Chapter 7 - Sinth
Chris thinks she’s a fraud and has refused to accept what’s right in front of him. For some reason, he hates the idea of being fated to a “slave girl”; a weak, shiftless wolf.
But I’m not so sure she’s shiftless considering her reaction to our pheromones back in the hall. It’s clear that she’s an Omega, but Chris still doesn’t want to see things for what they are. He’s convinced it’s a trick.
I guess we’ll find out soon enough since we’ve managed to come up with a plan that we all agreed to. That’s a first in a really long time. I must admit, it’s refreshing to be on the same page for once.
Wayne has returned to his Pack. His assignment is to fetch his Pack’s healer and bring them back here. Chris has left as well, and I’m sure he’s more than eager to dig into the woman’s past to prove us wrong.
He’s stubborn as a mule, that one.
I, on the other hand, can’t seem to control my own curiosity. With the others away on their separate missions, I decide to check on our mystery woman.
Her face is plastered at the back of my mind; the fear in her eyes when that guard raised his blade over her neck and the helplessness in her gaze when we argued about her fate.
I believe she’s just a victim of circumstances and doesn’t deserve the death penalty. I haven’t fully accepted this pull yet, but deep down, I think she’s actually pretty—gorgeous in every way. And I’m drawn to her.
Maybe that’s why I’m on my way to the cell right now—because I want to set my eyes on her again.
However, I tell myself I’m only checking on the prisoner. That’s the word I use in my own head, deliberately, because prisoner is a manageable word and everything else I might call her isn’t.
I go down to the cells anyway, and while descending the stone stairs, my heart starts to race even faster. But why?
I honestly am not sure.
It’s dimly lit down here, with the only source of light being the flaming torches hanging on the stone walls.
The guard at the passage straightens when he sees me. “My lord. Did you need something?”
“A moment with her. Alone.”
He hesitates, just slightly, before stepping aside.
I stare at him in silence, and he gets the message. He leaves the space entirely, the sound of his retreating boots echoing off the walls.
With my hands crossed behind me, I walk further down the passage until I reach her cell.
She’s sitting against the far wall when I round the corner, knees drawn to her chest with her chin resting on them. She doesn’t look up right away. When she does, there’s a flicker of something raw before she catches it and smooths it over—fear, mostly, though something harder sits underneath it.
I halt outside the bars that hold her prisoner, my eyes pinned on her. She doesn’t look away; instead, she holds my gaze in a way that raises a flutter in my chest.
Strange.
The silence between us stretches on, and as weirdly as it might sound, I forget for a moment why I was down here in the first place. Her red hair spills over her shoulders, strands framing her face.
Even in the dim light, I see her clearly.
Dirt smudges her skin—some parts of her cheeks and both her hands. Her feet are bare and just as filthy, soles blackened from the cell floor.
The hem of her skirt has torn along one side. Not badly. Just enough to show a teasing glimpse of soft, thick alluring thigh. The sight makes my heart skip a beat and arousal swells within me. I’m actually ashamed.
She tugs the fabric back down, self-conscious. I shift my gaze to her face instantly, clearing my throat.
“You haven’t touched your food,” I say, glancing over at the dish abandoned in a corner.
It doesn’t pass as a proper meal to me, but it’s enough to sustain her strength.
She hesitates for a moment. “I’m not hungry.”
“It’s not what you’re used to, I suppose.” I mean the prison food.
“Trust me, it’s better than what I eat where I come from,” she replies, her voice low and rough.
“And where’s that?”
Silence.
She stares at me as though she’s evaluating her response, like she’s measuring how much information is worth giving out.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not here to hurt you.”
“People rarely announce when they are.”
Fair. I can’t argue with that, so I don’t try.
I crouch instead, putting myself lower than her, less of a looming shape in a small stone room. “The circumstances surrounding you are rather…mysterious.”
She swallows, eyes still latched on me.
“I have questions that need answers,” I say to her. “And it’s really in your best interest not to lie to me.”
“I haven’t told a lie since I got here.”
“You haven’t told the truth either. At least not the whole truth.”
She studies me for a long moment, weighing whether that’s worth anything at all. “What do you wanna know?”
“Let’s start with where you’re from.”
“Ashwick.” The word comes out flat, bitter. “It’s a small village, western edge of Snowpeak’s territory. Not that it matters. Nobody there will miss me anyway.” There’s sadness and a hint of anger in her voice.
