Chapter Three #2
I had been attracted to others before, both men and women. I had taken lovers in camp when war dragged on too long and loneliness became its own kind of hunger. Malric and I were bonded, but occasionally indulged in a third in our bed when a woman caught our eye. This was not that.
This was a soul-deep recognition.
My magic stirred, restless and eager, pressing toward the scent as if it had been waiting for it. The tower answered with a low hum under my boots, a vibration that traveled through my bones and made it difficult to tell where my body ended and the structure began.
Malric didn’t speak as we climbed. He rarely did when he was mapping threats, when he was building the plan in his head.
His eyes scanned the stairs, the walls, and every room we passed, cataloging threats, assessing dangers with his sword at the ready to defend us.
I stayed close behind him, one hand on the wall when the stairs tightened, the other steady on my blade.
The bond between us held taut, a line drawn too tight across a storm.
His tension bled through the bond, his tight control, and my magic threatened to spiral, but Malric was locked down.
Focused, the way he always was, not only through discipline but through sheer will.
His power locked behind the mark that kept it leashed, which helped steady my own.
The tower’s magic pressed at it anyway, curious. Testing.
My magic pressed back.
That was the danger. It always wanted to answer.
We passed multiple levels on our way up.
A dining room. A library. A nest. We cleared them efficiently, Malric checking them with the thoroughness of his military training, assessing for threats before I could even venture into the room.
I tried not to be irritated. I was a soldier, commanded a unit myself, and didn’t need his protection, but he insisted all the same.
The threat assessments all had the same result.
Each room was unoccupied. No people. No weapons.
No threats. We reached the top landing with no warning from the tower, no change in temperature, no obvious threshold.
One moment, we were turning past bare stone, the next the stair opened into a chamber lit by muted moonlight and the pale glow of old magic caught in the walls.
She stood at the far side of the room, backed against the stone as if she had nowhere else to go.
Malric stopped so abruptly that his entire body went rigid in front of me. I halted half a heartbeat later, my boot scraping the floor.
The girl—a woman—was real.
Not an illusion shaped by the forest. Not a memory the tower had conjured to lure us.
Flesh and breath and the slightest tremor in her posture as she watched us with eyes that were too wide and too bright to be calm.
The sight of her stunned me hard enough that my thoughts scattered, leaving only sensation in their place.
She was beautiful in a way that I never expected to find inside a prison of stone.
Not painted, not adorned, not the polished perfection of court girls who learned to wear their faces like armor.
Her hair fell loose, heavy and pale against the darker stone, catching light in soft strands.
Her skin was pale too, but not sickly, not fragile.
Alive. Her mouth was parted as though she’d tried to speak and swallowed it back.
Her hands hovered near her stomach, fingers curled into the fabric of her gown as if she were holding herself together by force.
Her scent hit me fully then, no longer a tease in the stairwell.
Warm honey. Sweet spice. Silver blossom.
My breath caught and stayed caught. Heat surged low and sudden.
My body responded with an urgency that made my grip on my sword feel clumsy.
The pull was not toward her body alone. It was toward something deeper, something in the shape of her presence, in the way the air itself seemed to align around her as if she were the axis.
Omega.
The word rose in my mind like a blade drawn free.
We didn’t have omegas in the Unseelie lands anymore.
Not openly. Not safely. The king had hunted them, or locked them away, or forced them into breeding bonds that left them hollowed out.
They disappeared, and the court pretended it was the natural order of things, that omegas were rare like comets, like miracles that didn’t need explanation.
This one stood in front of me and made my instincts flare so hard my magic twitched, storm pressure shifting in my chest.
Mine, something inside me tried to claim, too fast, too desperate.
And then I sensed Malric.
Not just his presence in front of me, not his body blocking part of the view, but his bond as it reacted to her. The air around him tightened, his shoulders locking as if his muscles had gone to stone. His breath hitched once, sharp and controlled, and it came through the bond like a jolt.
Blindsided.
Malric didn’t get blindsided.
