Page 2 of Nanny for the Alien Prince (Alien Recruitment Agency #4)

2

NATH

I slammed my fist on the desk and heard the unmistakable crack of the wood as it gave beneath my blow.

Damn the Ordres! Damn them to the infernal fiery recesses of the Creator’s crack!

But how could anyone remain calm when there was the threat of impending war on the horizon? I’d warned my father not to do this, not to take the risk that the Ordres might react this way but he had chosen not to listen to me… another example of how our leadership styles would be vastly different.

I loved him dearly but he was mired in the past, learning and being educated by the exact same teachers as his own father before him. When you were fed the same information and education as all former leaders, what did you expect to happen? More of the same.

As the second eldest member of the royal family, I was never meant to have the crown. I was only meant to serve my elder brother and to support him with control of the military. That was what I had been born to become. The general of the Ulsen empire's armed forces, which were vast. It was agreed long ago that putting such power into the hands of various houses and families was too dangerous. Much better for it to be in the control of a single ruling family… not that everything always ran that smoothly, to be sure — we had our rivalries like every other family. But our blood joined us in ways that friendships and mere vows could not.

But then my elder brother, the prince and the pride of the entire Ulsen empire had died in a freak accident. Rumors circulated, threats were made against other powerful families, but I calmed my father, the king, down and prevented him from losing his temper and striking out at what could potentially be an innocent enemy.

The elder prince had been the center of the family and the entire empire, our pride and joy, and there was a hole left in our family that would never be overcome. It became my duty to take his position and I had been studying ever since.

It hadn’t been an easy transition. My role was to take my brother’s orders and carry them out, and ensure they were done to the best of my ability. Now I was expected to be the one to make the decisions.

It was a lot of pressure. And I suddenly had to deal with all the other families, their allegiances and commitments. I hated it but it was what Fate had decided for me and who was I to complain?

I slammed my fist on the desk again. And I heard the wood splinter again, and a tuft of fuzzy fibers drifted to the floor amidst a cloud of dust.

But why now? Why now of all times?

The door creaked open and M’ra entered, carrying a tray with a tall glass of Ulsen juice on it. She approached slowly, silently, and placed the tray on my desk .

“Elijax is here,” she said softly.

“Elijax?” I said, still lost in thought at this latest piece of news.

“Your nephew,” M’ra said.

“Hm? Oh. Yes. Of course.”

I fell into my chair and began scribbling what I wanted my orders to be on a piece of paper. Writing down my thoughts always helped me figure out what it was I actually wanted to do.

“The mother is here with her child,” M’ra said, prodding me again.

“Hm? Mother? I thought she died with Irvale?”

“Elijax’s true mother. The female human that raised him.”

“Oh. That one. Right.”

“The nephew that you will be responsible for now, going forward.”

“Yeah, sure. No problem.”

There was a breath of silence — one I had grown to become wary of over the years — and an instant later:

Whack!

The slap came so fast that I wouldn’t have been able to defend myself against it even if I knew it was coming. M’ra was faster than lightning even in her old age and just as wily. There was no outwitting her when she had a mind to do something.

“What was that for?” I said, rubbing at the back of my head.

It didn’t hurt but it was associated with so many childhood memories that it was impossible not to be affected by it.

“That’s for being your thick-headed uncaring selfish self! ”

I checked for blood.

“It’s not bleeding, you dolt! I used a newspaper!”

“There might be a paper cut… and you’ve used other, heavier things in the past…”

“That’s because your head grew so thick I had no other choice.”

“I think you gave me brain damage.”

M’ra clucked her tongue. “I should be so lucky. It would be the only time I actually ever made a difference.”

She knew better than that. She had raised me, turning me into the Ulsen I was today… both the good and the bad. Although she couldn’t control all the influences that happened to me. No one could do that. Father (although I most often thought of him as the King rather than my dad) wanted me to learn statecraft, warcraft, and any other craft that involved manipulation and violence. Mother ensured I learned the correct attitude of becoming king, how to project power and influence over both friends and enemies — and her very first lesson was to accept that a royal family member had no true friends.

It was M’ra who dressed me in a cloak and took me beyond the palace walls to see the everyday Ulsen going about their business.