“Not even your family?”
Her brows arch, and a dismissive scoff falls off of her lips. “They were the ones who sold me to those traders.”
I feel it deep in my bones; anger. I don’t know why I’m so affected, but it makes my jaw tighten.
She continues, “My stepbrother’s Omega got sold first. They needed a replacement, and I was the only spare body in the house nobody valued enough to keep.” Her voice doesn’t waver on it, which somehow makes it worse to hear.
I listen in silence.
“They drugged me. Forced pills down my throat and drenched me in fake pheromones until I smelled close enough to the real thing to fool men who don’t know any better. Then they handed me over for coin and let their favorite child keep his intended.”
I feel sorry for her, genuinely. She got rejected by her own family and now by her fated mates as well. It must be rough.
“You don’t have to believe me,” she says after a beat. “I’m used to people not doing so anyway.”
A pause.
“But why would I lie? You’re already planning to kill me. What would a lie even buy me at this point?”
What’s in her voice is exhaustion. And I recognize it because I’ve worn it myself often enough, managing two men who’d rather destabilize the region with their fights than admit they need each other.
I don’t answer her question. Instead I let the silence sit for a moment. Underneath it, faint but undeniable, I catch it again—that thread of scent from the hall. Thinner here, dulled by exhaustion and cold stone, but present.
It’s nothing like the artificial perfume the traders—rather, her family slathered on her. This is different. Warmer. Real, in a way I have no framework for explaining.
“The drugs you were given,” I say slowly.
“They can act as an aphrodisiac. On a wolf, they’d force something close to heat.
I understand that part.” I study her face.
“What I don’t understand is why you’d still be giving off a scent, hours later, when whatever they forced into you should have burned through your system by now. ”
She frowns, genuinely confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a scent. I’ve never had one. I’m not an Omega. That’s the whole reason my family force-fed me those pills in the first place.”
“There’s something there now.”
I watch that land on her, watch the confusion deepen into something closer to fear. “That’s not possible.”
“I’d like to test something, if you’ll allow it.”
Her hands curl tighter around her knees. “Do I have a choice?”
“You do, actually. I’d rather you agree than force it.” I mean that.
I don’t examine too closely why I mean it, or why it matters to me that she consents to this rather than simply enduring it the way she’s clearly braced to endure everything else tonight.
After a moment, she gives one small, wary nod.
I let a thread of my pheromones loose. Not the wall of force I used earlier in the hall, tangled up with Chris and Wayne’s. Just my own, deliberate and controlled, aimed at her the way I’d test any Omega’s responsiveness.
Her reaction is instant.
Her breath catches. Her spine straightens, some buried instinct pulling her upright before her conscious mind seems to catch up to what her body’s doing.
Color floods into her face, and for a moment her eyes go glassy, unfocused, the exact response I’d expect from an Omega caught by an Alpha’s dominant scent.
This is definitely heat. She’s in heat.
She makes a small, strangled sound and presses a hand to her chest like she’s trying to physically hold something in place. “What—what did you just do to me?”
“I confirmed something.” I keep my voice steady, though my pulse hasn’t been steady since the moment I walked into this cell. “You reacted to that the way an Omega reacts. Not the way a beta would. Not the way anyone shiftless should.”
“Wait…are you saying that…” Her voice trails into silence as the realization sets in. “That’s not—I can’t be an Omega. I told you, I’m shiftless. My wolf died before I was—”
“Did it die,” I ask, quiet, “or did someone tell you it did?”
She goes still.
“The healer said it ran dry,” she says finally, voice smaller now. “Starved before I was born, because something went wrong when my mother was carrying me. He never said dead outright. Everyone else just started saying it that way because it was easier.”
Dormant is not dead. I don’t say that part aloud, not yet. I don’t have enough certainty to hand her hope only to take it back later if I’m wrong. But something in my chest tightens at the thought regardless.
“Thank you for your time.” I straighten. “You’ll be fed tonight. Properly. I’ll see to it myself.”
She watches me with an expression I can’t fully name… more cautious than gratitude or trust.
I don’t have an answer for her yet. I’m not sure I have one for myself.
I leave before I do something foolish, like promise her more than I currently have the right to promise.
The conversation follows me the rest of the night.
