Chapter Seven #2
Her breathing on the other side of the door had steadied into something slower, the ragged quality gone.
Her scent had changed with it—still present, still honey and silver blossom, but the desperate heat-edge had pulled back into something that was simply her.
I let myself notice the difference and found I could breathe more easily without the acute note in the air.
I knocked softly. “Aveline.”
Silence.
“It’s Thane.” I kept my voice low, trying not to scare her more than she already was. “You don’t have to open the door. I just want to know how you’re doing.”
A long pause, then the bolt slid back.
The door opened a few inches. She looked through the gap, her eyes exhausted and uncertain with dark circles under them.
Her hair was loose and tangled, her face still flushed with the remnants of fever.
The gown was rumpled, her feet bare on the cold stone.
She looked wrung out and not sure what was happening.
She looked at me and said nothing.
“You need something to drink. Water,” I said. “And food, when you’re ready. The bell hasn’t rung yet, but I can go down and see what the tower has. And then maybe a bath. You’ll feel better after.”
Her gaze moved past me to the empty corridor, then back. “Malric?”
“Downstairs.” I paused. “He thought his scent was making it harder. He was probably right.”
She processed that for a moment in silence, while I waited. After a moment, she opened the door fully and stepped into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind her. The gesture was deliberate—she was not inviting us into the nest. She was coming out on her terms.
I respected that considerably.
She swayed once on her feet. I moved my hand toward her elbow without touching it, close enough that she could lean if she chose to.
She chose to, briefly, then steadied herself.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said firmly, clearly determined to stand on her own, not willing to rely on anyone.
We went down to the dining chamber to find that the tower had arranged it with fresh food by the time we arrived, steam rising from the plates as if it had anticipated our arrival. Three places. The tower apparently remained committed to our presence regardless of what had occurred overnight.
She looked at the three settings for a moment before sitting.
I poured water from the pitcher on the table and set it in front of her. She drank without ceremony, both hands around the cup, and I watched the flushed color in her cheeks fade slowly.
Footsteps echoed on the stairs. Malric appeared in the doorway with the expression he wore when he had been doing something useful to manage himself and was not ready to stop being useful. He had a second pitcher—warmer water, I realized, with something steaming from it.
He set it on the table without speaking and moved to his usual position, which was standing when everyone else was sitting.
Aveline looked at the second pitcher. “What is that?”
“Willow bark tea,” he said. “For the cramping. If it’s still present.”
She looked at him for a moment with an unreadable expression. Then she held out her cup and he filled it without comment.
I watched this and said nothing, because something had shifted and I didn’t want to disturb it by naming it.
She wrapped both hands around the cup again, steam curling up to veil her face as her gaze fixed on the table.
Her shoulders were rigid, drawn tight as though bracing for a strike—verbal or otherwise.
After our last interaction, she likely expected us to resume our relentless questioning about her circumstances and about her father.
“Tell me what happened to me.”
Her voice was steady. That steadiness had cost her something—I could feel it through the thread, the effort of it—and I chose my words accordingly.
“A heat spike,” I said. “Not a full heat. A precursor—what happens when an omega is preparing for a full heat and their body encounters something that accelerates the process.”
She was very still.
“We believe the tower has been suppressing your heat,” I continued, “and has been keeping your biological cycle arrested. Your body has been in a state of suspension for a very long time. When we arrived, when the tower responded to us the way it did—” I paused.
“Something began that the tower couldn’t—or wouldn’t—fully contain. ”
“We triggered it,” Malric said. Flat, not apologetic, but trying to keep emotion out of the conversation.
Aveline’s fingers tightened around the cup. “My father never said the word omega. Not once.” She paused. “He said I was dangerous. That my power was unstable. Nothing else.”
“He was describing a heat,” I said carefully. “And telling you it was a weapon. How old were you when you came to the tower?”
Her jaw tightened and her eyes got a faraway look as she thought back in time. “I think I was sixteen. I remember my mother talking about balls and alphas and mating. My father hated it and told my mother no one was good enough for me.”
I exchanged glances with Malric. He cleared his throat. “Your omega side would wake up around that time. You were probably showing signs of it, especially if you were around any unmated alphas. It could have been why your power also came online.”
“Your heat is not a weapon,” I said. “It’s biological. It’s your body doing what it was designed to do. The wanting isn’t dangerous—it isn’t a precursor to harm. It’s just your system trying to complete something that was interrupted before it could finish.”
She looked at me directly. “I watched you,” she said. “Tonight. I came down the stairs and I”— the flush in her face deepened, not fever this time—“and then the spike…”
“Yes,” I said. “Proximity to alphas during rut can accelerate a suppressed omega’s heat response.
Especially if there’s a scent match.” I maintained eye contact, as averting my gaze would have seemed like leaving her to face the awkwardness of the discussion alone.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Your body responded to stimuli. That’s all.”
“It doesn’t feel like that’s all,” she said quietly.
“No,” I agreed. “I know it doesn’t.”
Malric moved from his position by the wall—not much, just enough that he was closer to the table than he had been. He didn’t sit. But the adjustment was a concession of something, and I thought she noticed it.
“The word you used,” she said to neither of us in particular. “Omega.” She said it carefully, as if she were weighing each syllable. “I’ve read it. In the library. The histories of the courts. Before…”
“Before the purge,” Malric said.
She looked at him. “He told me they were gone.”
“He eliminated them,” Malric said. “There’s a difference.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Am I the only one?”
The question was quiet. Said so quietly as if afraid to voice the words, afraid of the answer.
Malric and I exchanged a look. The honest answer was that we didn’t know—that the rebellion’s intelligence suggested there might be others in hiding.
We knew omegas existed in the Seelie territories, where the borders had sealed.
There may have been omegas in our own territory, but the king had been ruthless in hunting down omegas and protecting them.
“We don’t know,” I said. “The rebellion has reason to believe you’re not the last. But we can’t tell you anything certain.”
She nodded once, absorbing that.
“What happens to me now?” she said. “If the suppressants keep failing, what will happen next?”
“The spike will be followed by others,” I said.
“More frequent, more intense, as the suppression degrades further. Until a full heat.” I paused.
“A full heat requires—it requires an alpha. Or alphas. To complete it. Without that, the heat becomes painful and—” I chose the next word carefully. “Difficult for the omega.”
Her eyes met mine. “How long?”
“Before the suppressants fail entirely?” I looked at Malric.
“Days,” he said. “A week, perhaps, given the extent of the binding work. But the spikes will come faster now that the first has broken through.”
She looked at the cup in her hands. The steam had faded, the liquid cooled while we talked. Her expression was the blankness of someone processing something too large and choosing instead to focus on smaller parts.
“He knew this would happen,” she said. Not a question.
“If an unmated alpha came,” I said. “Yes. He built the tower to contain you. He chose the isolation to prevent them from being tested.” I paused. “He didn’t account for the tower opening.”
“He didn’t account for a lot of things,” Malric said quietly.
Aveline looked at him. He held her gaze without looking away, without the cold assessing quality from the night before. Something in his expression was simply present in a way it had not been earlier.
She looked back at her cup.
“I need to think,” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean—” She stopped, then started again. “I’m not asking you to leave.”
The distinction mattered. A fragile trust was forming. Maybe.