“How can you expect to rule over those you do not know?” she would always say.

We got caught on more than one occasion. The exit route was closed off and I was told to never leave the palace alone again. But M’ra always had other ways of escape, and we used a different one every time.

They became events I looked forward to, like I was visiting a strange and distant land. That was the first time I saw hardship, poverty, and the problems that plagued the average Ulsen .

And it became the driving force of my deepest desires.

My father had given the people war, believing it was the only way to defend our borders. I would rule differently. There would be no war and we would prosper, our culture and influence becoming so powerful that our neighbors would have no choice but to trade with us.

And empires that depended on each other for trade did not go to war.

At least, that was the theory.

I turned back to M’ra. “I could have you whipped for striking a member of the royal family…”

M’ra snorted. “Your army isn’t big enough.”

She was probably right. And if ever such an order was given, it would tear the royal family apart and end the thousand-year reign our family had enjoyed. M’ra had too many loyal members of the family behind her — mostly because she had raised them.

I was such a loyal member.

“Will you treat the nephew so callously?” I asked.

“He’s a sweet boy. Unlike you and your brothers and sisters. And don’t call him ‘the’ nephew. He’s yours by blood.”

“By half-blood.”

M’ra sighed. “By your brother’s blood.”

He had always been her favorite. No matter how many rules he broke or times he disobeyed her or our parents, he always got away with it. Maybe that was part of the reason he had become the way he had.

The M’ra sighed wistfully. “He looks just like him. There’s no doubt of his lineage.”

I knew that already. I’d seen him at his parents’ funeral. He was dressed all in black in what I assumed was traditional human funeral clothing. He looked so small and his human foster mother — the step-sister of his mother, as I’d been informed — clutching her arms around him protectively, her eyes darting this way and that, daring any member of our family to come anywhere near him.

She paid particular attention to me and her deep brown eyes bore into mine like I was the child’s father and had been the one to leave him with her. I wanted to approach the boy, to crouch before him and pay him the proper Ulsen respect so the other members of the royal family could see he belonged as much among them as they did, but the foster mother had taken him away before I could approach.

“Is the foster mother with him?”

M’ra sighed. “She is no more his foster mother than I am merely your nanny. She is his mother. I don’t care what the birth certificate says.”

“But the family — and the empire — cares very much.”

The M’ra sighed again — her trademark. “Yes. And I wish it wasn’t so. She’s done the family and the empire a great service in raising him. He is a quiet, thoughtful child with excellent manners.”

“You could tell that with one meeting?”

“I could tell that with a single glance.”

She’d spent her life around children, raising them, caring for them, educating them… if there was any good in me, it was thanks to her. Not that my parents were not good to me — they were. But they were distant, cold, like orbiting comets around a dead star. They were to be respected at all times.

“I see the news of impending war must wait until after I meet this human female who is really the mother of the nephew— I mean, my nephew.”

M’ra nodded, pleased I had addressed him the right way .

“Are you going to treat me with this lack of respect when I take the throne?” I asked.

M’ra’s eyes glinted. “Ask your father.”

And she turned and left.

The servants bowed respectfully as I moved down the hallway, lost in complete thought, puzzling over what to do about the threat of war on the fringes of our eastern border. I was distracted when I heard soft voices inside a room, speaking a language that I hadn’t heard in its native tongue before.

I stood in the doorway and saw Amelia watching a young half-Ulsen who had to be the boy. I couldn’t read Amelia’s face but she seemed to be completely engrossed with him. I took the opportunity to run my eyes over her body, taking in her smooth curves and surprisingly toned legs. She might have been trying to conceal the body she had underneath those frumpy clothes but there was no fooling me.

Then she turned and double-took me in the doorway and hopped on the spot and screamed. What did I expect? I was lurking like a mosstum in its cave.

I wanted to apologize but protocol prevented me from doing so. Amelia’s ears colored red and I wondered why. I wasn’t aware of pheromones that could be excreted from a human’s skin to ensnare the affections of an innocent male… but then, I had only read the report on Amelia, not conducted it myself. Perhaps there was more to them than met the eye.

“He is the child?” I asked her, unsure what else to say.

