The Alpha King Call Boy: Chap 47-128

I pushed aside the uneasy feelings – they may have been all for nothing, anyway – and exited Grandfather’s room quietly, following Alexander and pulling the door almost-closed behind me.

We were halfway to the elevator, passing the floor’s reception desk, when I saw that nurse again. The one who was in Grandfather’s room last time Alexander and I were here together. Who had given him a look of longing and a needlessly close pass of her body.

She was standing behind the desk, turned to the side photocopying a document on the glass scanner of a big printer. She caught sight of Alexander as we approached and did a less than discreet double-take.

The last time this happened, Alexander had ignored her attention.

The nurse rudely kept her eyes on my man as he and I passed the desk, walking side by side. Alexander again acted willfully blind to the situation, not reacting in any way.

I decided that enough was enough. If he was not going make a point of showing her that he was taken, then I would do it myself.

I slipped my hand into his and gave it a tight squeeze.

He looked down at me and smiled. I gave him an encouraging wink, and he lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss into it.

When we reached the elevator, Alexander hit the button with the down arrow. I looked over my shoulder at the nurse. As expected, still had her eyes on us.

My icy stare hit her hard; she flinched when she met my gaze, and then rapidly looked away.

The elevator doors rolled open. We stepped inside, turned around. Alexander punched the button labeled L for lobby; while his eyes were busy on the button panel, mine flicked back to our friend behind the desk.

Yep – she dared to look over at us again.

I smiled at her. Then I grabbed Alexander by his shirt collar, wheeled him around to face me, stroked his chest and leaned my head to one side, inviting him in.

Alexander was easy to wrangle into touching me when I was motivated enough to be pushy and egg him on. He smiled, licked his lips and then planted them on my neck. Air rushed into his mouth and nose in a huge inhale.

It was a satisfying sound.

The elevator doors started rolling, slowly, closed. I found the nurse’s eyes again just as her jaw dropped a half-inch, and stared her down fiercely.

Her eyes went wide, her cheeks flushed, and she shivered. Then she turned her whole body away.

I’d scared her.

Good.

Alexander

The weekend passed like a dream. Fiona was on fire.

Monday morning came too soon, and she slipped away before I could wake up enough to even attempt to hold her back in bed with me. I snoozed while she was drying her hair—the sound was like a white noise

machine—and reawakened when she was nearly out the door.

It was only three-thirty.

“Your boss is a real asshole if he expects you in the office at four a.m.” I shuffled my body upright, leaning back against the headboard, and snatched a water glass from my nightstand.

I was pleased to earn a tiny, distracted chuckle. Fiona kept true to her routine, not allowing me to distract her. Shoes, jacket. Then the final check on her lipstick in the mirror by the door.

“I’m meeting Nina for breakfast,” she finally said, turning to look at me across the dim room.

She began running her fingers through her freshly washed hair to fluff it up with even more body and

volume. Distracted by this display, I missed a narrow opportunity for follow-up questions about Nina and her odd availability for pre-dawn meal dates such as these.

“I’ll be back for dinner by six,” Fiona continued, her tone matter-of-fact. “See you then.”

“Okay. Sounds great. I’ll see you then.”

Purse on shoulder, briefcase in hand, Fiona was one foot out the door, but then— “My boss isn’t an asshole, by the way,” she said with a casual glance over her shoulder. “At least, not all the time.” She grinned and winked at me, added “Bye,” and smoothly closed the door behind her.

I was stunned for a second. Dying with laughter in the next.

The good mood balloon was popped and blown to bits the second Iris opened her door.

“I don’t want to go,” she whined before the door had even swung fully open.

“Good morning to you, too, Iris.” I found myself speaking to her as if she were a child. The way she behaved called for it. “May I come in so we can talk?”

“Sure.” She pushed the door aside, just enough for me to pass her by.

I meandered over to the table where I usually perched for my chats here with Iris and took a seat. “So, what’s the problem? Why don’t you want to go to your appointment?”

“I already told you.” She crossed the room and crawled up into her bed, lying on her side with her

head on a flat pillow, facing me directly. “It’s scary.

Have you ever done a bunch of medical tests like that, hmm?”

“I have not,” I admitted. “But you’re not going to be alone. I’m going with you to the hospital, and I’ll stay with you the whole time. If I’m allowed in the room, I’ll stay in the room with you. If I’m not, I’ll be waiting for you in the hall. Okay?”

She pulled a pillow from behind her on the bed, held it bundled tightly against her chest. “Okay,” she said at last. “If it’s too much though, we can leave, right?”

“Sure,” I said. Whatever got her out the door at this point. I could deal with that situation later, if it came up.

Iris was seated for the blood draw first. The doctor had recommended getting it over with at the

beginning of our day of tests, since it was what seemed to scare Iris the most.

I was a little surprised at the actual depth of her fear when it appeared in its full form at the sight of the needle. She fully panicked, hyperventilating until the tech intervened.

This woman was infinitely patient and very good at her job. She managed to calm Iris down with breathing guidance, reassurances about the procedure and quick-talking chit-chat. Then she brought out a little partition to shield Iris’s eyes from the needle and tubing she was about to hook up into the ditch of her elbow. I suspected this was a tool more commonly used with child patients. Finally, then, the draw was in process, and then a minute later it was done.

I made a mental note of the nametag on the woman’s

teal scrubs. I would later figure out who her supervisor was, and make sure they were quite aware of how skilled and valuable their employee was.

Fortunately, the rest of Iris’s appointments passed with less tumult.

Even the CT scan, which I had been getting increasingly nervous about, sure that Iris would not have the patience to sit through the long, tedious ordeal with her head inside the machine. But somehow she fell asleep and took a long nap until it was over. My good fortune was not lost on me. I muttered a prayer of gratitude to whichever deity had granted me this mercy.

We returned to the palace mid-afternoon. Iris was tired. I would have been too; she was not wrong about hours of medical testing being an unpleasant, onerous chore.

With just a few hours before Fiona would be home for dinner, I was itching to get back to our room to change and then be on the way to training. I could probably work out with the pack for a little over an hour before I’d need to start cleaning myself up.

“Stay with me for just a little while?” Iris whined when I tried to bid her goodbye at her doorstep.

“I can’t right now, Iris. I need to get my pack training started. Plus, you need to rest anyway. That was a lot that you just went through. Take it easy tonight, please, and don’t forget to eat and hydrate.” That last bit was a reiteration from the blood tech’s parting speech.

“You’re always busy,” she said, pouting.

“That’s true.” I gave her a sharp look, remembering

that sometimes treating Iris like a child was the most effective way to course correct in the face of her childishness.

“Alright.” Her shoulders slumped with resignation.

“When will I see you again?”

“Well, how about we have breakfast tomorrow morning? I was hoping maybe after you get some rest, we could start trying to talk about my mother.

See if… you can try to remember anything.”

She brightened, agreeable to this plan of action. I thanked her profusely for her efforts with the medical tests and then, as politely as I could, got away before she could start complaining again.