Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
LILY
The promise I'd made hung between us like something physical, taking up space in the water.
Tell us everything.
Soon.
Soon had become now. I could feel it in the way they watched me—patient, yes, but with an edge of desperation underneath. They'd given me time. They'd given me space. But the questions were building behind their eyes, and I couldn't keep deflecting forever.
We floated in a kelp clearing, the green-gold fronds swaying around us like curtains. Thane had found this place earlier, private, quiet, away from the currents. A place for difficult conversations.
I didn't know how to start. Vale drifted behind me, and I felt his fingers brush against my hair. The touch was light, questioning.
"May I?" Vale's voice was silk against my ear, his breath stirring the hair at my temple.
His silver eyes caught the filtered light, patient but intent.
I nodded, not entirely sure what I was agreeing to.
His fingers slid into my hair, gentle and deliberate, and I felt him begin to separate the strands. Sectioning. Weaving. Braiding.
But it was more than that. His wrist pressed against the back of my neck as he worked, and I felt warmth bloom across my skin wherever he touched. He was rubbing something into my hair—his scent, I realized. Marking me.
"What are you doing?" My voice came out breathless. Soft. I tilted my head slightly, trying to see him, but his hands guided me back to stillness.
"Marking you." His fingers never stopped their weaving, steady and sure. His wrist dragged across my nape again, deliberate and possessive. "So every creature in this ocean knows you belong to us."
Something happened in my chest. A sound started—low, vibrating, completely involuntary. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from me.
A purr.
An actual purr, rumbling up from somewhere deep in my ribcage. Mortification flooded through me. I'd never made that sound before. I didn't even know I could make that sound. My omega had always been suppressed, controlled, locked away—
"Don't stop." Thane drifted closer, his honey-brown tail catching the light as it swayed. His golden-brown eyes were wide with something like wonder, his lips parted. "Please. Don't stop that sound."
"I can't—I don't know how to control it—" I pressed my hands to my chest as if I could somehow muffle the sound. My cheeks burned with embarrassment.
"Then don't control it." Riven moved closer, his massive scarred body cutting through the water until he was right in front of me.
His golden eyes were burning, fixed on my face with an intensity that made my breath catch.
His crimson tail coiled beneath him, powerful and restless.
"Let us hear you, little human. Let us hear what you sound like when you're not hiding. "
The purr intensified. I couldn't stop it. My omega was preening under their attention, and for once, I didn't have the strength to fight it.
"Good omega," Thane murmured, the words like a prayer, his hand reaching out to hover near my arm, not quite touching. His voice cracked on the praise.
I felt myself go liquid. The words hit me like a physical force. My muscles loosened. My thoughts went soft and hazy at the edges. I sagged in the water, and Kaelan was there instantly, his arms wrapping around me from the side, holding me up.
"Such a good omega," he said against my temple, his lips brushing my skin with each word. The purring became something closer to a whimper. "You've been hiding this from everyone, haven't you? Suppressing what you are. Pretending to be something else."
"I had to." The words scraped out of my throat, rough and raw. I curled into his chest, my fingers gripping his arm. "I had to hide. You don't understand what they do to omegas who don't hide."
Stillness. Complete, absolute stillness. Vale's fingers paused in my hair. Riven's jaw went tight, a muscle jumping beneath the scarred skin. Thane made a sound like something breaking, his hand finally closing on my arm as if he couldn't bear not to touch me anymore.
"Tell us." Kaelan's voice was soft, but there was steel underneath. His dark eyes had gone flat, dangerous. His arms tightened around me. "Tell us what they do."
I told them everything. The words came slowly at first, dragged out of some locked place inside me that I'd tried so hard to forget existed.
But once I started, I couldn't stop. I told them about my family.
How my mother had loved me before—how she'd sung me songs and braided my hair and told me I was precious.
How everything changed when I presented at fourteen.
How my father looked at me differently after that. Not like a daughter. Like an asset.
