Chapter 22 Kess
Kess
The tea tastes wrong.
I notice it the moment the liquid touches my tongue—a discordant note buried beneath the familiar bitter-sweet blend, something my newly sharpened senses have been trying to tell me for days.
I hold it in my mouth instead of swallowing, letting it pool against my teeth, cataloguing the flavors the way my grandmother taught me to catalogue herbs in the forest. Chamomile.
Honey. The astringent bite of something medicinal underneath.
And beneath all of that, so faint I might be imagining it, something that tastes like wrongness. Like my body recognizing a threat my mind hasn't caught up to yet.
I swallow anyway, because I'm probably being paranoid. Because Rhystan loves me. Because he brings me this tea every evening with such careful attention, watches me drink it with such obvious relief when I finish the cup, that doubting him feels like a betrayal of everything we've built.
But I set the cup down with the tea only half-finished, and I find I can't make myself drink the rest.
-
The bond feels wrong too.
It's been feeling wrong for weeks now, muted and distant like hearing music through stone walls, but I kept telling myself it was the transformation. The contamination remaking my body cell by cell. My system adjusting to the changes flooding through me with every passing day.
But the wrongness has a pattern.
The bond is weakest in the mornings, after I drink my tea. Strongest in the late afternoons, when hours have passed since my last cup. The connection ebbs and flows with a rhythm that has nothing to do with my emotions or his presence or anything else that should affect a mate bond.
It ebbs and flows with the tea.
The thought surfaces unbidden, sharp and cold as a blade drawn across skin, and I can't push it back down no matter how hard I try.
What if it's not the transformation making the bond feel muted? What if something is actively weakening it, fraying the connection thread by thread?
What if it's the tea?
I need answers. Real ones, not the careful deflections Rhystan has been giving me for weeks, not the vague reassurances about transformation and adjustment and giving my body time to heal.
And I know exactly where to look.
The storage room is dark and dusty, thick with the smell of old fabric and forgotten things.
Moonlight filters through a single grimy window, casting silver shadows across the broken furniture and moth-eaten tapestries that have been moldering here for decades.
My hiding spot is where I left it—the hollow behind the cracked armoire where I used to stash food in the early days, back when I trusted no one and nothing, back when survival meant hoarding secrets like a dragon hoards gold.
The books are still there too. The ones Rhystan hid from the library. The ones I found weeks ago and never told him about, holding the knowledge close like a weapon I wasn't ready to use.
I haven't told him I know about the priests.
Haven't told him I know about the forty-seven deaths being engineered, about warrior omegas being hunted to extinction, about the conspiracy that's kept his curse active for three hundred years.
I've been waiting for the right moment, the right conversation, the right opening to confront him with everything I've learned.
Maybe the right moment is now.
I carry the texts back to my chambers, light every candle I own, and start searching with new purpose.
Not for information about contamination this time—I know enough about that.
This time I'm hunting for anything about bonds.
About what could weaken them. About why I feel so disconnected from the man I love even when he's pressed against me in the dark, even when his hands are gentle on my skin, even when he whispers my name like a prayer.
The answer finds me an hour later, buried in a margin note written in cramped, faded script.
Certain preparations can weaken the omega bond if administered regularly. The most common blend includes valerian root, moonflower extract, and essence of nightshade in quantities too small to poison but sufficient to fray the mate connection over time.
My hands have started shaking. I flatten them against the page and force myself to keep reading.
The omega may notice the bond feeling distant or muted. Sleep is often improved as the bond's emotional intensity fades.
Sleep is improved.
The bond feeling distant.
I think about how well I've been sleeping since Rhystan started bringing me tea. How the nightmares have faded, how the intensity of the bond has softened into something manageable instead of overwhelming.
How I thought that was a good thing.
I turn the page with trembling fingers, and the next passage stops my heart mid-beat.
These preparations were historically used to help omegas escape abusive alpha matches, or to prevent bonds from forming during forced claimings.
