Teasing My 7 Hot Alpha Stepbrothers at the Royal Academy novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Subject: Me

Moved into the Commander's House, Romilly starts a trial notebook on her missing wolf and runs her first test on Nero at midnight, until Titus finds the notebook open on the bathroom counter.

I read the notice twice, and then I kicked my own door.

It didn't care. It wasn't mine anymore.

I called the housing office. A recording told me to call back Monday.

I called Roxy.

"He did what?" she said. "I'll kill him. I'll put something in his coffee. I'm a pharmacist, Romy, nobody would know."

"Don't say that on the phone."

"You're sleeping here. On the couch. My boyfriend can sleep in the tub."

"Your apartment is one room."

"He's flexible."

I sat down on a box and laughed until it turned into something else.

Then my phone buzzed again.

Mom.

"Stay where you are. The Commander is sending the boys."

Fifteen minutes later, boots came up the stairs.

Nero first, in his hockey hoodie, then the twins, then the cook with a hand truck.

Nero took one look at the notice and ripped it off the door.

"Delacorte," he said, like a swear word.

"His father," I said.

"Same blood. Same smell."

He picked up my heaviest box.

"Dad says family doesn't sleep in a hallway. Come on, Doc."

My new room was on the second floor of the Commander's House.

It had a window over the parade ground, a narrow white bed and a bathroom with three doors.

One was mine.

One opened into Nero's room.

The third opened into Hadrian's.

"We'll knock," Nero said from the doorway. "Mostly."

"Lock it from your side," said a twin behind him. "He sings in the shower."

When they'd gone, I sat on the bed with my black notebook.

I turned past the scent notes from the infirmary to a clean page.

I'm a doctor. When I don't know something, I test it.

The Book said a fated alpha could wake a late wolf.

This morning, in my doorway, something in my chest had pulled toward Hadrian Varro.

Either that was real, or it was hope.

Hope doesn't show up on a pulse.

I wrote at the top of the page, in block letters.

"Subject: me. Variable: seven alphas. Hypothesis: one of them."

Under it I wrote my resting pulse. 64.

Then I wrote the rule I'd follow.

"They swore not to touch me. I didn't swear anything."

At midnight the house was dark, and I went down for milk.

The kitchen light was on.

Nero stood at the open fridge in gray sweatpants and nothing else, drinking orange juice out of the carton.

His back was all long muscle and old bruises.

He turned around and didn't bother to put the carton down.

"Doc."

I was in a sleep shirt that came to the middle of my thighs.

His eyes went down it and came back up slowly.

"I need the milk," I said.

"It's behind me."

"I know where it is."

I walked right up to him and reached past his waist into the fridge.

My arm passed an inch from his bare stomach.

He went very still.

I found the milk. I didn't hurry.

My other hand was on my own wrist, two fingers flat on the pulse.

Ninety-eight.

And under my breastbone, something turned over.

A flicker. Two seconds. Like a fish moving in dark water.

I stepped back with the milk.

Nero was staring at my fingers on my wrist.

"Are you taking your pulse?"

"Research."

"On me?"

"On me. You're the variable."

He put the juice down on the counter very carefully.

"I swore an oath four hours ago, Doc."

"I know. I didn't touch you."

"You came close."

"Close isn't touching. Read the oath again."

He laughed, low and helpless, and scrubbed a hand through his curls.

"Goodnight, Nero."

"You're going to kill me," he said to my back.

Upstairs I wrote it down.

"Nero, kitchen, 12:06. Pulse 98. Chest: flicker, two seconds."

Morning rounds were at six.

I walked onto the surgical ward with four hours of sleep and my pendant tucked under my scrubs.

Titus stood at the head of the team with his tablet.

"Look who's here," he said. "The wolfless wonder. She lives in my father's house now."

The interns laughed, because he was the boss.

"Bed six," I said. "The cadet with the shoulder. His dressing smells wrong. I want a culture."

"His labs are clean."

"His dressing isn't."

Titus didn't even look at the bed.

"Your nose is not a lab, Tenley. Next."

The team moved on without me.

I stood at bed six for one more second and breathed in.

Sweet. Sour. Not yet, but soon.

I wrote it in the notebook anyway.

That night, at ten, I was coming out of the bathroom when Hadrian came up the stairs.

The upstairs hall is narrow.

He didn't stop, and neither did I.

We passed so close my shoulder brushed the buttons of his uniform.

He smelled like rain on stone.

"Romilly," he said.

"Captain."

His eyes dropped to the silver pendant at my throat, and stayed there.

Then his door shut behind him.

My heart was going so hard I could hear it.

I went back into the bathroom, set the notebook on the counter and counted.

I wrote fast, before I lost it.

Then Roxy called about her boyfriend and the tub, and I walked out laughing and forgot the notebook was there.

At seven the next morning, someone knocked on the bathroom door from Hadrian's side.

It wasn't Hadrian.

Titus stood in the doorway with a towel over his shoulder and my notebook open in his huge hand.

He read it out loud.

"Hadrian, hallway: pulse 112."

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