Teasing My 7 Hot Alpha Stepbrothers at the Royal Academy novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Must Possess a Wolf
Mocked in a crowded café by the ex whose father wrote the wolf clause to keep her out, wolfless omega Romilly applies anyway and swears she'll have a wolf by the Hunter's Moon; that night her mother's surprise husband introduces his seven sons, and the eldest heard her whole plan through her door.
The job had four requirements, and I met three of them.
Medical degree. Three years of residency in Supernatural Medicine. Advanced wolf anatomy.
The fourth line hadn't been there last week.
"Must possess a wolf."
I'd peeled the notice off the residents' corkboard at six that morning and carried it home.
Royal Physician to the Crown.
I'd wanted that job since I was twelve.
Applications closed at noon. It was 10:40.
I touched the silver pendant at my throat.
Every omega wears one. It tells every wolf in the room what rank you are.
Mine tells them what I'm missing.
My wolf was supposed to come when I was thirteen.
I'm twenty-five, and I'm still waiting.
Somebody kicked my door twice.
"It's open, Roxy."
She came in with two coffees and a fat old book under her arm.
"You've read it forty times," she said. "I can hear the paper crinkling from the stairs."
"They added a line."
"I know. Half the residents' group chat thinks it's about you."
"And the other half?"
"Alphas. They can't read."
She put my coffee down and dropped the book on top of the notice.
The Book of Omega Law.
There was a pink sticky tab on one page.
I didn't have to look. I knew the line by heart.
"An omega whose wolf is late may wake it through the bond of a fated alpha."
"No," I said.
"Romy."
"I'm not biting some stranger to get a job."
"Not a stranger. Somebody hot." She sipped her coffee. "Chemistry matters. And I hear when your wolf wakes up in the middle of it, it's a whole experience."
I threw a cushion at her. She ducked it.
"The last alpha I let near me got three passing grades out of it," I said.
Her face went flat.
We both remembered the team party.
Cash Delacorte standing on a table with a beer, telling forty people I'd been his pity date.
"Good for homework and one night's fun."
Then he'd kissed a beta from his own pack right in front of me, and the whole room had laughed.
"Cash is a pig," Roxy said. "You're coming to the café. It's wall-to-wall alphas at this hour and you need a muffin."
"I'm not propositioning anybody."
"We'll see."
I yanked my door open and walked straight into a wall.
The wall had hands.
They closed on my shoulders and held me up.
I looked up into the greenest eyes I'd ever seen.
Dark hair. A Royal Guard jacket with captain's bars. A jaw.
Something low in my chest gave a hard, strange pull.
His nostrils flared.
He was scenting me. Right there, in my own doorway.
"Careful," he said.
His voice went straight down my spine.
Then he let go and walked to the stairs without another word.
Roxy grabbed my arm so hard it hurt.
"That was Hadrian Varro."
"I know who it was."
"The Commander's eldest. He's turned down every omega on this campus. And he just sniffed you like dessert."
"He was being polite."
"Romy, nobody smells polite for that long."
The café across the quad was packed.
So was the window table.
Cash sat there in his Guard officers' team jacket, with three lieutenants and the beta from the party in his lap.
He saw me and smiled.
Then he stood up, pulled a folded copy of the notice out of his jacket and cleared his throat.
The whole café went quiet. He'd planned it.
"Royal Physician," he read. "Medical degree, residency, blah blah." He looked right at me. "Must possess a wolf."
His lieutenants were already laughing.
"My dad wrote that line the week your name went on the list," Cash said. "He didn't want to waste the King's time. You're welcome, Tenley."
His girlfriend tipped her head at me.
"Is that the one who did your homework?"
"Three classes," Cash said. "Best tutor I ever had. Shame about the rest of her."
Somebody near the counter snorted coffee.
I looked at the clock above the register. 11:41.
My application was in my bag.
Every box was filled in except one.
I walked to his table.
I took the pen out of his girlfriend's hand.
I set the application down on top of his eggs and wrote in the last box, in big block letters.
"WOLF: PENDING."
Then I signed it.
"The selection's at the Hunter's Moon," I said, loud enough for the back of the room. "I'll bring my wolf."
Cash laughed. "And where are you getting a wolf?"
"Same place you got your anatomy grade," I said. "From someone smarter than you."
The girl at the register said "Oh," out loud.
I walked out.
Across the quad, into the infirmary lobby, to the brass slot marked Selection Board.
11:58.
I pushed the envelope through and heard it land.
Roxy was making a noise.
"Find me an alpha," I said.
She grabbed my face in both hands. "You just walked into the best one on campus."
My phone buzzed.
Mom.
"Dinner tonight, seven o'clock, the Commander's House on the parade ground. Wear the blue dress. I have news."
I read it three times.
My mother is a school librarian in Kingston.
She had never been inside the Commander's House in her life.
At seven o'clock she opened its front door herself, in a cream suit with a white rose pinned to the lapel.
"Romy. I got married today."
Behind her stood a gray-haired man in dress uniform, holding a library book about the Hudson River forts.
The Tuesday man.
The widower she'd been seeing since spring, whose name I had never once asked.
Lord Commander Varro.
"I believe," he said gruffly, "you should meet my sons."
He led me into a dining room with a table for sixteen.
Seven chairs scraped back at once.
Seven alphas stood up.
The one in navy scrubs was Titus, my chief resident, who'd called me the wolfless wonder on rounds for two years.
The one with the split lip was Nero, the Academy's hockey captain.
There were twins, grinning identically.
And at the head of the table, the man from my doorway.
Green eyes. Captain's bars.
"Romilly," said the Commander. "My eldest. Hadrian."
"We've met," Hadrian said.
He came around the table and pulled out the chair beside his.
As I sat, he bent low and spoke right against my ear.
"Dad sent me to invite you this morning. Your walls are very thin, little sister."
His breath touched my neck.
"Start with somebody hot, was it?"
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