Griffin Food (Coveted Prey #15)

Prologue

Violet

It started innocently enough at first, an extra blanket here, a pretty throw or two… then came the cushions. Lots and lots of cushions in every color I could find.

I didn’t realize what I was doing at first. And then it was only when a maid joked that my bed looked like a nest that I realized my mistake. Every one of them was packed in the cupboard, and I laughed it off, telling her it was for research.

I was the second oldest of five sisters. The scholarly one, the one everyone said would never wed, although my mother applied herself diligently toward this end.

At least, at first.

Not only did I act differently, I looked different too, with my strawberry-blonde hair in ringleted curls that escaped everything but my trusty scarf, and blue eyes hidden behind the spectacles I needed to read my books and research.

I bore no familial resemblance to my mother or father or any of my siblings.

I was a throwback to my late grandmother on my father’s side, as I was told, although I’d never met her personally.

I dedicated my life to research. Fascinated by the old lore surrounding centaurs, griffins, stag shifters, dolphin and shark shifters, and such—the mythical and the magical, the dark fae, and the fairy kingdoms. There were so many to choose from, and I researched them all.

No one paid attention when I said I was researching omegas; I have two omega sisters, after all.

But I couldn’t tell anyone my secret. Not when my oldest sister, Elisa, had such deep prejudices around my kind.

To understand Elisa, one must understand her story.

Our home, Hydornia, is a land of united kingdoms under the rule of a single High King.

Ours was a small but wealthy sub-queendom governed by a long line of queens.

Several years earlier, Elisa had mated with an alpha.

It was quite a boon for her and our family when the match was made. Everything was rosy for a time.

But not all alphas are equal, and while many latch upon their beta mate and love them with every drop of potency they might bestow upon an omega, others never settle.

Others have a roving eye.

From what my research has yielded, I inferred that problems more often happened when the pairing had been heavily arranged, where the alpha did not pick.

Still, I believed some alphas were merely out of tune with their instincts, perhaps convincing themselves that they wished for the prestige of a certain match and that they desired the mate well enough.

My sister’s mating to Elijah was one such discordant match, doomed from the start and which displayed cracks within a matter of months.

He was a highborn alpha, but the fifth son.

Not a chance that he would ever get an opportunity with an omega other than through luck.

He could have let nature run its course, supported the war as many alphas did, and waited for that spark of connection to a beta.

Instead, he mated a future queen and garnered all the pomp that goes with that.

The affairs began almost immediately, and I use the term loosely. Elijah was not above using heavy persuasion and his position to get under the skirts of maids and the ladies of the court. And there were incidents that went further than mere persuasion.

The alpha and everything about him was abhorrent to me.

His roving eye latched onto both my omega sisters as they revealed, with a mind to creating his own little harem.

Elisa grew ever more embittered. She did not get with child. She blamed my omega sisters for trying to tempt her mate.

It was against this backdrop of fracture that, at the unprecedented age of twenty-five, my nesting incident occurred.

By then, my father had passed away, and my three younger sisters had already left home in one way or another.

My mother abdicated to Elisa, thinking—hoping—it might give my sister an outlet, a source of pride and drive.

It didn’t.

My two omega sisters, despite tumultuous circumstances, found their special ones.

Even my beta sister, Clarissa, by far the sweetest of us all and who tried so very hard to temper Elisa’s ever-darkening rage at life, found solace in a wonderful beta man who was swift to extract her from our family environment of cruelty.

The irony of Clarissa, a beta, eventually joining in a joyful, lasting ménage with her beta husband and his alpha best friend is not lost upon me. But that is another story, with its share of tragedy on the road to happiness.

That alpha did not have a roving eye. That alpha adored his beta mate, whom he shared.

But I knew I couldn’t stay in my family home, not once I revealed as an omega. There was only so much that herbs could do, and besides, my research indicated it was unhealthy to use them indefinitely.

It was time for me to leave.