"Omegas are rare," I heard myself saying, my voice flat and distant.
My hands had gone cold, and I pressed them together in my lap.
"Valuable. In the human world, we're... we're property.
We can't own land. Can't sign contracts.
Can't travel without an alpha guardian's permission.
We belong to our families until we're sold, and then we belong to whoever buys us. "
"Sold." Vale's fingers had gone still in my hair. His voice was barely recognizable—stripped of its usual silk, leaving something raw underneath. "You said sold."
"That's how it works. Arranged matings. The alpha's family pays a bride price, and the omega's family hands them over.
" I laughed, but it came out broken and jagged.
I stared at my hands rather than look at any of them.
"I was sold when I was sixteen. Two thousand gold pieces and a trade agreement for my father's business.
That's what I was worth. Two thousand gold pieces and a business deal. "
"Who." Riven's voice was a snarl wrapped in broken glass. His claws had extended fully, digging into his own palms. Blood dispersed in the water like smoke, dark ribbons spiraling away from his hands. His whole body had gone rigid, every muscle coiled. "Who bought you?"
"His name was Marcus. A merchant. Twice my age.
" I couldn't look at them. Couldn't bear to see their faces.
My nails bit into my palms. "He came to look at me before the deal was finalized.
To inspect me like cattle. He looked at my hips and asked my father if the women in our family were good breeders. "
The sound that ripped from Riven's chest wasn't human. Wasn't anything close to human. It was pure rage given voice, a roar that made the water vibrate around us.
"Give me his name again." He was shaking. His whole massive body was trembling with barely leashed violence, his crimson tail lashing the water behind him. "The full name. And your father's name. And the names of every single human who looked at you and saw a price tag instead of a person."
"What would you do with them?" I asked quietly, finally meeting his eyes. They were molten gold, burning with something that should have terrified me.
"Kill them." Simple. Certain. Like he was stating a fact about the tides. His scarred face was utterly calm, which somehow made it worse. "Slowly. Painfully. I would make them understand exactly what they did, and then I would make them regret it for a very, very long time before I let them die."
"Riven—" I reached out, my fingers brushing his arm. He flinched like my touch burned him, then pressed into it desperately.
"I would start with the merchant." His golden eyes found mine, and there was nothing sane in them.
Nothing human. Just pure, possessive, murderous want.
"I would drag him into the deepest trench I could find.
I would hold him under until his lungs filled with water, and then I would let him surface just long enough to gasp, just long enough to hope—and then I would drag him down again. "
His claws flexed, blood still dripping into the water.
"I would do that for hours. Days, maybe.
Until he begged. Until he screamed your name and apologized for ever thinking he had the right to touch you.
" His voice dropped lower, rougher. "And then I would start taking him apart.
Slowly. One piece at a time. I'd start with his eyes—the eyes that dared to look at you like you were something to be bought.
Then his hands—the hands that wanted to touch you. Then—"
"Your father," Vale's voice cut in, ice and silk and something sharp as a blade underneath. His silver eyes had gone cold. Empty. His beautiful face was a mask of perfect, terrifying stillness. "Tell us about your father."
"Vale—" I turned toward him, but his expression didn't change. Didn't soften.
"He sold his own daughter." The words were calm. Far too calm. His silver hair drifted around his face like a halo, making him look almost angelic, if angels were capable of murder. "He looked at his child, his own flesh and blood, and he put a price on her.."
"That's... that's how it works. In the human world—" I started, but the words felt hollow even as I said them.
"I don't care how it works in the human world.
" Vale drifted closer, and I saw his claws extending, silver and wicked and sharp enough to gut a whale.
His iridescent tail caught the light, beautiful and deadly.
"I care about what he did to you. I care about the fact that he made you feel like a thing.
A commodity. A broodmare to be traded for business deals. "
He reached out and touched my face, impossibly gentle despite the murder in his eyes. His thumb traced along my cheekbone, feather-light.