Side effects may include nausea, particularly if the omega is pregnant, as the herbs interfere with the hormonal changes that strengthen the mate connection during gestation.
Nausea as a side effect.
Particularly if the omega is pregnant.
The book falls from my hands, pages splaying against the floor like broken wings.
Pregnant.
The nausea that comes every morning. The exhaustion that drags me under without warning.
The emotional storms that leave me crying at nothing, raging at nothing, feeling everything too much and not enough all at once.
The dreams about children I've never wanted, the strange fullness in my belly that isn't bloating, the way my body has been changing in ways I couldn't name.
I'm pregnant.
And he's been giving me bond-weakening herbs.
While I was pregnant with his child.
While I didn't even know.
-
The mystic's chambers smell like dried herbs and old magic, the kind of scent that seeps into stone over centuries and never quite fades.
She looks up from her work when I enter, and something in my expression makes her go very still—hands freezing over the mortar and pestle, ancient eyes sharpening with recognition.
She knows why I'm here.
"How long?" My voice comes out steadier than I expected, cold and flat as a blade laid against skin. "How long have you known I was pregnant?"
She doesn't pretend to misunderstand. Doesn't try to deflect or delay. Just sets down her tools with the careful movements of someone who knows they're about to deliver a killing blow.
"Since he brought you to me for examination. Weeks ago."
Weeks. He's known for weeks that I was carrying his child, and he said nothing. Let me wonder why I was sick, why I was exhausted, why my body felt like it belonged to someone else. Let me drink that tea every night while his baby grew inside me.
"And you didn't tell me."
"He asked me not to." Her voice carries no defense, no justification—only the weary truth of someone who's been waiting for this moment, dreading it, knowing it had to come.
"He was convinced the pregnancy would kill you.
That the bond was putting too much strain on your transforming body.
He thought if he could weaken it enough, give your system room to handle the changes—"
"He could save me." The words taste like poison. "By lying to me. By drugging me. By hiding my own pregnancy from me while he fed me herbs that might hurt our child."
"The doses are small," she says quietly. "Meant to affect the bond, not the pregnancy itself. I don't believe they'll harm the baby."
"You don't believe. But you don't know."
Silence. The mystic's gaze drops to her folded hands.
"No," she admits. "I don't know. There's so little research on warrior omega pregnancies. So few texts that survived the purges. I told him the risks. Told him he should trust you with the truth." A pause, heavy as stone. "He was too afraid to listen."
I'm shaking now. Can feel it in my hands, my shoulders, the tremor running through my whole body like an earthquake building toward release.
"Thank you," I hear myself say, and my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. "For finally telling me the truth."
I leave before she can respond, before the shaking can turn into something worse.
His study door crashes open when I shove it, the heavy oak slamming against stone with a sound like thunder.
He's at his desk, papers spread before him, quill in hand—looking every inch the cursed king dealing with kingdom business.
The late afternoon light catches the sharp lines of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, and even now—even with rage burning through my veins—some treacherous part of me responds to the sight of him.
Wants to go to him. Wants to let him hold me and tell me everything will be alright.
I hate that part of me.
When he glances up at my entrance, he starts to smile, that soft expression he saves just for me, the one that used to make my heart turn over in my chest.
The smile dies when he sees what I'm carrying.
The hidden books. The ones he removed from the library and tucked away where he thought no one would find them. The ones I discovered weeks ago and held close like a secret of my own.
"Kess." He sets down the quill and rises slowly, his eyes tracking from the books to my face and back again. "Where did you find those?"
"Storage room near my old food stash. Where you hid them.
" I cross to his desk and drop the books with a thud that echoes through the chamber.
"I've known about the priests for weeks.
About the engineered deaths. About warrior omegas and the conspiracy that kept your curse active for three hundred years.
I was waiting for the right time to confront you. "
Something flickers across his face—surprise giving way to a flash of anger that hardens his jaw and narrows his golden eyes. "You knew? You've known this whole time and you didn't tell me?"