He was the alpha who walked into battle already knowing where the arrows would fall. He planned for betrayal, sickness, and ambush. He expected pain. He didn’t expect beauty standing against a stone wall and turning his instincts inside out.
I watched the way his hand tightened on his sword hilt, the way his posture went rigid with restraint, and something inside me cracked.
Because if Malric wanted her—if the tower had brought us here for that reason, if the scent match that had tugged at me was even stronger for him—then where was I in this equation?
A third body. A spare. Or worse, a discarded alpha with power he couldn’t always control, standing behind the male who had always been the center of every room and every fight, the one men followed without question. Malric could have an omega. He could break his curse. He could have an heir.
He could have everything the Seelie Queen had promised him: remain in Unseelie lands, have his ancestral lands, and he would no longer need me.
The thought landed like cold water poured over a flame. My throat tightened, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if the pressure in my chest was the tower’s magic or my panic trying to rise.
I forced a breath through my nose, slow and controlled, the way I did when storms built too fast. The air tasted sweet with her scent, making control harder, making my magic strain like a tethered beast.
Malric recovered first.
It happened in a single shift, like a door closing. His shoulders remained tense, but his gaze sharpened, focusing on threat and purpose rather than the pull in his blood. He took one measured step forward, then another, keeping his sword angled down but ready.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
His voice cut through the chamber cleanly, no softness, no room for uncertainty. It was the voice he used on prisoners, on spies, on men who might hold secrets that could kill us.
The woman flinched as if struck.
Her breath came faster, her back pressing harder against the stone. The fear in her eyes sharpened, and the tower hummed faintly beneath my boots, responding.
Malric’s gaze flicked over the room, cataloging it the same way he had cataloged the clearing below. I did too, because I needed something to ground myself besides her scent and his reaction.
It was a bedchamber—but not the sort fashioned for courtly display.
No gilded screens. No velvet-draped canopy. No glittering vanity crowded with jewels.
Yet it was not barren.
The bed stood against the far wall beneath the tallest window, carved of pale oak rather than ornate mahogany, its craftsmanship simple but careful.
The mattress was thick, layered deep with feather and wool, and dressed in soft linen the color of fresh cream.
Not stiff ceremonial sheets—the fabric had been washed so many times it held a gentle drape, edges faintly worn where hands had gripped them in sleep.
Pillows crowded the headboard. Too many for mere function.
Some square, some narrow, one clearly older than the rest, its embroidery faded from years of touch.
A heavy quilt lay folded at the foot—hand-stitched in delicate patterns, threadwork fine enough to mark noble hands, though repaired in places with more practical mending.
Softness. Everywhere softness.
A thick rug covered most of the stone floor, woven in muted blues and dusk-rose tones, the fibers dense beneath my boots. Another fur—silvered and brushed until it gleamed—had been placed beside the bed, precisely where bare feet would first touch down in the morning.
There was a wardrobe near the inner wall, doors slightly ajar.
Within hung gowns of fine but modest make—silks and brushed cottons in pale shades, nothing ostentatious, everything chosen for comfort rather than spectacle.
A shawl had been draped over the wardrobe’s edge, as if claimed often.
As if she reached for it without thinking.
Near the window stood a small writing desk, polished smooth by use.
A ceramic pitcher and matching cup rested there, along with a shallow dish that once might have held fruit or sugared almonds but now sat empty.
Beside them lay a stack of books, their spines cracked, pages softened from rereading.
One had been left open and face-down, carefully placed so as not to damage the binding.
No mirrors dominated the walls. Only a small, polished silver disk hung discreetly near the wardrobe—practical, not indulgent.
No perfume cluttered the air. No trays of jewels. No excess.
But there were touches. Quiet ones.
A knitted throw draped over the back of a cushioned chair. A small collection of pressed flowers tucked into the corner of the window frame. Curtains lined thickly enough to block drafts, their inner layer brushed soft like the underside of a dove’s wing.
It was not a prisoner’s chamber.
It was an omega’s bedchamber. Not a full nest. We had passed that already, but a place where an omega could feel safe between her heats.