“Your nephew?” she said. “Yes. ”

The conversation went from bad to worse after that. A conversation with the noble class was so complex, with each word designed to convey multiple meanings and levels of understanding that it became easy to misjudge what your partner actually wanted.

The human female appeared to speak directly, and I was taken aback.

I approached the boy and peered down at him. He was so small his horns hadn’t yet come in. And it was then that I realized how unready I was to raise him.

His eyes were doubtless those of Irvale — golden with purple shores like rolling seas. We Ulsen passed our unique identity into our eyes the same way humans did with their fingerprints.

There was no denying it.

The boy was royalty.

I was unsure how this first meeting with the human female would go but had prepared accordingly. Now that I had met her, I realized I needed to instigate one of the plans.

“Perhaps… I might have a word with you.”

I walked back to my office, an army of servants bowing like waves on my way there. I ran over what I wanted to say to Amelia, layered in the multiple meanings, and by the time I fell back into my chair, I was ready.

Amelia was awkward as a servant shut the door behind us and didn’t seem to know where to stand or what to do. She clutched her hands in front of herself, then massaged them, then tucked them behind her back… She was nervous as hell.

“Take a seat,” I said .

She hastened to one of the open-backed wing chairs and took a seat, peering around at the opulence of the office.

I reached down for the lowest drawer in my desk and extracted a pitifully small folder. I placed it on the desk, unwound the piece of string that held it together, and began to read.

“You’re an only child,” I said. “No, wait. You have a half-sister.”

“Had a half-sister,” she said.

Ah, yes. The one buried in the casket beside my brother. It was rare for a non-Ulsen to be buried in the holy soil of the Royal Cemetery but it was what Irvale had wanted. I couldn’t deny him that.

“I wanted to bury her on Earth,” Amelia said. “Her home.”

“They wished to be buried together.”

“So bury them both on Earth.”

“A royal Ulsen buried in off-world soil?” I shook my head. “It isn’t done.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Not in Ulsen culture. Once a precedent exists, it remains for all time.”

“Huh.” Amelia snorted.

I paused in looking at the file. Something about her tone irked me. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s clearly something.”

Amelia pursed her lips. “The people who follow traditions never think they can be changed.”

“You think they can?”

She raised her eyes and looked me dead in the eye. “Tell me, what existed before there was precedent?”

I blinked. No one questioned a member of the royal family — much the heir to the throne. I leaned back in my chair, unsure how it made me feel to be challenged this way.

“Chaos,” I said. “There is chaos before precedent.”

“And how many times was there precedent before someone decided this was the right precedent?”

I didn’t like where the conversation was going — mainly because I was losing. “We don’t need to talk about this now,” I snapped, turning back to the file.

But the human female wouldn’t leave it alone. “My mother wanted to go to my sister’s funeral.”

“Step-sister.”

“But she’s too ill to travel. Now tell me that it’s okay for her to be buried a million miles away.”

There was a fire in her eyes and I found it… alluring. I felt a hunger in the pit of my stomach and reached over for the intercom to order some fruit.

“There is nowhere the spirit cannot go,” I said. “Once your sister—”

“Step-sister.”

“—passed into the Deeper Plane, she can travel anywhere in an instant. Your mother can still contact her if she recites the right words.”

“A shame she doesn’t know them.”

“Then we’ll make them available to her. Agreed?”

Amelia bit off whatever it was that she was going to say next. She lowered her eyes where her fingers were torturing the hem of her dress. Sitting down, it had pulled tight over her body and it was much easier to make out the full curves of her figure.

I tore my eyes away and cleared my throat. I reached for the report and turned it to face me. I rifled through the pages.

“I see you studied at Arthur Field’s High School,” I read .

Amelia’s eyes drifted down to the papers on my desk. Her mouth fell open and she glared at it. “Are you serious?”

I blinked at her. “You didn’t attend Arthur Field’s High School?”

She got up and approached the desk, her eyes firmly on the file. “You… You had me followed?”

“No following required. All your details are stored on computer systems on your home planet and Lizark-12.”

“You spied on me?” she said, flicking through the pages.

I observed the curve of her cheek and the brown eyes that peered back at me through large irises. An unkempt strand of hair hung across her nose and I wanted to reach up and tuck it behind her ear… but didn’t.

