Episode 5
Forsythe
I’m okay, I tell myself for the tenth time today. It only hurts when I breathe.
My hand presses into my ribs, halfway expecting to find them bruised and aching. But there’s nothing. I haven’t injured myself, not physically at least. But mentally, emotionally? I might as well have slit my own throat and now I’m bleeding out. We're bleeding out.
Focus, Forsythe. You need to focus. Get through the day. Just today, and you can break down tonight.
Just like I have every night since we sent Florence home, climb into my bed alone and curl around my bleeding aching heart. No, not my heart. I don’t have that anymore. It's firmly in my omega’s hands thousands of miles away.
No, don’t think about the distance. That way lies madness.
It really does. I’ve lain awake at night for hours, staring at the ceiling and counting each of the miles between me and my omega. All forty-eight hundred of them. I feel that distance keenly. So does the rest of my pack. So, I imagine, does Florence.
With a sigh, I refocus. I’m already running late. I seem to do that a lot these days though no one is brave enough to call me on it. One more glance in the mirror, an adjustment of my tie, and a palm run over my head to smooth my hair, and I feel ready enough to face the day.
I have no other choice, really.
Piers is waiting in the sitting room, and I fresh pang of hurt hits at seeing my beta.
Not from anything he’s done, but because of what I’ve done.
I know I’ve hurt him, know I’ve forced him into something he would never have done if not for me, my ties to the crown.
Given the choice, he would have followed Florence back to her home, would have wrapped her up and kept her in his pocket, his own personal sunbeam.
But the bond between us demanded he remain at my side.
He glances up from his tablet as I enter and I give him what I hope is a believable smile. “Good morning, love,” I murmur, sliding my hand on his lower back and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “How are you today? Did you sleep well?”
“I slept like shit,” he mutters, not meeting my gaze, his scent turning slightly musty, like grass clippings left to molder. “Just like you did. Just like Thayer and Grieves and Courtland did.”
I grit my teeth, flexing my jaw.
“It’ll get better,” I tell him and try to believe it myself. “It’s just a fresh wound right now. It will heal, scar over and we’ll get back to our normal.”
He frowns up at me. “Will we?”
My lips brush his forehead again. “I have to believe that we will, love. Otherwise…”
He steps back, putting space between us under the guise of pouring a cup of coffee for me. “Otherwise we broke our pack when we sent Florence away from us,” he finishes for me. He doesn’t see how I flinch when he says her name.
“We’re not broken,” I tell him, as he hands me the steaming mug, “just fractured.”
“A fracture is a break.” The look he gives me could peel paint, but it fades in an instant replaced with one that is pure self-loathing and grief. With a weary sigh that makes my heart ache, he sinks onto the couch and rests his elbows on his knees.
“I’m not sure we can keep going like this. I know I can’t,” Piers says, both palms pressed to his face.
I glance at the clock and then back at my beta, obviously hurting, obviously needing me.
There’s no choice. Grandmother will have to be displeased with my tardiness.
“We’ll get through this, Piers,” I tell him, slipping onto the arm of his chair and gripping the back of his neck in a gentle massage.
“We’ve survived every other thing the world has thrown at us, and we will survive this. ”
He lifts his red rimmed, devastated eyes to me.
“We’ve never been through something like this, Sythe.
I know you want to pretend like we didn’t majorly cock it up when we sent Florence home, but we did.
” I don’t hide the flinch when he says her name.
Don’t even try to. He looks at me with haunted hazel eyes. “You have no idea…”
My brow furrows, and I want to ask him what he means, but there’s also the tick tick tick of the clock, and I know my time is running short. “We’ll talk about this later. I’m due for a press conference with the queen. That is supposed to be starting right now. She’ll be cross with me.”
“And we can’t have that, can we?” he mutters, his tone full of derision.
The vitriol takes me aback. I hadn’t realized just how much he’s hurting, how much all of my pack is likely hurting. But of course they are. If I feel like I can’t breathe almost every moment of every day, then of course they feel the same.
They lost her just as much as I did.
A knock on the door pulls me to my feet. I smooth a hand down the front of my suit jacket before using that same hand to squeeze his shoulder. “We’ll talk about this later, yeah?”
