Episode 13 Fairest of Them All
The production crew shuffles us outside to a platform with a table and four chairs on it. Rows of omegas sit opposite us, each with a little whiteboard in front of them, chatting to each other as we get settled in our seats. We’ve got boards and markers too. It’s supposed to be lighthearted. Fun.
It feels like a test we’re rigged to fail.
Well, not us. We technically can’t give any wrong answer. The omegas will have to try to match with us, not the other way around. But we still can very much give the wrong answer, go against what the people and the crown expect of us.
Courtland bounces his marker like he’s trying really hard not to draw a cock on something.
Forsythe folds his hands on the table like the perfect fucking prince, scanning the chattering omegas across from us.
Thayer looks like he wants to throw the entire set into the ocean. The feeling is mutual.
My eyes go straight to her.
Florence Karlin sits between Petal and Tristan, braid over her shoulder, whiteboard clutched to her sweatshirt-covered chest, even as she smiles at the pink haired omega next to her.
She shouldn’t be this far from us. She shouldn’t have to look so small, surrounded by overdressed omegas who stare down their noses at her like she’s out of her depth. Beneath them.
She’s not.
If anything, they are beneath her.
At the last elimination ceremony, she’d looked even more resigned to going home. Not surprising. Courtland told the rest of us how her first conversation with Forsythe had gone—not well—and that she’d told them point blank she expected us to eliminate her.
But when Forsythe brought up her name yet again the three of us refused again.
I couldn’t bring myself to agree with him, to send the fierce little omega away from us.
Forsythe had needed to bow to our greater number.
For all that he’s a prince and our prime, he tries to take our opinions into account for most of the pack decisions.
If I’m honest he gave in much quicker than I thought he would.
Maybe because he secretly craves an omega that doesn’t bow to him, that tells him exactly what she thinks, that isn’t afraid of sharing her true thoughts. He doesn’t get that with anyone but us and his sister. And even then, we usually do what he demands, because he’s our prime.
Florence doesn’t feel the need to impress us, or be polite, seeing as how she’s been told we will not pick her. There is no artifice in her bearing, in how she interacts with us, with the other omegas. She is refreshingly real.
And that had never been more clear last night when Forsythe had given her the third crown. Third. And she looked shocked and then confused and then frustrated as she’d stalked over and hissed at him, “What are you doing?”
Forsythe had calmly placed the crown on her head and asked her to stay. She’d had no other choice but to say yes.
Cleo Hartwell floats onto the small platform between us and the omegas, a make-up artist brushing powder over her cheeks in a final touchup. “Clear the set,” someone calls and the woman scurries away. “And action.”
Cleo smiles into the camera like she’s about to crown a champion of some arena battle. “Welcome to The Compatibility Quiz! Let’s find out how in-sync our Ashbourne alphas are with this season’s omegas and vice versa.”
I see the camera in front of me shift slightly, point more fully in my direction, recording my every reaction. I grit my teeth and keep my face as impassive as I can.
“The rules are easy. The pack will write down their answers to our questions. The omegas will do the same. For every matching answer the omegas will get a point. That means there are a maximum of four points for each round if all of the alphas give the same answer to a question. The two omegas with the highest points will be heading out on a group date with the pack. Got it?”
We all nod our understanding because we’ve all been told the rules before they started filming.
“Excellent! Then we’ll get started. Question number one,” Cleo gives us all a sly look. “Describe your ideal date.”
Markers squeak. Omegas giggle and watch us like that will help them figure out what we’re going to say.
It shouldn’t be that hard actually. This is a question we’ve fielded a million times before, in almost every puff piece interview.
If any of the omegas did any kind of research they would be able to figure this out.
I write quickly quiet supper at home. Somewhere safe. Somewhere real. Somewhere where I don’t have to be fucking ‘on’. Where I’m free to be just me, Grieves.
“Alphas, show us your answers!” Cleo trills. We flip our boards, each of us reading out our answers, like we’ve been instructed to do.
“Dinner and a night at the theater,” Forsythe says, even though I know that’s a lie. It's what people expect him to say. He’d probably rather spend the night on the couch with our omega curled up next to him while he reads her poetry or they play chess or something dull like that.
