I Thought I Was Helping the Alpha King Court My Sister—Then He Asked Me to Dinner Instead

Don't touch that. The words crossed the Royal City Museum's central gallery at precisely the wrong volume. Every conversation stopped. A photographer lowered his camera. My sister Celeste froze beneath the exhibition banner with the perfect smile she usually wore through funding emergencies, hostile interviews, and donors who believed owning a painting qualified them to

explain it. At the center of the silence stood King Lucien Vale. He was 35, 6'4, and dressed in a black suit that made the silver ceremonial crown beside him look almost modest. His public photographs never quite captured the stillness of him. 12 territories answered to his government. Half the buildings visible through the

museum's glass roof belonged to companies in the Veil Investment Group. The wolves in the room could feel his alpha authority before he spoke. I felt only the danger of an uncovered hand moving toward 900 years of fragile silver. Lucien looked from the crown to me. I had come through the conservation door carrying a tool case, wearing a

gray apron over an old green sweater. A pencil was holding my hair together. One of my gloves had a smear of blue testing gel across the thumb. I was not part of the welcoming committee. which was why the committee looked ready to bury me beneath the museum gift shop. "Excuse me?" Lucien asked. I crossed the gallery

and opened a packet of clean nitrial gloves. "The inner band is unstable. Skin oils will interfere with the residue analysis." I held the gloves out to him. "Your title doesn't make fingerprints historically significant." Celeste made a small sound that might have been my name or a prayer. The museum director, Harold Vance, reached