I keep circling back to the sound of her voice going ragged with fear and holding steady anyway. The look in her clear blue eyes and the glimpse of that soft, thick thigh tucked away somewhere in the back of my mind.
***
Two days later, the other Kings and I meet up at the middle-ground palace. We sit at the long table that dominates the center of the room, sunlight streaming in through the large windows.
“My men tracked the traders’ route back to a village called Ashwick. Western edge of my territory,” Chris begins, his voice calm as usual.
“That matches what she told me,” I say.
His brow lifts slightly. “You spoke with her.”
Both Kings have their eyes on me, a hint of suspicion flickering in their gazes.
“I did.” I don’t elaborate, and neither of them pushes. Although Wayne has that grin on his face, the one he wears when he smells something fishy.
”What did your men find?” I ask Chris.
“Confirmation of the shiftless story. A healer in the village remembers her birth, remembers declaring her wolf dormant after her mother died delivering her.” He pauses.
“Does that also match what she told you?” Wayne teases, that pesky grin still retained.
I don’t respond because I know what he’s playing at.
Chris continues, “They found no shortage of people willing to describe her as useless. A family that treated her as unpaid labor. A village that considered her cursed, or close enough to it.”
Something in my chest tightens at that, sharper than I expect.
“My healer is examining her as we speak,” Wayne says, his eyes shifting between Chris and me. “We should get a report soon.”
The examination didn’t take as long as I expected. When the healer, an old man with long grey hair and a crooked staff, emerges, his expression is thoughtful in a way that makes all three of us go quiet before he even speaks.
“She’s an Omega,” he says simply. “Has been all along, in the sense that matters. Her wolf isn’t dead. It’s dormant—nearly starved to nothing, but not extinguished.”
Something flashes across Chris’s face. I’m not sure what it is yet.
The healer goes ahead to add, “A wolf that dormant wouldn’t have manifested a secondary sex at all under normal circumstances. She’d have gone her whole life shiftless, exactly as everyone believed.”
“Then what changed?” Chris’s voice is flat, but I catch the tension underneath it.
“The drugs, I suppose, combined with exposure to the three of you together.” The healer explains, “Powerful Alpha pheromones, concentrated and colliding the way yours did in that hall. It’s rare but not unheard of for that kind of exposure to force a dormant wolf toward the surface.”
Silence.
“It’s not fully awake. Not yet. But enough to manifest what it always should have been, given the chance.”
“So she’s unstable?” I ask.
“Yes. Extremely,” he replies. “Her wolf is trying to wake from something close to death, and doing it under duress, with none of the gradual development a wolf normally has.”
We exchange glances amongst ourselves.
”She’ll need care. Time. The wrong kind of strain could push her wolf back into dormancy for good, possibly kill her in the process.”
Silence settles over the room.
“She’s weak,” Chris says finally, arms crossed, voice hard and flat. “Unstable, fragile, and by every account we’ve gathered, of no particular use to anyone, including herself. I see no reason to invest further resources in her recovery.”
“Have you not been paying attention?” Wayne glares at him. “She needs time to regain her strength.”
“He’s right,” I say to Chris. “She can recover, with the right help.”
“You’re wasting your time with a liability.”
“That liability is our fated mate,” I say, keeping my voice low and even. “She didn’t ask for any of this, and she reacted to our combined presence in a way none of us can currently explain.”
Wayne yawns and stretches. “I don’t care about liability or usefulness, honestly. I’m more curious about the strange connection I feel toward her. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels it.”
Chris’s jaw works, some argument building behind his eyes that he doesn’t voice.
“We’ve been at this for a while,” I add, quieter. “Trying to agree on one woman between the three of us, and failing every time because none of us wanted the same thing. This is the first time all three of us reacted to anyone the same way. I don’t think that’s something we should dismiss.”
“I’m with Sinth on this one.” Wayne crosses his legs on the table. “I say we keep her.”
Chris looks between Wayne and me, and I watch him do the math, the way he always does—weighing the cost of being outvoted against the cost of being wrong. Neither option sits well with him. It rarely does.
“Fine.” The word comes out clipped, resentful. “But if she proves as much of a liability as I suspect, I want it noted that I said so first.”
“Noted,” Wayne says, not quite hiding his grin.
I don’t smile, not yet. But something in my chest, tight since the moment I left her cell three nights ago, finally loosens, just slightly.
We’re keeping her. Whatever she turns out to be, we’ll have the chance to find out.