All Chapters of Alpha Romanov: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Valeria:Yelena arrived at my door just before seven, and I knew something was wrong the moment I opened it.Her face held the careful patience of someone who had been given an order she already knew I would hate. It was not fear; it was the kind of steady composure people wore when they had to deliver bad news with a polite smile.I leaned against the doorframe. “What does he want from me this time?”Her brows lifted. “I did not say this concerned Alpha Romanov.”“You did not have to,” I said. “Your face showed it all.”She pressed her lips together and glanced behind me as if checking the corridor for eavesdroppers. “May I come in?”I stepped aside. “Come,” I said, giving her a gentle nod, knowing that she was just a servant here and like everyone else, she needed to follow certain rules and guidelines.She walked in and closed the door behind her, watching as I crossed my arms over my chest as I looked at her. “Alpha Romanov has requested that you join him for dinner tonight.”I sta

Valeria:I knew I was annoying him. It showed in the way his jaw tightened every time I used his name instead of his title, in the darkening of his eyes when I questioned him, and in the way he stood outside my door now, looking like one sarcastic comment away from losing the last thread of his patience.Good. He needed to be annoyed. Maybe then he would understand that I would not spend the next year being summoned from room to room like an item on his schedule. I had signed a contract; I had not signed away the right to be spoken to like a person.Nikolai stared at me. I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms. “Well?”His brows lowered. “You’re enjoying pushing me more than you should, Valeria.”I smiled faintly. “Maybe.”His expression hardened and I could almost hear the warning before he spoke. “Valeria.”“Nikolai.” Using his name annoyed him almost as much as refusing an order, and that made it harder to stop.“You know exactly what you are doing.” He said, rolling his

Valeria:I should not have been thinking about him. That was the first thing I told myself as I left Nikolai’s rooms and walked back toward the eastern wing. The second was that I had absolutely no intention of listening to the first.Dinner had been different, and I knew that it was a problem… but it wasn’t one that I wanted to press on thinking about.For once there had been no council watching us, no contract sitting between us like a third person, no argument that ended with one of us storming out. We had talked and somehow that felt more dangerous than kissing him.I kept replaying the moment his expression changed when I mentioned the piano. The stillness that came over him before he told me his mother used to play. He had looked different then, not like Alpha Romanov, not like the man everyone feared, but like a son remembering his mother. I hated that I had noticed. I hated even more that I wanted to know more.My hand tightened on the doorknob when I reached my room. “This is

Valeria:I barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes Elena’s voice returned with a clarity that made anger curl through my stomach all over again.When you are gone, I will raise that baby as my own.I tightened my fingers around the edge of the windowsill and stared through the glass. Snow had fallen overnight, laying another untouched sheet of white over the grounds. The morning sun caught on it in a way that should have been beautiful, but I could not appreciate it.I forced myself to breathe. Slowly. Once. Twice… but it did not help much. If anything, it only made me angrier.The worst part was that Elena had gotten under my skin. Not because she had been with Nikolai; I had spent most of the night telling myself that whatever he had done before I arrived had nothing to do with me. He had a life before the council put a contract in front of me and called me his wife for a year. I had no right to be jealous of another woman simply because she had known his mouth before I did. The th

Valeria:By the time Yelena brought me to Nikolai’s rooms, I had already decided that whatever he wanted had better be worth interrupting my shower.The guards opened the door and I stepped inside. Nikolai stood near the window with his back to me, dressed in black trousers and a dark shirt. His shoulders were rigid, the kind of tension that told me immediately this was not about breakfast, dinner, or whatever new Romanov rule he had decided to invent overnight.Yelena remained behind me. “You may leave,” Nikolai said.She hesitated. “Alpha Romanov…”“Leave.” The command was flat. “Now.”The door closed behind her. I folded my arms. “Care to tell me why you had me brought here like some criminal?”Nikolai turned. The look in his eyes stopped whatever sarcastic comment had been forming on my tongue. He was furious, not the irritation he wore when I challenged him, but a deeper, colder fury. His eyes were already beginning to silver. My stomach tightened.“What happened?” I asked. “Did