If curses can be broken, the War God's priests lose their greatest weapon. Berserker blood—the elixir that makes soldiers into monsters—comes from alpha suffering. From maintained curses. From omegas dying year after year while the curse stays deliberately intact.
So they burned our records. Hunted our families to extinction. Made sure cursed alphas kept suffering, kept killing, kept producing the blood that builds empires.
The writing becomes more erratic, letters slanting wildly.
Forty-seven omegas have died in the Vhal'kar claiming grounds. Every single one was chosen by the priests. Every single one was selected to FAIL.
They're not tributes. They're sacrifices.
I set the book down because my hands are shaking too hard to hold it.
Forty-seven omegas. Forty-seven names Rhystan carved with his own bleeding hands. Forty-seven deaths he carries like stones in his pockets, drowning in guilt for three hundred years.
And every single one was deliberate murder.
The priests knew gentle omegas would die. Selected them specifically because they would die. Kept the curse active, kept Rhystan suffering, kept his blood potent for their war machine.
Three hundred years of calculated cruelty dressed up as divine will.
Three hundred years of a man believing he was a monster when he was actually a victim.
And someone hid these books. Someone didn't want this truth found.
I think about the gaps in the archive shelves. The dust outlines showing where volumes sat for decades before being removed. The way Rhystan always seems to know when I've been researching, always appears with tea and careful questions about what I've found.
He hid these books.
He knows.
He knows what I am, knows about warrior omegas, knows the priests engineered his suffering—and he's been keeping it from me.
The rage that floods through me is hot and clean and clarifying, burning away everything else until there's nothing left but fury.
I find him in his study, bent over texts by candlelight, and I don't bother knocking.
The door crashes open and he's on his feet in an instant, golden eyes flashing, body tensing for a threat. When he sees it's me, something in his expression shifts—relief, then wariness, then something that looks almost like fear when he sees what I'm carrying.
The books. His hidden books.
"Kess—"
"You knew." I throw the genealogy text onto his desk, pages splaying open to those damning margins. "You knew what I was. You knew about warrior omegas, about the priests, about all of it. And you hid it from me."
He doesn't deny it. Doesn't try to explain or excuse. Just stands there, shoulders tense, jaw tight, looking at me like I'm a blade aimed at his throat.
"How long?" My voice comes out raw, scraped rough by betrayal. "How long have you known?"
"Since the beginning." The words fall between us like stones. "Since you survived the first claiming. No docile omega could have lived through that. I knew what you had to be."
"And you said nothing."
"I was trying to protect you."
"From what?" I step closer, close enough to see the guilt carved into the lines of his face. "From the truth about my own bloodline? From knowing that your suffering was engineered? From understanding that those forty-seven omegas were murdered by priests who wanted you broken?"
He flinches like I've struck him.
"Yes," he says quietly. "From all of it. You already carry so much—the contamination, the transformation, the knowledge that you're becoming something the world tried to erase. I didn't want to add the weight of my guilt to your burden."
