Chapter 6 - Chris
My scowl deepens as I glare at the redhead, refusing to accept that this shiftless slave is the fated mate I have to share with Sinth and that idiot Wayne.
How’s this even possible? She’s not a wolf, let alone an Omega, and that’s why she was imbued with fake pheromones. So how come such a fragile and weak creature turned out to be the mate of three powerful Alpha Kings?
This must be some kind of sick joke. For once, I actually agree with Wayne. Fate indeed has a cruel sense of humor. She stands before us with tears in her eyes—tears that seem to have softened both Sinth and Wayne.
But I’m not buying it. I don’t believe that she is what she claims to be, even though the signs are glaring. There has to be a mix-up somewhere. I can’t be fated to a weak, wolfless fraud, regardless of whether or not she’s beautiful.
“Take her to the cell,” Sinth’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “Make sure she’s fed. And mind the way you treat her.” The last sentence is whispered in the guard’s ear—more like a warning than a statement.
Having no interest in standing there listening to him be gentle about something that shouldn’t require gentleness at all, I walk away.
“Where’re you going?” Wayne calls after me.
I ignore him and head toward the door, my boots echoing off the high walls.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!”
“Let him go,” Sinth says to him, his voice calm and gentle.
I don’t slow down, and I don’t glance back either. I keep walking until I’m out the door.
She’s a fraud. Fraud or not, she’s shiftless. Either way, she has no business occupying another minute of my time tonight.
I’m already three corridors away by the time the sound of her being led out reaches me, faint through the stone. I keep walking, telling myself that I don’t want anything to do with her.
However, deep down, I know I can’t ignore this for long. Sooner rather than later, I’m going to have to speak with the others about what to do with her. For now, though, I just need some time to gather my thoughts.
***
The middle-ground palace sits at the exact center of the three territories. It was built generations ago by Kings who understood that no single pack could be trusted to host the others without eventually turning the arrangement into a claim.
Snowpeak stone on one wing, Forestguard timber worked into the other, Trident’s pale marble threading through the halls that connect them. Neutral ground. Nobody’s throne room is truly anybody’s throne room here, which is precisely why the three of us tolerate sharing it.
Earlier, I’d received a message that I’m supposed to meet up with the other Kings at this location.
I arrive on time as always, and find the private council room. The doors part open, and I walk inside.
The ceiling is high enough that the beams vanish into shadow, no matter how bright the room burns below. A wide stone hearth throws firelight across the walls. Iron sconces line the room at intervals, flames steady, since the tall windows show nothing but black night pressing against the glass.
A long table of dark, unornamented wood dominates the center of the room, its surface scarred faintly from years of use. Three heavy chairs sit around it. Each one is carved subtly differently, marking the Pack it represents, though none sits taller or grander than the rest.
Wayne is already here, which is very unusual. He’s seated on his chair with his legs crossed on the table.
“You’re late,” he says, drumming his fingertips on fine wood.
I’m not. He’s early.
Sinth comes last, closing the door behind him.
“You’re both here. Good,” he says. “She’s in her cell. The guards have instructions not to touch her.”
Like I care.
“It’s clear to me that you arranged this meeting,” I say to Sinth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wayne chips in, a hint of displeasure in his tone. “It could’ve been me.”
I ignore him.
“Do you wanna tell me what this is about?” The question is thrown at Sinth.
“Like you don’t know what this is about,” says Wayne.
Sinth walks past me and sits in his chair, then gestures for me to do the same.
A moment of hesitation. After that, I take my seat at the table.
“I brought us all here so we can discuss what actually happened in that room, instead of pretending we don’t all know.” Sinth’s gaze shifts between Wayne and me.
“We know what happened.” Wayne’s voice has none of its usual mockery in it. “We felt it.”
“What we felt was nothing but a trick.” I turn to face them both. “A very effective one. That is all it was.”
“That’s what I thought at first,” Wayne says. “But let’s be real, that wasn’t artificial at all.”
Sinth’s brow creases.
“I think everything about tonight has been artificial from the moment those traders walked through the door,” I begin my argument. “The girl had no scent and was doused in fake pheromones one time already. Why should the rest of it be any different?”
“I don’t know, maybe because ‘artificial’ doesn’t explain what happened after.” Wayne’s tone stays level.
“We sensed no wolf in her. Confirmed. She gave off nothing when you used a command tone on her earlier—no flinch, no submission, nothing an Omega or wolf’s instincts would have produced,” Sinth says.
“My point exactly.” I meet his gaze.
“And yet.” He doesn’t blink. “The moment our pheromones collided, she reacted. Immediately. To us, specifically, in a way I’ve never seen an Omega react to anyone, let alone three Alphas she’d never met before tonight.
