Her Broken Alpha - Isoellen Page 0,3

can be here to assist us in preparing for the marriage ceremony after. Don't you think, my dear?"

Naya hoped she hadn't blanched at the idea. She hoped no one could tell what she was feeling.

"You smell near your time, sweet child," Corre said. It was not a fatherly comment, although his casual posture made it seem as if he’d meant it as one. No one should have been commenting on her smell in her mother's sitting room. "Isn't her perfume divine, Crispin?"

Crispin nodded. "As I have told you, Naya, you grow more irresistible every day. I shouldn't want to be across town in a different sector when your body decides it is ready for me."

Naya kept her eyes lowered. Her cycle would make her want Crispin. His touch. His body. On hers and in hers. The doctor’s notes and her own schooling had explained it all in clear black and white lines that looked terribly intimate, messy, and vulgar.

The hormonal change would rob her of all her dignity and will.

Naya couldn't wrap her mind around feeling any of it, but she'd seen it happen to her sister Phee two years ago at her bonding ceremony. They'd been in the dining room with her intended, Grayson Swift, two of his brothers, and the family. Phee's face and upper chest had melted to pink before she moaned, biting her bottom lip bloody. Clutching her waist, Phee had started to crumple to the floor, flushed with perspiration and sudden arousal.

Naya, two years younger, had smelled the difference in her sister's pheromones, a shockingly rich sweetness overshadowing every other scent in the room.

Chaos had exploded around them, but the families’ trusted friends and her brothers held back Swift's siblings, whose pupils grew giant in awareness of the ready omega breeder in the room. As if it bled from his face, composure left him, inner animal taking over as he entered a mating rut.

Naya remembered feeling a fascinated dread watching the change take over Swift from his head to his toes.

Father had carried Phee out, Swift tailing them like she was bait. Struggling in his arms, lost to the powerful instinctual onslaught, Phee had fought as she cried, reaching toward all the available alphas, not just her intended.

Naya had felt so ashamed for her.

But that would happen to her as well. Biology would take over, and there was no knowing how she might act, or what she might do under the power of her first estrus.

In contrast to this animalistic drive was all this civilized ceremony. Family to protect her. Crispin at hand as her choice. Drones and beta servants at the ready to see to their needs. And everyone there to witness her loss of self-discipline and every shred of self-respect.

She dreaded it.

"Yes. That would be nice, I'm sure," Naya replied reflexively. What else was there to say? No one wanted to hear her honest thoughts. "I think my brothers will also be here in a day or two. I can't wait for you to meet them. It will be nice to have them in the house again. Wherever shall we put all these guests, Mother?"

"We always make room for friends and family." Mother smiled, pleased by Naya's compliance. When Mother glanced toward Alpha Corre, Naya thought she saw her blush a little. How odd.

Eager for an excuse to end the conversation, Naya followed Crispin's example and made herself a plate. It was a little mound of flaky, buttery, spice-and-fruit-stuffed goodness she knew Mother would frown at, but she was too busy talking to Alpha Corre to notice what Naya ate.

This was happening. She would mate, marry, and have her own home.

She looked at the cool and colorless tones of heavy linen fabric in her mother's parlor as she ate. The tight, knotted carpet over the white painted floors was a plain, gray-dyed wool. In her head, she redecorated it with bright, soft, happy things.

Not all change was bad.

*

She'd eaten too much.

The dining room sat too many people. Twelve of them gathered around a massive spread of food. Two drones rushed in and out of the narrow doorway to keep plates and wine glasses full. Her sister Phee, sitting next to her Grayson Swift, had already drank more than normal. She kept leaning toward Crispin on her opposite side and petting his shoulder.

Her father talked too loudly, arguing politics with Corre and the two older unmarried alphas who worked with them like he was in the courtroom. Phee's namesake, their aunt, laughed raucously at