Chapter 4 - Wayne
I’ve been sitting on this throne for two hours, and I’ve decided I hate every second of it equally.
Not one of these Omegas has done a thing for me. Some are pretty, some aren’t. Some are lanky, some are plump. But none of them have anything that makes them unique. And I’m actually bored out of my mind as time goes by.
I have watched twenty-some women parade across this floor without a single one of them making the hair on my arms stand up.
Chris hasn’t picked one either, not that I expected him to. The man could have the moon dragged down and set at his feet, and he’d find a reason it wasn’t good enough.
“How many more of these,” I mutter, mostly to myself, stretching, “are we doing today?”
“As many as it takes.” Chris doesn’t look at me. Like I asked for his opinion. I definitely hadn’t been asking him. I was asking Sinth, but he doesn’t say anything.
I’m two seconds from saying something I’ll probably enjoy and immediately regret when the next cluster of women gets herded in.
Rougher group, this one. These aren’t regular women who came here willingly, hoping to get picked. These ones are different. They seem weak, and their clothes aren’t ideal for occasions like this. In fact, they are basically rags.
They’re led by three men I recognize as traders. No wonder they look odd. They’re merchandise.
One of the women stands out to me instantly. It’s the redhead Sinth had been looking at earlier. She’s dressed a little better than the rest, so I hadn’t realized she was with this group when I first noticed her. She looks like a peasant, not a slave.
I wonder how she ended up with slavers…
The traders step forward, boots skidding a little on the polished floor with a hint of desperation coloring their eyes.
As the lead trader starts speaking, I catch something in the air—not a scent exactly. More like the ghost of one, faint and strange, threading through the myriad of Omega scents in the hall like a single wrong note in a song. I straighten without meaning to.
“Fine stock this round, my lords,” the lead trader’s saying, hauling the red-haired woman forward by the shoulder hard enough that she stumbles. Her pale, round face is flushed dark red like she’s been standing too close to a fire.
“This one caught the tail end of her heat on the road. Sweetest scent of the lot, if you don’t mind my saying,” he chuckles quietly.
I smell it properly this time, and something in my chest goes tight and irritated all at once. My fingers curl into fists, and my brows knit together.
That’s not heat.
I’ve smelled heat plenty of times in my life. I know what a real Omega in heat does to a room. It’s not subtle, it’s not faint, it doesn’t hide underneath a layer of something sour and artificial the way this does.
Whatever this girl is putting off, it’s empty. Nothing is pulling at me the way it should.
I open my mouth to say exactly that.
Chris beats me to it.
He’s already risen off his throne, ice-pale eyes locked on the trader as though he’s decided the man’s fate before the sentence is even finished.
“You can inspect her yourself, my lord,” the idiot goes ahead to say. “She’s the real deal.” He has a stupid grin on his face.
This man’s either overly confident for a fraud, or he’s just a big fool.
Chris slowly descends the long steps leading down from the thrones. His expression doesn’t change, nor does his pace quicken as he approaches them. He towers over the redhead and watches her for a moment.
The woman’s scared half to death already. Her breathing is ragged, her chest rising and falling as she avoids Chris’s intense gaze.
She knows she’s been made. She knows Chris can tell she’s not an Omega. And she’s terrified. As she should be.
“Do you like what you see, my lord?” The foolish trader just can’t read the energy in the room.
Even the woman knows they’re in trouble, but somehow this idiot is still clueless.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Chris meets his gaze, and the trader’s throat bobbles.
Fear crosses his eyes and his breath hitches. His jaw drops, but for the next few seconds, no sound is produced.
“You mean to deceive us.” Chris’s voice doesn’t rise. It never does, which is somehow worse than if it did. “Do you take us for fools?”
The others instinctively take two steps backward, heads lowered in terror.
The lead trader’s face goes through about four different expressions in the span of a heartbeat. Confusion first, genuine, the kind you can’t really fake.
He clears his throat. “We would never try to deceive you, my lords.” By the time he glances back, his fear doubles when he realizes that his companions had already withdrawn from his side.
“Then why did you bring us a shiftless wolf disguised as an Omega?” His voice is low but venomous.
“What?” The trader’s eyes widen, his chest heaving rapidly. “M—My lord, I—she’s exactly as sold to us. In heat, sweet-scented, we paid good coin—”
“You dare to lie to me?” Chris’s jaw is tight enough to cut glass.
I push up out of my own seat and step down beside him. “Are we sure he’s lying? Look at his face. The fool genuinely thinks he’s holding an Omega.”
“Do you think I’m wrong, Wayne?” Chris spits out.
