I tried not to snort. He was right. The prince—hell, any of the royals—meant nothing to me. And why would they? Maybe if they’d put in a tiny bit of effort to take care of people on the outskirts, I’d actually have a reason to give a shit. We were subjects of Lacehaven, too. But the outskirts folks—the farmers, the miners, the lumber workers—none of us meant anything to the royals except an end product. They didn’t care that bandits attacked us. They didn’t care that—
Shep suddenly got up. “Bjorn!”
An exhausted Bjorn leaned on the doorframe. Shep ran to him and welcomed him inside, though with three alphas in his small room, it was getting cramped.
“Hey, Rourke, maybe Bjorn can tell you what it’s like to get bought out,” Shep suggested.
We both flinched, clearly for different reasons.
“I don’t need to know,” I said. “It won’t happen to me. I won’t let it.”
Shep made an irritated face at me before turning to Bjorn. “Listen. The prince was just here, and he sounds interested in buying Rourke’s contract—”
At the mention of the prince, Bjorn snapped to attention. Fire that had been gone from his eyes reappeared. “Which prince?”
Shep scoffed. “The oldest one, our dear Sebastian.”
Bjorn bit his lip, fists trembling at his side. It was the most animated I’d seen him since he came back.
“He was there when the knights came for me,” Bjorn muttered. “He could’ve stopped it…”
“Stopped what?” Shep asked.
“Stopped the knights from ripping me apart from Eugene.”
This shit again. I shook my head. It was clear that omega had donesomethingto Bjorn. In the short time he’d been gone, he’d changed dramatically. The Bjorn I knew wasn’t some snivelling omega-lover.
“He just let it happen,” Bjorn said angrily. “What good is a prince if he can’t even stand up for his people?”
Well, he was right about that part at least.
Shep’s brows screwed up and he made a sound of exasperation. “You guys are both acting ridiculous. Why the hell would the prince help you, Bjorn? In case you forgot, this Eugene of yours was an upper-ringer. Hecan’tbe with you, or any alpha lower than his own class! The prince isn’t going to break that taboo because you made some sad puppy dog eyes at him.”
A flicker of such anger flitted across Bjorn’s vision that, for a second, I thought he was going to lunge at Shep.
“You just don’t get it, Shepherd,” Bjorn growled. “We were fated.”
Bjorn’s words upon his return ran in my mind.
I was safe with him. You don’t understand. He wasmine.
It didn’t make any sense back then, and it didn’t know. An alpha couldn’t own an omega. There was no possible situation in which an omega could behis.So what the hell was he talking about?
“Bjorn, can I ask you something?” I said. “Are you on drugs?”
This time Bjorn really did lunge for me. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, screaming curses the whole time. I wrestled him off as Shep tried to hold him from behind.
It was a minor scuffle, all bluster and no bite, but a guard came to the door anyway. He rapped the break stick against the door.
“Hey! Cut that out unless you want to go in the Kennel!”
All of us stopped. The beta examined us with narrowed eyes before he kept walking down the hall.
When he was fully gone, Bjorn glared at me. “No, you asshole. But I’m not surprised you think that. You’ve always been an omega hater.”
I bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said. You hate omegas. There’s no possibility in that big fucking head of yours that an omega could be a good person. That an omegacouldlove an alpha.”
