Chapter 7 #2
I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye, still grinning. “You do, of course you do. You’re lovely, Zabriel. I just think it would be funny, the two of us. We’d have figured out by now if we had feelings for each other.”
He grins. “Yes, you’re right. I’ll know my mate as soon as I see her.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Because it’s obvious when you meet your Omega.
The stories say it’s like being hit by a lightning bolt.
Onderz and Mirelle have known each other since they were children, but he said she’s always been his first thought in the morning and the last at night.
The moment she started giving off her Omega scent, he knew she was his.
I know in my heart that I’m fated to an Omega, and I would guess that seeing as Stesha is unmated, he probably feels the same way. ”
The smile fades from my lips. The beautiful future I was building for myself and Stesha comes tumbling down, brick by brick. “Stesha is what?”
“Waiting for his Omega. Well, I haven’t talked about it with the dragonmaster because I think he would knock me into next week if I pried into his private hopes and dreams, but being unmated and not taking any lovers ever is a sign that an Alpha believes he’s fated to an Omega.”
Fated.
To an Omega.
It can’t be. My mind searches for any scrap of hope. “Maybe I’m an Omega.”
“You’re a bit old, aren’t you?” Zabriel asks.
I must look devastated, because he hastily adds, “I mean, Omegas usually start presenting when they’re fourteen or fifteen, don’t they?
I don’t know, though. I don’t really know anything.
You should speak to Mirelle. I have to go.
” He backs away from me, just like Stesha did, and flees the Great Hall.
Mirelle. There’s an idea. I go off in search of her because she actually has a mate, and she can tell me how this certainty that someone is yours is supposed to feel.
I find Mirelle along a covered walkway near one of the biggest gardens. She’s doing her best to cram herself beneath a stone bench, but her long, trailing lilac dress gives her away.
I hurry forward and kneel down beside her. “Mirelle, have you lost something?”
“Oh, Zenevieve,” she sobs, and grips my hand. “I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. This is only the third time.”
Mirelle doesn’t seem to want to let go of my hand or crawl out from beneath the bench either. “Only the third time for what?”
“My false heat. Everything’s too bright. Too noisy. I need to hide.”
Mirelle is younger than me, and she’s been giving off her incredibly sweet and pervasive Omega scent for years. I’ve never experienced anything like this, so that must mean Zabriel is right. I can’t be an Omega.
“I need to get inside,” Mirelle whimpers. When I encourage her to get out from beneath the bench, she cries, “No, please, I can’t.”
I look at her helplessly. If she needs to be inside but won’t move, how am I supposed to help her?
“Oh, the light.” Mirelle covers her eyes with her hand and winces.
I draw one of the many layers of her dress up so she can use it to shield herself. “Mirelle, please tell me how I can help you.”
“Find Onderz, please. I need Onderz.”
Of course, if she’s in this much distress, she’ll need her mate. Onderz’s scent and his arms around her are probably the only things that will make her feel safe. “I’ll go find him. I’ll be as fast as I can.”
I run and search the dragongrounds and the sparring grounds. I check the Flame Temple. I seek out his house, but I can’t find Onderz anywhere, and no one has seen him.
When I return to Mirelle, I hear her before I see her. She’s shrieking in panic, and when I round a corner, I see her struggling as she’s carried on someone’s shoulder. A tall someone. Emmeric, her brother.
I run up to him and block his way. “What are you doing with Princess Mirelle?”
His arm tightens around her. Her legs are kicking over his shoulder.
“I’m helping her.” Emmeric’s eyes are hard and glittering without an ounce of sympathy for his sister, but it’s not his eyes that are scaring me the most. It’s the fact that there’s a bulge in the front of his breeches. His knot is swollen.
“That’s your sister.”
“Mind your own business, Beta,” he snaps.
When he tries to move past me, I step in front of him again. “Stop that. Let her go, you’re scaring her.” He’s scaring me as well.
“I can do whatever I want, especially to a stupid little Omega,” he sneers. “Get out of my way.”
Mirelle is now screaming for Onderz, and her cries of distress are wrenching at my heart. I can’t leave her like this. Though he’s twice my size and a royal prince, I put my hand on the hilt of my sword. “Put her down, now.”
He snickers. “What are you going to do, stick me with that needle of yours? Draw your weapon against me, a prince, and I’ll have you beheaded.”
There’s something wrong with Emmeric. He was always horrible, but now he’s downright evil. I’m so afraid for Mirelle that I don’t think. I draw my sword, and I slam the hilt into Emmeric’s knot. The effect is instantaneous. The prince crumples to the ground with a groan.
Mirelle staggers away from her brother. A moment later, Onderz bursts through an archway and catches his sobbing mate in his arms. He’s shouting, I’m trying to explain what has happened, and Emmeric is snarling in fury and struggling to his feet.
