Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Chapter 147: Chapter 147: Wings and fries

Nero looked at her for a moment, as if her offer had arrived from very far away through several layers of royal restraint and bad instincts.

Then he said, ”I’m down.”

Sylvia blinked. ”That easy?”

His violet eyes shifted briefly toward the corridor behind her, toward the wing where Dean had disappeared with Arion, and something in his expression hardened before smoothing back into civility.

”I need air,” he said. ”And distance.”

That, more than the answer itself, made her understand.

Not the details. Sylvia was not stupid enough to go digging through royal feelings with her bare hands. But she understood enough. Someone had gotten under Nero’s skin, and whatever had happened in that ballroom had left him too wound up to stay there without doing something regrettable.

She lifted a finger. ”Fine. But I’m serious about the wings and fries.”

Nero’s mouth moved, almost a smile. ”That’s acceptable.”

”And you’re paying.”

”I don’t care.”

Of course he didn’t.

Sylvia folded her arms, eyeing the richly embroidered Sahan formalwear that made him look less like a person and more like a state occasion given bones and a face. Deep violet-black fabric, gold detailing, severe lines, perfect tailoring. He looked expensive, beautiful, and entirely unsuited for a late-night escape involving fried food and a civilian apartment.

”You cannot go out dressed like that,” she said.

Nero glanced down at himself once. ”I’m aware.”

”Good. Because if you walk into a casual place wearing that, people will either call the press or kneel.”

That finally pulled a real breath of amusement from him, faint but genuine.

”I’ll change first,” he said. ”Meet me in fifteen minutes. West private elevators.”

Sylvia nodded. ”Fine. I’m changing too.”

He gave a short incline of his head, then paused before turning away. ”Are you going to your suite?”

”My apartment,” Sylvia corrected. ”The one Arion had arranged when I relocated. I’m done with this gala.”

Nero’s gaze settled on her more fully at that.

”Good,” he said after a beat. ”Go there. I’ll take you.”

She narrowed her eyes slightly. ”You don’t have to escort me all the way home.”

”I know.” His tone stayed even. ”I want to leave the gala. You want to leave the gala. This solves both problems.”

That was fair.

Not warm, not intimate, and not the beginning of an unlikely emotional alliance. Simply practical. Mutual recognition between two people who had no desire to remain inside a building currently overflowing with dominant nonsense.

Sylvia exhaled. ”All right. Fifteen minutes.”

He left without another word, and Sylvia watched him go with the uncomfortable awareness that even angry and trying not to think, Nero moved like someone raised from birth to be watched.

Then she turned on her heel and headed for the room assigned to her for the event.

By the time she got inside and shut the door, the silence felt almost holy.

She stood there for a second, staring at the mirror, then at the designer dress hugging her body like it had personally participated in the evening’s crimes.

”Absolutely not,” she muttered.

She peeled herself out of it with the speed of a woman escaping a bad decision and changed back into her own clothes from before the gala: fitted jeans, boots, a dark sweater soft enough to breathe in, and her own coat ready for outside air that didn’t smell like perfume, political tension, and expensive pheromonal instability.

The relief was immediate.

By the time she tied back her hair and grabbed her bag, she looked like herself again. Not an accessory to a royal event. Just Sylvia. Tired, hungry, and profoundly ready to go home to her apartment, lock the door, and never again stand within ten feet of an engagement gala between two dominant disasters.

Then, as she glanced at her reflection one last time, a thought hit her.

She had been at a royal gala in Alamina. She had seen nobles, aides, security, foreign delegations, one spectacularly wounded peacock of a dominant omega, and enough political tension to power a small country.

And she still had not met Empress Minerva.

Sylvia stared at herself.

Then she laughed once, tired and disbelieving.

”Of course,” she said aloud. ”Of course that happened.”

She grabbed her phone and left.

Nero was already waiting by the west private elevators when she arrived.

He had changed out of the Sahan formalwear.

Unfortunately, that had solved absolutely nothing.

The leather jacket sat over a plain white shirt, dark jeans, and boots, simple lines, modern clothes meant to strip him down from prince to man. But they did not. They only made him look like royalty pretending to be normal for the benefit of people too weak to survive the full version.

His white-blond hair was loose around his shoulders. His face was calmer now, but only on the surface. The anger had not vanished. It had been locked behind stillness that suggested he had changed clothes specifically to avoid going back and doing something violent.

Sylvia stopped in front of him, took one look, and sighed.

”The clothes did nothing.”

One pale brow lifted. ”Nothing?”

”Nothing,” she repeated. ”You still look painfully identifiable.”

Nero glanced down at the jacket as though it had personally failed him.

”This is normal clothing.”

”For models, princes, and people who have never once had to rely on blending in,” Sylvia said. ”You do not blend. You just look like a royal in civilian packaging.”

That got the faintest curve from his mouth. Better than before. Still dangerous, but better.

He looked at her then, taking in her jeans, sweater, boots, and coat, and the fact that she had also shed the gala version of herself and returned to something real.

The elevator doors opened to a secured lower level, quiet and polished and dimly lit in the expensive way only royal buildings managed, where even concrete looked curated.

Sylvia stepped out first and then stopped.

”Oh, come on.”

Nero, a pace behind her, said nothing.

Because parked in the private bay was not a discreet sedan. Not even a merely rich car. It was the sort of machine that existed to inform the world that whoever sat inside it had never once been told no by price, law, or common sense. Low, glossy black, absurdly sleek, with lines sharp enough to cut and detailing subtle only if one had never seen luxury before. The emblem alone looked expensive. The whole thing screamed limited edition in twelve languages.

Sylvia turned slowly to look at him.

Nero had the decency to look almost blank.

”Tell me,” she said with profound calm, ”that this is not your idea of keeping a low profile.”

”It’s my car.”

”That is not an answer.”

”It was the closest one available.”

Sylvia looked back at the vehicle, then at the security staff nearby doing an admirable job of pretending they were not watching a Sahan prince escort a civilian toward what looked like a collector’s fantasy with an engine.

She sighed, long and accepting, the sigh of a woman surrendering to reality because reality had clearly arrived armed.

”There is no universe,” she said, ”in which this is subtle.”

”No,” Nero agreed.

At least he was honest.