Brooks nodded once before speaking quietly into his earpiece.
“Are they always like this?” Dallas asked, breaking out of protocol as he watched the delegates drink and laugh.
I couldn’t help but grin over my shoulder at him. “Actually they’re usually worse than this. If Grandpa were here they would already be coaxing him into drinking right alongside them which is a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.”
There had been more delegate’s dinners and events with the United Kingdom underneath my mother’s tenure than almost any other president in history. Most people probably just thought it was because she was trying to build strong relations with the UK, but I knew it was because she’d grown up right alongside the current king as de facto childhood friends.
And in turn, I’d grown up with his three sons, though they were closer to Carter growing up than me.
It was rare that we got together, but there had been several family vacations spent in England at the Holloway house there playing with the princes and their cousin, Josephine—which was not something that just anyone could boast about.
As if my thoughts of them were magic, the three princes who I had been working so hard to avoid all evening seemed to materialize out of thin air.
“My darling Lennon,” the poshly accented voice of the oldest of the three princes came from inside of the east wing as they exited through the french doors and into the garden.
There he was, Henry, Prince of Wales, and the bane of my existence for the evening. As always he was flanked by his two twin brothers, Princes Arthur and Edwin. All three were blonde and all three were wearing a set of identical, shit-eating grins. Great. That couldn’t mean anything good.
“We’ve been trying to talk to you all evening, it was such a shame that we were sat so far down the table from you at dinner,” Henry said, batting his pale lashes at me as if that would do anything.
I just rolled my eyes at him.
“That was on purpose, your royal highness,” I told him, offering him the small curtsy that was proper for his station as the crown prince of England and future king. Not that he acted anything like a crown prince. Henry was basically a frat guy in a cravat.
Henry just laughed at my attitude before reaching forward and snagging my wrist, dragging me forward and into their little circle. “You’re as adorable as ever, Lennon, but where is Carter? He’s usually here as your ever-present guard dog.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brooks and Dallas step forward, probably to stop the princes from dragging me around like a rag doll, but I just shook my head. This wasn’t anything new, and as annoying as they were, these three were about as harmless as a basket of overly rambunctious puppies.
They had always been overly touchy. With each other, with their cousin, with Carter and me on the occasions that our families were all together.
“Is he going through another ‘stint?’” Edwin asked curiously, making quotation marks with his fingers.
I shot him a quelling look. “If he is, would it make any difference?”
The prince just shrugged. “Not really. Father stuck Arthur in one earlier this year because he was a tad too attached to our good friend Charlie, if you understand my meaning.”
Edwin tapped his nose and wagged his eyebrows at me.
Arthur, who was always the quietest of the three brothers, just rolled his eyes but said nothing.
I’d long suspected that Carter’s issues with drugs had stemmed from these three. They were infamously known as the party princes, always getting up to something or another and the British tabloids ate up every bit of it.
“I thought you three were supposed to be cleaning up your image?” I asked Henry, who despite his brother’s teasing, looked the most put together now.
He looked halfway decent now, dressed in a smart suit with a Union jack pinned to his lapel.
“His majesty wants me to,” Henry said with a shrug, “but there’s time. The man’s only sixty. His father was nearly ninetyby the time he died and gave him the throne so I don’t see why I can’t enjoy myself while I’m young.”
“Because enjoying yourself usually entails driving very fast cars and getting into accidents?” I pointed out dryly. “Not to mention dragging your little brothers along on all of your shenanigans.”
Henry sighed and threw a heavy arm around my shoulders nearly knocking me off of my feet. “Lennon, you used to be more fun.”
He smelled of lime and cinnamon, not a hint of scent suppressant on him, and it was…fine. Just like most alphas his scent wasn’t bad. It was one of the reasons I hadn’t put much stock in designations before meeting them.
But now I knew better.
Henry’s scent paled in comparison to the four alphas who by some twist of fate had come to protect me. Even now I could smell Brooks and Dallas’s mixed apple whiskey and honey mead scents on the air as they followed closely behind our little group.
Their scents were overpowering and enticing, invading my senses and making me want to melt into them and surrender myself completely to my instincts.