Suddenly, King Aylard strides into the garden. I sheath my sword before he can notice that it’s drawn.
“What is happening here?” the king roars.
Mirelle cries harder. Both Onderz and Emmeric are pointing at each other and shouting.
“Onderz, take her to her nest. I can’t bear all this crying. Emmeric, tell me what happened.”
Emmeric shoots me a look of pure hate, and glances at my sheathed sword. I wonder if I’m about to be dragged away to the dungeons.
“Nothing, Father,” he says through his teeth, surprising me.
“Then get out of my sight.”
Emmeric gives me a warning look and then turns on his heel and stalks away.
I’m alone with King Aylard as he turns to leave. Emmeric’s threat to me was silent but palpable, but I have to tell someone about what I witnessed, for Mirelle’s sake.
I hurry over to the king. “Ma’len, may I speak with you a moment?”
The king pauses and gives me an imperious look. “Speak, girl.”
My fingers are twisting nervously together, and I put them behind my back. “Something is worrying me about the prince and princess. I came upon Prince Emmeric carrying the princess on his shoulder. She was crying and telling him to put her down, but he wouldn’t, and…and his knot was swollen.”
King Aylard’s eyes flash. He backhands me across the face, sending me flying.
The world goes white, and I can neither hear nor see for several seconds. When I come to my senses, I’m lying on the cold stone floor and the king is standing over me.
“…speak such disgusting words. You are lucky I don’t lock you in the dungeons. If you know what is good for you, you will hold your tongue.”
I’ve never been shouted at before, and from an Alpha, it’s terrifying. King Aylard’s fury hits me harder than his fists, and I curl up into a ball and sob. I ache for Stesha, and it’s devastating not knowing where he is or how to reach him.
King Aylard’s footsteps fade as he storms away. It’s several minutes before I can drag myself up to sitting. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, and below my eye feels like it’s on fire.
I limp back home, my head down. Though I know I’m going to find the rooms I share with Stesha empty, I still feel devastated. I crawl into Stesha’s bed and sob on his pillow.
Three days later, Stesha walks tiredly in, rubbing his forehead as if his head is aching. “Morning, Zen.”
Without looking at me too closely, he pats me on my shoulder on the way to his bedroom. He disappears inside like after every rut, and I know he will sleep for many hours.
A moment later, his door flies open, and his expression is bewildered. “Zenevieve, what’s happened?”
I stare at my hands in my lap. “Nothing.”
He crouches down on his heels so he can see my face. The bruise on my cheek has darkened to black, purple, and green. “But my bed smells like tears, and…” He trails off, and then exclaims, “Zenevieve, what happened to you?”
I’m hurting inside and out.
Are you truly waiting for an Omega?
Will I never be good enough for you?
I open my mouth to tell him everything about Mirelle’s false heat, Emmeric, and the king hitting me for speaking up.
I remember the shock in Stesha’s eyes as he saw my cut palm.
He takes his oath to my father seriously.
If I tell Stesha that King Aylard put this bruise on my face, how will he react?
Alphas are notorious for hot tempers around their ruts.
What if Stesha loses his temper at the king?
Prince Emmeric’s threat to have me beheaded is ringing in my ears.
I won’t be responsible for someone hurting Stesha.
Forcing a smile, I tell him, “I got too close to a wyvern’s tail, and she accidentally knocked me over.”
His lips press together in sympathy. “That looks like it hurts.”
He goes to a shelf and takes down a bottle of ointment that we use for bruises and cuts. “They’re unpredictable creatures, those wyverns. You must remember that they’re not as clever as dragons.”
As he gently daubs ointment on my bruise, I feel terrible about the things I’m hiding from him.
He pushes the cork back into the bottle. “Zenevieve, are you sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me?”
I’m silent for a long time.
“I missed you,” I whisper. My eyes fill with tears, but I blink them away, hoping he doesn’t notice.
He caresses my cheek. “I missed you, too. I’m always glad to come home.”
His touch and his sweet words cast some of the shadows from my heart.
Maybe Stesha will grow tired of his lonely ruts.
By his age, most Alphas have been mated for several years.
He must want to father children. I see how happy the hatchlings make him, and how proud he is when they venture out of the nesting caves for the first time.
Stesha would be prouder still of his own sons and daughters.
I can picture him patiently helping a baby to walk while they grasp his big fingers, their little feet hitting the ground while they laugh in delight. Painful longing squeezes my heart.
I get up off my chair and slip into his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck and resting my cheek against his chest so I can hear his heart beating.
Stesha doesn’t move for a moment, then he resettles my legs across his thighs to hold me, and releases a heavy, exhausted breath.
He rests his cheek against the top of my head.
Maybe he’s waiting for the day he notices me, but he doesn’t know it yet. Maybe I’m the only one who knows, and I just have to be patient.
A spark of hope has been glowing in my heart for a long time, and it hasn’t yet been extinguished.