Chapter Nine
AVELINE
The bath should have steadied me.
The tower always knew the right temperature.
The water had been deep and clean, steam curling softly around the stone walls in the bathing chamber adjacent to my nest. I sank beneath the surface and tried to quiet the noise in my thoughts.
For a little while, it worked. My muscles loosened—the trembling from earlier eased.
The sharp edges of memory softened into something I could hold without flinching.
But the stillness never settled fully.
I spent the rest of the morning in my nest, the only place in the tower that truly felt like home. The furs were newly cleaned and freshened, and I pulled them around me like a cocoon, and read the book the tower had left for me.
A History of Omegas.
The book was enlightening, a treasure trove of information about omega biology, bonds, and alphas that I had never heard about.
How could the tower have hidden this from me for all these years?
It had provided me with novels, romances about omegas and packs, histories of our world, and magical theory that had me hoping I would find my power. But never a book about who I was.
Maybe I wasn’t ready for it. I had known that I was an omega. My mother had assumed I would be, since she was and my father was an alpha. But we had not discussed much about it. Maybe, once Malric and Thane arrived, that was when I needed the information, needed to know who I was.
But it didn’t help me understand why my father would imprison me or what powers I had. It talked about omegas gaining more strength from a bond, and it talked about alphas also increasing their powers. But I had no powers that I knew of. What could I offer anyone but pain and death?
I put the book aside and curled up in a small ball in my nest. Cushions layered over furs, low shelves carved into the curve of the wall, blankets I’d folded and refolded so many times their edges had gone smooth beneath my fingers.
The ceiling arched above me like the inside of a cupped hand. It had always felt protective.
It felt inadequate today.
I drew my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, breathing slowly, trying to anchor myself in the familiar texture of wool and linen. The stone wall held a faint warmth, as if the tower was aware of my restlessness and attempting to compensate.
It wasn’t enough.
It felt like my skin was overly sensitive. Too aware of the air moving over it. The faint brush of fabric along my thighs seemed amplified. Heat gathered low in my body, not sharp like pain, but insistent. A pressure that made it difficult to sit still.
I shifted, pressing my palm against my stomach as if I could smooth the sensation down.
This had happened once already. I knew what it was now. I had a name for it.
Heat.
The word didn’t frighten me the way it had earlier, when I didn’t understand what my body was doing. Now the fear was different. Quieter. More precise.
I leaned back against the cushions and let my head rest against the wall, staring at the curve of stone above me.
Father had always told me he was a good king.
He’d spoken about duty the way some men speak about faith. About sacrifice. About hard choices made for the greater good. He’d told me the realm needed stability. That strength sometimes looked like cruelty to those who didn’t understand the pressures of a crown.
When I was younger, I believed him without question. It was easy to believe the only voice you ever hear.
For a while, even before Malric and Thane showed up, I’d sensed that things weren’t right.
It hadn’t been dramatic. No grand revelation.
Just small moments. The way Father’s gaze lingered too long when I stood near the balcony.
The way his hand would settle at my waist, not in affection but in control.
The way the warmth inside me would dim whenever he touched me, narrowing instead of expanding.
I used to think that meant safety, protection. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Malric had said I wasn’t a weapon. Thane had said I wasn’t broken. They hadn’t said it gently. They hadn’t tried to wrap the words in comfort. They’d simply spoken them as if they were facts.
I didn’t know them. Not truly. They had walked into my world less than two days ago and dismantled everything I thought I understood.
And yet, somewhere beneath the confusion and the fear, there was a quiet certainty I couldn’t deny. When Thane stood near me, my body didn’t recoil. It leaned. His inner storm raged, yet it never directed itself at me. It felt like a safeguard against a world spinning too quickly.
Malric was different. Sharper. His control wrapped around him like armor, but beneath it I sensed something older and deeper. A structure that had been forced into place and held there for years. When he spoke, the tower seemed to listen.
And when he looked at me, he didn’t look as if I were a problem to be solved.
He looked as if I were a variable in an equation he was trying to understand—and then, gradually, as if I were something else entirely.
The thought made my breath catch.
