Their Clueless Alpha Princess Chapter 12

Their Clueless Alpha Princess Chapter 12

Soren’s POV

I locked eyes with Vesper Aldric across the ice cream shop, and my lip curled before I could stop it.

The vampire smiled back. Polished, measured, perfectly human. The kind of smile that put girls at ease and made their pulse slow down right when it should be speeding up.

I’d known what he was since the first day of school. The scent was faint but unmistakable – something sharp underneath the cologne, something cold. Not wolf. Not human. Blood-drinker.

I hadn’t said anything. The treaty between species was clear: no supernatural could expose another in the human world. And I had no interest in getting tangled up with vampire politics when my only objective was finding the princess.

But watching him standing next to Thea’s cousin, all concern and courtesy, I felt Nox stir at the back of my skull.

“That one reeks,” Nox growled. “He’s not here for the girl’s ankle.”

He was here for the blood. The cousin – Darcy – smelled like fresh iron and sugar, a combination that would draw a young vampire the way a campfire draws moths. He’d stay charming through dinner. By midnight, she’d have two small puncture marks somewhere her shirt covered, and she’d wake up dizzy and blame the wine.

Not my problem.

The cousin looked between me and Thea, and something sharp crossed her face.

“Are you two on a date?” Her tone was bright and vicious. “I can’t believe you’d go for a bastard like her.”

The word landed like spit. In this town, everyone knew what Thea was a girl with no father and a dead mother, raised on someone else’s charity. The cousin said it the way you’d name a breed of dog.

I said nothing. But I let the date assumption stand.

She could think whatever she wanted. It made no difference to me what a human teenager assumed about my personal life. But my jaw tightened on its own.

“Nox,” I warned internally.

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

Then Thea’s hand closed around my arm.

I went still. Not because of the static – there wasn’t any this time – but because I didn’t like being touched. I never had. Physical contact was something I tolerated in combat and endured in ceremony. Even my own mother knew to keep her hands to herself.

Thea’s fingers curled into the fabric of my sleeve, and she pulled herself close to my side. She was warm. I could feel it through the jacket.

“Sorry, Darcy,” Thea said, and her voice was steadier than it had any right to be. “We’re busy. Soren and I have somewhere to be.

”

Vesper’s gaze shifted to me. I watched his pupils contract – a predator reassessing.

I could have pulled away. I should have.

Instead, I settled my arm across her shoulders and steered her toward the door. She was shorter than I expected. The top of her head barely reached my jaw.

Nox hummed. “You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m leaving. There’s a difference.”

Once we were around the corner and out of sight, I dropped my arm.

“Done using me?”

Thea stopped walking. She looked at the ground for a second, and I thought she might apologize or explain or launch into one of her negotiations. She always had an angle. It was one of the things that made her tolerable.

“Thank you,” she said. Nothing else.

We spent the next two hours working through her list. Six names, six addresses. At each stop, Thea would do the talking – introduce herself, make small conversation, find a reason to bring the girl outside or near a doorway where I could get close- and I’d stand within arm’s reach and breathe.

Nothing.

Human. Human. Human. Human. Human. Human.

Six girls. Six dead ends. Not a single trace of wolf. Not even a whisper of something dormant or half-formed. Just the flat, unremarkable scent of human blood and human skin.

I leahed against the car after the last stop and stared at the darkening sky. The princess was supposed to be here. The seer had said this school, this area, this generation. I’d posted the flyers, attended the classes, searched the records. Every lead was a

dead end.

Maybe the princess’s wolf hadn’t awakened yet. An unstable or dormant wolf would produce almost no scent. If she didn’t know what she was – if she’d been raised entirely human – her wolf might still be sleeping. In that case, scent alone wouldn’t find

her.

I needed a different approach.

“Nox.”

“Hm?”

“The girl at the party. The one with the wolf-tooth necklace.”

“The one who slapped you.”

“That night, you smelled a wolf in the restroom.”

“I smelled something. Faint. Could have been residue.”

“Could have been dormant.”

Nox considered this. “You’re still thinking about her.”

“I’m thinking about the necklace.” A wolf’s fang, worn as a pendant. In our world, that was a mate’s promise. In the human world, it was junk jewelry. But Thea said she’d found it in the trash. Her father’s only possession. A man who disappeared eighteen years ago – the same year the prince died.

Coincidence didn’t sit well with me.

Thea climbed into the passenger seat. I started the engine and pulled into traffic.

“You weren’t really checking those girls,” she said after a while. “You just looked at them for two seconds and walked away. You didn’t even ask about birthmarks.”

I kept my eyes on the road. “I have my methods.”

“Your methods are terrible.”

She was right, and that bothered me more than it should have a human girl who smelled like dish soap and cheap lip gloss telling me my methods were failing, after spending three hours pretending she hadn’t been stood up by an idiot.

We drove in silence until I pulled up outside her aunt’s house. The porch light was off. The windows were dark except for one on the second floor.

Thea grabbed her bag and opened the door. Before she stepped out, I said it.

“Stay away from Vesper.”

She froze with one foot on the pavement. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“You don’t get to tell me who-”

“I’m not telling you. I’m warning you.” I looked at her for the first time since we’d left the ice cream shop. Her eyes were red- rimmed. She’d been crying in the car, silently, thinking I wouldn’t notice. I noticed.

“Keep your ears open,” I said. “If anything unusual happens around here — anything at all – tell me.”

She frowned. “Unusual how?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Goodnight, Thea.”

She stared at me for a long second. Then she shut the door and walked up the driveway without looking back.

Nox watched through my eyes as she disappeared around the side of the house.

“You could have explained,” Nox said.

“Explained what? That her school crush is a vampire who wants to drink her cousin’s blood? She’d think I was insane.”

“You could have tried.”

I shifted into drive and pulled away from the curb.