“I like to know who I’m dealing with,” I said simply.

“So why not ask me?”

Directness. Again. “Because you might lie.”

“Why would I lie?”

“To get what you want.”

“And what would you do if you found out I lied?”

“Have you removed.”

“So why would I lie?”

I frowned at her line of thinking. She was telling me she would never lie because then she would lose the one thing she cared about most. The boy.

“What am I doing here?” she asked. “I’m not here to talk about funerals or spirits.”

“We’re here to discuss you.”

“Me? These are the final few minutes of my time with Elijax and we’re wasting them talking about things that don’t matter. ”

The tears sprung into her eyes and she turned her face away to prevent me from seeing them, but it was too late.

“You care for the boy,” I said.

“Of course I do!” she snapped.

This human’s emotions were all over the place. One minute she was upset, and the next, she could hardly keep her anger in check.

“I raised him from when he was a baby. I didn’t give birth to him but he’s mine. My child. And you…. You…”

Her nose turned red and she scratched it. It had become stuffy and she took a deep breath to control herself.

If this was control, I feared what lack of control looked like!

I sensed I should do something… so I got up from my chair, rounded my desk, and handed a box of tissues to her.

Amelia took one. “Wait.”

Then she took a dozen more, stuffing them into her pocket.

“As I was saying,” I said, perching on the corner of my desk, “you love the boy very much. And you will be sad to see him go.”

Amelia only nodded and buried her face in the tissue.

“But what if there were another way, a way for you to remain with him?”

Amelia snapped to attention. “Huh?”

“I wish to make you an offer.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “What offer?”

“To be the boy’s nanny. To raise him. To live here with him.”

She was standing still and yet somehow missed a step. “Huh?”

“Excuse me?” I said. “My translator doesn’t know what ‘Huh?’ means. Is it from a regional dialect?”

“Uh, no. It’s actually a very sophisticated form of communication. It’s too difficult for a member of an inferior species to explain.”

“Then can you explain it in a different way?”

Instead of explaining, she cleared her throat and said:

“Why would you want me to raise Elijax? I thought I was an inferior species?”

“You are. But you share a common ancestry. Perhaps, with time, we might be able to breed it out of him.”

She seemed to glower at my term “Breed it out of him.”

Surely she could see we were superior?

“You’re descended from royalty, right? So why not hire someone to be his nanny?”

“My nanny is the best the galaxy has ever produced… but alas, she is growing old in years and can no longer put in the time necessary to raise a young child.”

“There must be other nannies in your empire.”

“It’s not my empire… although it will be some day. You’ve raised the child since he was a baby. No one knows him better. And for him to lose his primary caregiver now after building that connection… It wouldn’t be best for the child. Now, do you want the position or don’t you?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

I cocked my head to one side at the expression. “I do not know. Does the Pope shit in the woods? And if he does, how does it affect my offer?”

“My answer is yes,” she said.

“You don’t need to discuss this with your mate?”

“My mate? Uh, no.”

“Or inform your place of work?”

“I’ll be living here, right? In this house?”

“It’s a palace.”

She rolled her eyes. “All right, in this big house. Right?”

“Correct. ”

“And all food, water, and facilities will be paid for?”

“Yes.”

I pursed my lips. “What’s the pay like?”

“The pay?”

“Yes. The money you give someone for their services. Don’t tell me your superior species only hires slaves?”

I frowned. “We stopped using slaves many generations ago.”

“Great. Then how much do you pay them?”

“I have no idea. How much do you want?”

She shrugged her shoulders and appeared to pick a number out of the air.

“Very well,” I said, quick as a flash.

Having no concept of money meant I would have agreed to pretty much any number she chose.

She seemed taken aback at how quickly I had accepted. “Plus, uh, expenses.”

“Expenses? Everything will be paid for for the young prince.”

“Why don’t you let your royal family raise him?” Amelia asked.

“Because then he would have my upbringing.”

“What, being raised a prince was tough?” She snorted and folded her arms.

“Yes, actually. It was.”

She looked me dead in the eye and I looked right back. Then she blinked with surprise.

I put my pen down and leaned back in my chair. “This might be difficult for an inferior species to understand—”

“An inferior what?”

