said.

Titus didn't look up from his water glass.

"Tenley," he said. "Small world."

"Dr. Varro."

"At this table I'm Titus." He finally looked at me. "On rounds I'm still your chief resident. Don't get confused."

"I'll try to keep up."

Across from me, the one with the split lip laughed out loud.

"Nero," he said, and stuck his hand across the bread basket. "Hockey. Bad decisions. You taped my thumb last spring."

I shook it. His palm was rough and very warm.

"I told you to stop punching people with it."

"You did."

"Did you stop?"

"No. But I thought about you every time."

"Nero," the Commander said.

"Sir."

Down the table, two identical blond heads leaned together.

"We're the twins," said one.

"We're twenty-one," said the other.

"We're the handsome ones."

A broad, serious young man came through the kitchen door with a roasting pan in oven mitts.

"My fifth," the Commander said. "He feeds us."

The cook set down a leg of lamb and pointed his carving knife at me.

"Do you eat lamb, or are you one of those?"

"I'll eat anything you cut."

He nodded like I'd passed an exam.

The last son sat at the far end with a pencil, drawing on his napkin.

"My third," the Commander said. "He doesn't talk at dinner."

The quiet one lifted two fingers at me and went back to his pencil.

Then the Commander stood, and the table went still.

He raised his glass to my mother.

"To my wife," he said. "Who renewed one book for me twenty-six times and never once asked why."

"I knew why," Mom said.

Everyone laughed, even Titus.

The Commander laughed too, and it turned into a cough he couldn't stop.

Under the cedar and the uniform starch, something hit my nose.

Bitter. Green. Stems crushed in a fist.

It wasn't the lamb. It wasn't his cologne.

It was coming off his skin.

I slid my black notebook out of my bag, under the tablecloth, and wrote it down blind.

Commander. Bitter green note. In the sweat. Not food.

When I looked up, Hadrian was watching my hands.

He didn't say a word.

But his jaw had gone tight, and his eyes went to his father's glass, which was shaking.

The Commander set it down and reached into his jacket.

He took out a thin gold chain with a ring on it and laid it on the white cloth.

Every son at that table stopped breathing.

"Your mother's ring," he said. "You know what it means when I put it on this table."

"Dad," Nero said. "Come on."

"Romilly is my wife's daughter. She lives under my protection now."

He looked down the table, son by son.

"Every one of you will swear on your mother's ring. No son of mine touches her."

My fork hit my plate.

"Commander, she's twenty-five," Mom said.

"And they're alphas. I was one of those for a long time." He didn't sit. "Hadrian."

"Sir."

"You first."

Hadrian looked at the ring for a long moment.

Then he put two fingers on it.

"I swear," he said.

He didn't look at me when he said it.

Titus went next.

"Easiest oath I ever took," he said.

The twins swore in unison.

The cook swore with the carving knife still in his other hand.

The quiet one reached over, touched the ring, and went back to his napkin.

Nero was last.

He put his fingertip on the gold and looked straight at me across the lamb.

"I swear," he said.

Then he winked.

"Do I get a vote?" I asked.

"No," said the Commander. He finally sat down, breathing hard. "You get a family. Eat."

The twins waited until the plates were cleared.

Then one of them pulled out his phone and set it face up between the salt and the wine.

"Pool's open," he said.

"What pool?" I said.

"Which one breaks first," said the other. "Hadrian's eight to one."

"Titus, a hundred to one. He can't stand you."

"Correct," said Titus.

"Nero's forty."

Nero threw a bread roll at them. "Why am I forty?"

"Because you're obvious," said a twin. "Obvious never wins."

Mom walked me out to the gate at ten.

"Are you angry?" she asked.

"You married a man I've never met."

"You've met him now." She fixed my collar. "He's a good man, Romy. Be patient with him. Be nice to the boys."

"They're not boys, Mom."

"I noticed," she said, and kissed my cheek.

I walked home across the dark parade ground with the bitter note still in my nose.

The residents' block was quiet.

My boxes were not in my apartment.

They were stacked in the third-floor hall, taped shut, with my lamp on top.

My key wouldn't turn. The lock was new and shiny.

A notice was taped over my peephole.

"Unit 3C reassigned, effective immediately, by order of the Royal Physician."

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