And more importantly, WE reacted. If not that we take blocker pills and have slept with Omegas before to control our ruts, that scent would probably have sent us into rut. ”
“How do you explain that, genius?” Wayne’s just trying to get a reaction out of me. He’s enjoying this, and I want to smack that pesky smirk off his face. But he’s right.
I don’t have an answer for that. I hate that I don’t have an answer for that.
They’re not wrong. I was there. I felt the air change. I felt something claw up out of the center of my own chest—something that I haven’t felt before. And for one disgraceful second I nearly say something I would have had to spend the rest of my life pretending I hadn’t meant.
I say the right thing instead. The only thing a King in my position could say.
“It changes nothing,” I say now, mostly to remind myself as much as them.
Wayne rolls his eyes in contempt.
I continue, “Whatever occurred, she is still what she appeared to be at the start of this—a fraud brought here by men who are already dead for their trouble. I won’t jump to conclusions on a feeling.”
“You stubborn son of a bitch.” Wayne finally takes his legs off the table. “We’re simply asking what we’re going to do with her. Because whatever that was back there, it wasn’t nothing, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make it go away.”
“We keep her in the cell,” I say flatly, already decided. “And we investigate. Properly. If there’s a trick buried in this somewhere, I intend to find it before either of you does something we can’t undo.”
Sinth studies me for a moment too long, like he’s deciding whether to push further. He doesn’t. “Agreed. While at that, we need to find a healer who can tell us if it’s possible for a… dormant wolf to be forced awake by pheromone exposure.”
“Leave that to me,” Wayne says. “I’ll head back to my Pack and bring our healer here myself. He’s the oldest and most skilled healer in the region.”
“I’ll look into her background,” I say. “The traders came from somewhere. She came from somewhere. I want to know how she was able to fake a scent match, and whether that skill was hers or someone else’s design.”
“It’s settled then,” Sinth says, his tone laced with finality.
Wayne almost smiles. “Look at that. The three of us, agreeing on something. Someone alert the elders.”
***
I go alone to the cell later, when I’m certain neither of them will follow.
I tell myself it’s diligence. A King investigating a potential threat to the region doesn’t need permission to examine that threat firsthand.
And if I happen to do it without informing Sinth or Wayne, that’s simply efficiency, not secrecy. I repeat this to myself twice on the walk down, and I don’t entirely believe it either time.
The cells beneath the middle-ground palace are old, older than most of the wings above them, carved directly into the rock the whole structure sits on.
Cold in a way that has nothing to do with Snowpeak’s particular cold—this is just stone, patient and indifferent, the kind of cold that doesn’t care who you are.
I stop before I reach the guards’ line of sight and watch for a moment through the narrow passage.
She’s sitting against the far wall of her cell, knees drawn up, and even from here I can see the effort it takes her to hold herself upright.
When one of the guards passes close to the bars, checking the lock out of habit, she lifts her chin. Squares her shoulders. There’s nothing in her face but flat, careful defiance. I say nothing; I let her perform for the soldier, waiting to see what she’s like when she thinks no one is watching.
The guard moves on. And the moment he’s gone, her brave face collapses.
Her shoulders curl inward, her arms wrap around her knees, and she presses her forehead down against them like she’s trying to make herself as compact and invisible as the cell will allow.
I watch her chest rise and fall too fast, watch her hands twist into the fabric of the tunic she’s still wearing. Then I hear it, the faint sound of her breathing hitched into something that isn’t quite crying, not yet, but is close enough that it doesn’t matter.
She hates this. That much is plain even from here, even filtered through stone and distance. She hates the cell, hates the guards, hates—I’d wager—every single one of us, in whatever order she’s ranked us in her head.
That’s fair. I understand hatred. I have far less patience for whatever else was happening in that hall an hour ago.
I can still feel it. Faint now, dulled by distance and stone. But present. That thread of scent I have no business recognizing, curling low in my chest, unwelcome, insisting on a claim I never authorized it to make.
I press it down the way I press down everything that threatens to become inconvenient.
It doesn’t matter what my body decided, uninvited, in that hall. Bodies are unreliable things. They fixate on whatever novelty crosses their path. The pull is there. It’s strong, but I keep refusing to accept it.
She lifts her head slightly, and for one unguarded second, before she catches herself, I see something in her face that isn’t defiance or exhaustion. Something closer to bewilderment. Like she’s as lost inside whatever is happening to her body as the rest of us are.
I turn and leave before she can sense me the way I can’t stop sensing her.
Whatever she is—fraud, anomaly, some cruel accident of fate—she is not my problem to soften for.
I will find out what she is through evidence. I just need the ache under my ribs to agree with that plan.
It doesn’t. Not yet. I ignore it anyway, the whole walk back up into the cold.