Unnatural (The Wrong Alpha 1)

After a moment’s hesitation, the steward nodded and started speaking into his earpiece.

“You don’t give orders here, either, Senator,” Taube hissed, red in the face from anger and humiliation as he glared at Royce. “I’m still the prime minister.”

“You are,” Royce said calmly. “But the Opal House’s staff serves the State first and foremost. With all due respect, Your Excellency, but antagonizing the Galactic Council representative doesn’t serve Kadar’s best interests.”

Taube opened his mouth and then closed it, still looking beyond pissed as the steward gathered all the male waiters.

“I really don’t remember his face,” Haydn said, eyeing the few dozen men that stood beside the steward.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lord Ksar said, walking along the row of men. “I’ll recognize him. A guilty person’s thought pattern is rather obvious.”

Haydn shuddered, more than a little discomfited. It seemed the waiters shared his unease, their faces growing pale as the telepath slowly moved past them.

At last, the off-worlder stopped in front of one of the waiters and studied him.

His throat bobbing, the waiter dropped his gaze. “Please, I just—I did what I was ordered to do,” he said shakily. “Don’t—don’t mess with my brain! I’ll tell everything.”

Haydn sucked in a breath. Until now, he’d been hoping against hope that his father was wrong and it was all some kind of misunderstanding. So much for that.

“Talk,” Lord Ksar said, his voice cold as ice.

“I didn’t know it would be anything like that,” the waiter said quickly. “He said it was just something that would amplify Prince Haydn’s alpha hormones and hopefully make him clash with his husband in public—nothing too bad, just enough to make Pelugia look bad.”

Haydn’s stomach dropped. So it was his drink that had been spiked, not Devlin’s. But the question was, why hadn’t it affected him? He’d drunk it, too—not as much as Devlin, but enough. He didn’t feel any different, didn’t feel more aggressive at all.

“He?” Royce demanded. “Who? Who gave you the order?”

The waiter’s gaze flicked to Taube, whose face was set into tight lines. “The prime minister.”

Stefan laughed harshly. “See? I was right, wasn’t I?”

Lord Ksar’s expression was inscrutable as he looked at Taube. “Do you have an explanation for your actions?”

Taube’s lips pressed into a thin line. He said nothing, still looking mulish.

Stefan snorted. “Of course he doesn’t. All his pretty words about peace were just that: pretty, empty words. Kadar has never wanted peace, Your Lordship, while we entered this arrangement with open heart and sincere desire for peace. I even forced my only son and heir into this sham of a marriage, and for what? For the Kadarians to try to poison my son with illegal drugs that didn’t turn him into a mindless beast only by a stroke of good luck! How can we be reasonably expected to deal with such unprincipled, backstabbing people?”

Haydn sighed inwardly. His father’s voice became louder and louder, carrying such conviction that all the Pelugian nobles started gathering around him, clearly scenting blood, an advantage they could seize and use.

Just great. Not that he wasn’t pissed at Taube—he absolutely was—but Haydn didn’t like where it was going. He had a bad feeling about this.

Stefan’s next words confirmed his worst fears. “The Kadarians deceived us from the beginning! My sources say that Prime Minister Taube was aware that Senator Cleghorn was an alpha when he entered him into a marriage with my son.”

Beside him, Royce went rigid. Several shocked gasps sounded in the crowd.

His expression turning viciously triumphant, Stefan said, “So you see that the Kadarians sabotaged the peace from the beginning!”

Haydn wet his lips with his tongue. “That’s not true, Father.”

Everyone turned to him, his father included.

Unexpectedly, Stefan didn’t look angry. His expression was very still for a moment before his gaze softened. “Son, I know you want this peace to last, and I do too, but it’s now obvious that peace can’t be sustained when they keep backstabbing us. Tell his Lordship the truth: that the Kadarians entered an alpha into the marriage with you under false pretenses, knowing that a marriage between two alphas would never work. Tell him, son.”

Haydn swallowed, looking his father in the eyes. A part of him, the part that was still the little boy who’d always craved his father’s rare affection and approval, wanted to do as he said, wanted to finally make him proud. It wasn’t as though Stefan was necessarily wrong, after all. It was possible that Taube had had suspicions about Royce’s true designation and chosen Royce on purpose, fully expecting their marriage to crash and burn—and perhaps he’d even thought that it would ruin Royce’s chances in the elections, thus killing two birds with one stone. Haydn’s father might be entirely correct that Kadar had never intended to keep the peace.

But.

He looked at Lord Ksar’ngh’chaali. He could see from the slightly resigned expression on his face that if Haydn confirmed his father’s words, Lord Ksar—and the Galactic Council—would side with Pelugia. They would probably stop insisting on the peace between the countries and deal exclusively with Pelugia from now on. It would be a resounding win for Pelugia—and a resounding loss for Kadar. It would mean war.