What were they to me? Strangers. Alphas. Rebels. Possibly liars.
And yet when I imagined them leaving—walking back through the thorn barrier and disappearing into the forest—the idea made me despair.
I pressed my hand more firmly against my stomach. The throbbing heat intensified.
It wasn’t just warmth now. It was scent.
At first, I thought I imagined it—a faint sweetness threading through the nest. Then it thickened, unmistakable. Honey and something floral beneath it, rising from my skin like heat from sun-warmed stone.
My pulse stuttered. No. Not again.
I sat up too quickly, dizziness sweeping through me. The atmosphere seemed to have increased in density and thickness. My thoughts scattered. The edges of the room seemed to blur slightly, as if my focus was gone.
I drew in a breath and nearly choked on my own scent.
It was stronger this time. Less frantic than the first spike, but deeper. More deliberate. My body wasn’t panicking. It was preparing.
I panicked anyway.
Father’s voice surfaced in memory, calm and instructive.
You will consume them. You won’t mean to. You will reach, and they will not survive it.
My hands began to shake. I couldn’t hurt them. I didn’t want to.
I tried to stand and nearly stumbled, catching myself against the carved shelf.
The heat pooled low and heavy, spreading outward in slow waves that made my knees weaken.
All my nerves seemed stretched to their limit.
The thought of Malric or Thane entering this room sent a sharp bolt through me that was not fear.
It was need. The realization terrified me more than anything else.
A knock sounded at my door.
“Aveline?” Thane’s voice carried through the wood, steady but edged with concern. “Are you all right? Do you want to come down for lunch?”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
He would smell it. Of course he would.
Now, the smell was all around me, so strong it felt like it was coating my hair, skin, and the cloth I touched. The nest no longer felt protective. It felt saturated.
I opened my mouth to answer and couldn’t speak.
“I—” I swallowed, then tried again. “I think it’s happening again.”
There was a pause on the other side of the door. Not retreat. Not hesitation.
A shift in the air, as if he’d stepped closer without touching the handle.
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.” The word came out sharper than I intended. “Don’t come in.”
My body reacted instantly to the thought of him doing exactly that. Heat surged higher, curling through my limbs, tightening low in my belly with a pressure that made my breath hitch.
I pressed my back against the wall, fighting the urge to reach for the door.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I admitted. “I don’t know if I’ll hurt you.”
The scent thickened further, almost dizzying now. My skin was flushed, oversensitive. Every shift of fabric sent sparks through me.
“Aveline.” His voice was closer. Still controlled. “You’re not going to hurt me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” he said.
There was no strain in his tone. No fear. That frightened me almost as much as the heat. Because part of me believed him. And if he was wrong, I could kill him. I wouldn’t survive that.
My knees buckled, and I slid down against the wall to sit on the floor of my nest, breath coming shallow and uneven. The warmth inside me had become a tide, rising steadily. Not chaotic. Certain.
I pressed my hands to my stomach, as if I could hold it in place.
“I’m having another heat spike,” I whispered, more to myself than to him.
And this time, I wasn’t alone in a tower built to contain me.
That knowledge should have comforted me.
Instead, it made the heat burn brighter—and the fear sharpen with it.
Thane
Iknew before she finished speaking.
The shift in the air was immediate and unmistakable.
Her scent deepened, thickened, unfolding into something fuller and more complex than the sharp, startled surge from the night before.
She was diving into another heat spike. At least I hoped it was just a spike and not a full heat. Aveline wasn’t ready for that.
I moved closer to her door without touching it, forcing myself to breathe slowly so my own instincts wouldn’t rise too quickly in answer.
“Aveline,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady through the wood. “Talk to me.”
There was a rustle inside—a soft, uneven thud—like someone losing balance and catching themselves too late.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she said. Her voice trembled around the edges, thin but trying very hard not to be. “It feels different this time.”
It would.
The first spike had been shock. Her body surging after years of suppression, reacting to proximity and possibility all at once. This was the beginning of something stronger. Each spike would be stronger until her full heat.
“I know,” I said gently. “You’re not in danger.”