“Didn’t say you’re wrong. Just that he seems to think he’s right.” I glance at the girl, who’s still on her knees, eyes glassy.
She looks too weak to even stand or keep her head up.
“Whatever’s wrong with her, I don’t think she’s in on it.”
“Since he’s so adamant he’s correct,” Chris’s eyes haven’t left the trader. “Let’s confirm.”
Sinth, who’s been quiet through most of this, finally speaks up from his throne. “Wash her. If the scent’s artificial—which it is—water and soap will strip it.”
Chris nods once, sharp, already turning to bark the order at a guard. “Take her away.”
The girl is hauled off in a heartbeat, her red hair disappearing through a side door with two soldiers flanking her.
“My lords.” The trader trembled. “I swear, I brought the girl as bought; I did not try to—”
“Silence.”
He goes still at the sound of Chris’s voice, his lips quivering.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” he says, shifting his gaze across the traders. “After she’s washed, the truth will be revealed that she’s not an Omega and that you all tried to deceive your Kings.” A pause. “When that happens, rest assured that you will all pay with your lives.”
One of them wets himself instantly, his legs trembling beneath him.
I lean in and ask softly. “What’re you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he replies with the same tone.
“It looks like you’re threatening to execute these men on the spot because their merchandise smelled funny.”
“They attempted to defraud their Kings.”
“I know, but it seems it wasn’t on purpose,” I say through gritted teeth. “You need to chill. Not everything’s a personal insult.”
Chris turns his head slowly, ice eyes narrowing. “I do not need to ‘chill’. I need this region to stop being handed fraudulent goods and expected to smile about it.”
“Listen, I’m trying my absolute best to be civil with you, but you’re hell-bent on frustrating me.”
“Can you two not do this right now, in front of all these people?” Sinth materializes beside us, his voice flat with exhaustion.
“Don’t look at me; he’s the one being stubborn,” I say to Sinth, nodding toward Chris.
“Let’s take this elsewhere. The rest of the selection can continue in the receiving room.”
The receiving room is smaller, cooler, tucked off the main hall, with none of the throne room’s ceremony. Just a long table, a few chairs, and high windows instead of a crowd.
They bring the next round of Omegas in one at a time. I say no before most of them finish crossing the threshold.
“That’s four in a row,” Sinth says, watching me with the kind of look he gets when he’s cataloging something for later. “You didn’t even let the last one speak.”
“Didn’t need to. Nothing there.”
“Nothing there, or you’re still annoyed about the hall?”
“So what if I’m still annoyed?” I snap, keeping my voice leveled. “Why does he always have to make the final decision?”
Chris, seated with his usual poker-straight spine, doesn’t bother looking up. “Is that what this is about? You want to call the shots so badly?” There’s a hint of mockery in his tone.
“I want you to quit being a jerk all the damn time and stop acting like you’re the supreme leader and we must do as you say.”
He casts that usual cold look in my direction but says nothing.
The door opens before I can make another bold statement, and whatever I was about to say dies in my throat.
They’ve brought the redhead back.
She’s in a plain tunic now, hair still damp, and she looks smaller somehow, stripped of whatever perfume and posturing the traders dressed her in.
She’s shaking, whether from cold or fear I can’t tell, arms wrapped around herself, eyes darting between the three of us and the small cluster of traders being marched in behind her.
I scent the air without meaning to.
Nothing.
Not faint, not masked, just… nothing. It’s exactly like I felt earlier. She’s empty. No Omega, no Beta, no wolf at all that I can find.
The trader who’d been so eager to sell her goes pale as a corpse the second he sees it too, sees the shift in our faces.
“My lords, I swear on my own blood, we didn’t know—”
“You brought us a wolfless girl and dressed her up as an Omega in heat.” Chris rises from his chair, and the temperature in the room seems to drop a few degrees along with him. “Whether by ignorance or by design, you have wasted the time of three Kings.”
“Please, we were deceived the same as you; we only—”
“I told you what would happen when the truth is revealed. Guards.” Chris’s voice is low and even. “Kill them.”
It happens fast. Faster than I expect, even knowing Chris the way I do.
The traders barely have time to finish their protests before the guards move, and then it’s done, quiet, efficient, and final. Headless bodies drop to the floor, blood pooling beneath them. The only sound left in the room is the girl’s ragged breathing.
She’s still standing there. Horrified. Alone now with no traders left to hide behind. Her eyes are wide with fear, her hands shaking violently. She stares at the corpses at her feet as if she’s unable to tear her gaze off the despicable sight before her.
Terrified doesn’t begin to cover the look on her face.
I almost feel sorry for her because she might be next.