Court smirks. “Drinks and dancing at a club.” This is also on par with his persona. It’s what is expected of him, but not necessarily the truth.
“Moonlight picnic and star gazing,” Thayer says and I swear half of the omegas let out little sighs of pleasure at the thought.
If only they knew that by star gazing he means lecturing them on the constellations and then testing them about it later.
Takes out some of the romance. But they don’t know that.
When I flip my board there’s visible disappointment on some of the omegas faces. And I can’t blame them. Most of them are as active in social circles as we are, and their ideal date would involve being seen with our pack. Being on the arm of a prince.
“Okay, Omegas, let's see what you’ve got.”
They shift and straighten as one by one they flip their boards and read off their answers. Isadora matches Forsythe’s answer to a tee. Almost like she copied him word for word. In fact, most of the omegas have some version of his answer.
My eyes immediately find Florence’s. Her handwriting is a little messy from nerves, but clear enough, and if it wasn’t her sweet voice is. “Cooking dinner together. Dancing bare foot in the kitchen. Laughter. Being easy.”
My throat goes tight.
Courtland mouths at her, Easy? And then wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. The idiot.
Her cheeks pinken, and she drops her pen, flustered. Her chair scrapes against the stage as she scoots and bends to pick it up, her face even more red when she straightens. Petal leans over and mutters something I wish I could make out but can’t.
Ren gives her a grateful, if rueful smile, and rolls her eyes at herself. The production team finishes tallying points and gives Cleo the go ahead to move to the next question.
“What matters most in a pack?”
My answer comes to me immediately, scrawled across my board within moments, so I see when Florence wrinkles her brow, nibbles on her lip like she’s considering. She writes something, then stares at it, crosses it out and writes something else.
“Okay, time’s up. Omegas, show us your answers.”
Boards flip.
Most omegas write bullshit like “Legacy,” “Status,” “Ambition.”
Florence? ‘Trust’ is her final answer, but I can see where she wrote ‘safety’ first before drawing a line through it.
My breath punches out of me. Courtland makes a pleased noise when he sees how they match.
I raise my answer when prompted. “Safety.”
Thayer’s board says ‘love’, which is surprisingly mushy for our resident professor. Courtland doodled a heart around his answer. Forsythe wrote “Stability,” which is as close as he can get to admitting anything real on camera.
Florence looks between my board and Courtland’s a wrinkle between her brow like she can’t figure out how we got so close to hers, and then she looks at Thayer’s and Forsythe’s answer, and her shoulders release just slightly, as if seeing all four of our answers together is a relief to her.
Trust, Love, Safety, Stability. All integral to pack life.
“What’s your biggest dealbreaker?”
Isadora writes, “disrespect.”
“Lack of ambition,” writes another.
“No money. I don’t want no scrubs,” is Tristan’s answer drawing a puff of laughter from everyone, while Ren snorts into her hand.
Half the others scribble whatever they think Forsythe would approve of.
Florence? She pauses, thinking over her answer, like she’s finding the exact right word for what her dealbreaker is. One that will encapsulate everything. And when she turns it toward us, my heart clenches.
“Cruelty.”
The deliberate way she wrote that, the care she took with her choice tells me all I need to know. Florence Karlin has experienced cruelty in her life. Someone hurt her, physically or emotionally or both. And I am going to hunt whoever it was down and eviscerate them.
I’m so focused on the fantasy of beating some faceless person bloody, that I hardly notice what everyone else wrote, what I wrote.
I barely come back from the edge of an alpha rage when Court nudges me with his elbow and then jerks his chin in Florence’s direction. She’s watching me when I look over at her, a concerned frown on her face. “You okay?” she mouths at me.
The rest of my ire drains away in the face of her worry and I give what I hope is a reassuring nod. She doesn’t look convinced though.
“Cruelty, not violence?” Cleo asks, and my omega whips her head toward the host.
“Sorry, what was the question?”
“You wrote cruelty, not violence.”
Ren’s brow wrinkles, flipping her board as though to check the answer. “I did.”
“Do you not think violence is worse?”
My hands fist, and my heart stutters waiting for her answer, for her judgement on what has been a huge part of me for a very long time. Boxing is a violent sport. Not a cruel one.