For the next eight hours, wrapped in their arms in the depths of the sea, I let myself forget everything except the feeling of being loved.
Chapter Thirteen
LILY
The promise I'd made hung between us like something physical, taking up space in the water.
Tell us everything.
Soon.
Soon had become now. I could feel it in the way they watched me—patient, yes, but with an edge of desperation underneath. They'd given me time. They'd given me space. But the questions were building behind their eyes, and I couldn't keep deflecting forever.
We floated in a kelp clearing, the green-gold fronds swaying around us like curtains. Thane had found this place earlier, private, quiet, away from the currents. A place for difficult conversations.
I didn't know how to start. Vale drifted behind me, and I felt his fingers brush against my hair. The touch was light, questioning.
"May I?" Vale's voice was silk against my ear, his breath stirring the hair at my temple. His silver eyes caught the filteredlight, patient but intent. I nodded, not entirely sure what I was agreeing to. His fingers slid into my hair, gentle and deliberate, and I felt him begin to separate the strands. Sectioning. Weaving.Braiding.
But it was more than that. His wrist pressed against the back of my neck as he worked, and I felt warmth bloom across my skin wherever he touched. He was rubbing something into my hair—his scent, I realized. Marking me.
"What are you doing?" My voice came out breathless. Soft. I tilted my head slightly, trying to see him, but his hands guided me back to stillness.
"Marking you." His fingers never stopped their weaving, steady and sure. His wrist dragged across my nape again, deliberate and possessive. "So every creature in this ocean knows you belong to us."
Something happened in my chest. A sound started—low, vibrating, completely involuntary. It took me a moment to realize it was coming fromme.
A purr.
An actual purr, rumbling up from somewhere deep in my ribcage. Mortification flooded through me. I'd never made that sound before. I didn't even know Icouldmake that sound. My omega had always been suppressed, controlled, locked away?—
"Don't stop." Thane drifted closer, his honey-brown tail catching the light as it swayed. His golden-brown eyes were wide with something like wonder, his lips parted. "Please. Don't stop that sound."
"I can't—I don't know how to control it—" I pressed my hands to my chest as if I could somehow muffle the sound. My cheeks burned with embarrassment.
"Then don't control it." Riven moved closer, his massive scarred body cutting through the water until he was right in front of me. His golden eyes were burning, fixed on my facewith an intensity that made my breath catch. His crimson tail coiled beneath him, powerful and restless. "Let us hear you, little human. Let us hear what you sound like when you're not hiding."
The purr intensified. I couldn't stop it. My omega waspreeningunder their attention, and for once, I didn't have the strength to fight it.
"Good omega," Thane murmured, the words like a prayer, his hand reaching out to hover near my arm, not quite touching. His voice cracked on the praise.
I felt myself go liquid. The words hit me like a physical force. My muscles loosened. My thoughts went soft and hazy at the edges. I sagged in the water, and Kaelan was there instantly, his arms wrapping around me from the side, holding me up.
"Such a good omega," he said against my temple, his lips brushing my skin with each word. The purring became something closer to a whimper. "You've been hiding this from everyone, haven't you? Suppressing what you are. Pretending to be something else."
"I had to." The words scraped out of my throat, rough and raw. I curled into his chest, my fingers gripping his arm. "I had to hide. You don't understand what they do to omegas who don't hide."
Stillness. Complete, absolute stillness. Vale's fingers paused in my hair. Riven's jaw went tight, a muscle jumping beneath the scarred skin. Thane made a sound like something breaking, his hand finally closing on my arm as if he couldn't bear not to touch me anymore.
"Tell us." Kaelan's voice was soft, but there was steel underneath. His dark eyes had gone flat, dangerous. His arms tightened around me. "Tell us what they do."
I told them everything. The words came slowly at first, dragged out of some locked place inside me that I'd tried sohard to forget existed. But once I started, I couldn't stop. I told them about my family. How my mother had loved me before—how she'd sung me songs and braided my hair and told me I was precious. How everything changed when I presented at fourteen. How my father looked at me differently after that. Not like a daughter. Like anasset.
"Omegas are rare," I heard myself saying, my voice flat and distant. My hands had gone cold, and I pressed them together in my lap. "Valuable. In the human world, we're... we're property. We can't own land. Can't sign contracts. Can't travel without an alpha guardian's permission. We belong to our families until we're sold, and then we belong to whoever buys us."
"Sold." Vale's fingers had gone still in my hair. His voice was barely recognizable—stripped of its usual silk, leaving something raw underneath. "You said sold."
"That's how it works. Arranged matings. The alpha's family pays a bride price, and the omega's family hands them over." I laughed, but it came out broken and jagged. I stared at my hands rather than look at any of them. "I was sold when I was sixteen. Two thousand gold pieces and a trade agreement for my father's business. That's what I was worth. Two thousand gold pieces and a business deal."