“Sure,” he says, sounding like he doesn’t believe me. Maybe he doesn’t.
I can’t even blame him for that. We haven’t really talked in weeks. In fact, this is the longest conversation that we’ve had that hasn’t involved my schedule in a month.
I go to answer the door, squaring my shoulders and straightening my spine.
Folding my face into the politely aloof mask I know my grandmother prefers.
“Your highness,” Mr. Kerry, my grandmother’s version of Piers, greets me as soon as I step into the hall.
I give him the barest nods of acknowledgment, even as his eyes sweep behind me, as though he expects to see the rest of my pack.
His mouth tightens when he realizes it will be only me attending. I’m moving before he can question me. I don’t owe him an explanation and neither does my pack. If my grandmother has a problem with it, she can raise her concerns with me. Not this puffed-up little sycophant.
He huffs along behind me, barely keeping up with my quick strides, rushing ahead of me to open doors, head tipping down in deference as I pass by him.
My sister and my grandmother are waiting outside the press room, both looking every inch the royals they are.
I note that Elizabeth too has left her pack out of this.
She’s been doing that more and more recently.
Leaving Bree with Henri, Thomas and George, unless specifically informed that their presence is required.
My grandmother’s eyes sweep behind me in the same way her assistants eyes had and her expression darkens with disappointment the same way his did. She arches a brow at me. “You’re late.”
I bend and press a kiss to her powdery cheek. “Apologies, Your Majesty. Couldn’t be avoided, I’m afraid.”
She hums a displeased noise and I exchange a look with my twin.
“We will talk about this later,” she warns, before stumping into the press room, making the murmur of voices inside hush and then silence all together.
Lizzie and I flank her as she steps in front of the podium, spine straight and face composed with the gentle, caring expression she wears whenever she’s speaking with the public.
Elizabeth and I used to joke that she’s the living embodiment of Mom from Futurama. Publicly, she appears as a sweet, motherly figure, but in private, she is evil, cunning and cutthroat.
Recent events have turned this from a joke into a reality, at least as far as I’m concerned, probably as far as Liz is concerned too.
“My beloved people of Bravonne,” my grandmother, the queen, starts.
“Throughout our long and storied history, the strength of our realm has rested upon three pillars: stability, community, and care for our most vulnerable.
In recent years, our society has evolved at remarkable speed.
Packs form in new ways. Bonds are made across borders.
Technology reshapes what was once left solely to fate.
With change comes opportunity, but also uncertainty.
“It is the responsibility of the Crown not merely to celebrate progress, but to ensure that it does not leave our citizens unprotected.
“Today, I have formally enacted the Omega Welfare and Community Stability Act.”
Elizabeth and I exchange a glance. One where I ask if she has any idea what the hell our grandmother is talking about, and my twin replies that she bloody well doesn’t. That can’t be good. Whatever this new ‘Stability Act’ is, it isn’t for the good of the country.
“This legislation has one purpose: to safeguard the wellbeing of omegas across Bravonne.” Warning bells ring in my ear, and my fingers itch to pull out my phone, to figure out what exactly she’s been up to while the world has been distracted by that godforsaken dating show, by my betrothal to Isadora.
“Omegas, by their very nature, experience periods of heightened vulnerability.
Historically, they have been at risk of coercion, abandonment, and exploitation — particularly in unregulated bonding arrangements.
While many packs are loving and honorable, we would be remiss to ignore that not all are.
“The Act introduces a national registry designed to ensure that every omega has access to medical resources, legal protection, and community support.
It establishes voluntary community forums, opportunities for unbonded omegas to connect in safe, structured environments, should they wish to do so.
It clarifies bond recognition processes, so that no omega finds herself unprotected in matters of inheritance, custody, or legal standing.
“Let me be clear: this is not a restriction. It is a protection.”
The way she stresses the word tells me she wants people to believe it, not that she means it.
“No omega should ever question whether her bond will be recognized by law. No child should face uncertainty regarding legitimacy. No family should be left vulnerable to dispute because the law failed to keep pace with modern realities.