“An inferior species. A species is the collective word for— ”

“I know what species means!” she snapped. “What do you mean, inferior species?”

“Humans are less developed, less intelligent, less in control of their emotions and more—”

“We are not in less control of our…” She glared at me as I passed my eyes over her. She might have caught the flicker of amusement in my eyes but it was gone in an instant.

“And more prone to emotional outbursts,” I completed.

“Are you talking about Elijax too?” she said.

I hesitated. “No. With his shared lineage, he will have adequate strength to override his more… primitive impulses.”

She ground her teeth, tapped her foot, and shook her head.

“Do you accept my offer?” I sincerely hoped she would. It was best for the child and would make it an easier transition for him to integrate into the royal family.

Amelia looked up at me. “Let’s see. Take care of Elijax and see him grow up into the amazing guy I know he’ll be… or leave him here to be raised by God knows who and how? It’s not much of a choice, is it?”

“Then you agree?”

She hesitated only a moment before she nodded. “I agree.”

I shot up from my desk. “Excellent. Then I’ll have all the arrangements made and—”

“But.”

I looked up at her. She didn’t look at me and focused on the file on her and flicked through the pages with little real interest.

“But what? I thought you wanted to be with the boy.”

“I do. ”

“Then what’s the problem? Everything will be given to you. The child will want for nothing.”

“ Almost nothing.”

The royal family was so rich there was nothing we could not give the boy if he desired it. “What?”

“There are some things money cannot buy. I am the loving mother. And most of the time, that’s enough. But Elijax is half Ulsen and he’s going to be living here among your kind.”

Your kind. She spat the words as if we were inferior in some way. I ignored my emotional response and focused on the logic of her argument.

“So,” I said, “that’s why he’ll have access to the very best teachers, the best tutors from throughout the empire. What more does a boy need?”

Amelia looked up at me. “A father figure.”

She held my eyes and they might have been tractor beams for all the resistance I could give. “He will have many father figures.”

Amelia shook her head. “Not plural. Singular. The court decided you are to be his father. Not anyone else. You. You are to take responsibility for him.”

“I am the heir to the throne,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “If others believe I am grooming him to become my heir—”

“He cannot become heir under Ulsen law, correct?”

I couldn’t keep the surprise off my face, or from my jaw which almost hit the floor.

Amelia seemed to take pleasure in my surprise. “You’re not the only one who did their research. ”

I liked the way she met my eyes, the way she stared me down, challenged me. I was not the heir in her eyes but a male, and one she thought she could defeat in a debate.

And judging by how this one was going, she might well turn out to be right.

“I have responsibilities,” I said. “Things that take up my time.”

“Reschedule them.”

I ground my teeth. “The running of an empire requires—”

“You’re the heir. Not the emperor. You said so yourself.”

When had I lost control of the conversation? I wondered. When had she turned everything on me?

I was the one who’d come into the room with the offer.

I was the one who had the report made.

I was the one with the upper hand…

And now it had all turned to a pile of sleeax.

“What do you expect of me?” I asked.

“You’ll spend time with him. Educate him on what it means to be an Ulsen. You’ll call him by his name.”

“I call him by his name.”

“You haven’t called him by his name since I met you. Do you even know what it is?”

“I know what it is,” I snapped.

“That’s a good start.”

I growled. She spoke to me like I was a pup. “In exchange, you will treat me with respect as befitting my station.”

“In public, I will treat you however you like. But in private, we are both foster parents and we must be on an even footing.”

“You call this an even footing?” The words were out of my mouth before I thought about them. It was an admission that she had gotten the better of me — as if I needed to tell her that!

She smiled at me, and it was the equivalent of a victory lap. “I call it a good start.”

Which meant things were only going to get worse…

“Good. I’ll go check on Elijax. We can discuss the details later.”

Now she was giving me orders?

She turned — revealing her back to me! — and approached the door.

Speak up, fool! Don’t let her have the last word!

“I’ll, uh, I’ll expect the boy to eat Ulsen food!” I said hastily.

Amelia only smiled, bowed her head, and left.

Only once the door had shut did I fall back into my chair.

And just like that, the shiaab rug had been pulled from beneath my feet.

Some ruler I was going to be! I’d been bested by a human female!