But now wasn’t the time for that. I faced my father and said, “Now what? You said only lowly alphas can shift. Yet now I’ve just done the same, and I am an omega of royal blood.” I crossed my arms. “That either makes you misinformed… or a liar.”
“You’ve slept with beasts and become a beast yourself!” Father sputtered.
“You can deny it all you like, but the fact of the matter is thatyougave birth to me. I am your firstborn omega son, and the heir to the throne.”
“No!” Father cried out. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I disowned you!”
Motion in my peripheral vision told me what I needed to know. Two figures were scrambling towards the courtyard. I let a slow, confident smile spread over my lips.
“Not properly,” I said.
Before Father could retort, a loud grating voice called out, “Objection!”
The crowd shuffled and parted to make way for the newcomers.
Rourke blinked. “Are those your brothers?”
“Move aside, people, royal princes coming through!” Elian said, waving his arms. There was a large leather book in one of his hands. He made it past the circle and pulled Cecil forward. Watching the dread dawn on Father’s face was honestly the highlight of my day, aside from the fact that Rourke was safe and that both of us magically gained the ability to turn into wolves.
“Ew, what happened to him?” Elian asked, wrinkling his nose as he noted Melchom’s headless body still on the ground behind us.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
Father boomed, “What is the meaning of this?”
“We’re here to help Sebastian,” Cecil said. His usually soft, dreamy voice was firm now as he faced our father. Cecil’s presence might have been the final nail in the coffin that we needed. As much as Father now despised me and was generally irritated by Elian, he could never say no to Cecil, his favorite son.
“We know you ripped the pages out of Cecil’s book,” Elian accused.
Father’s face blanched. “What are you talking about, Elian?”
“We have both copies side by side, so you can’t hide it anymore.” Elian smirked as he raised the book over his head. I recognized it now as the intact copy of the origin myth—possibly the only one in existence, and we only had it because of Woods and his obsession with fated mates.
Elian went on. “It says it clearly right here. Fated mates recognize each other through their kiss that tastes like fruit. And they canbothtransform into wolves. It’s not that alphas are beasts and they infect the omega or whatever.Onlya pair of fated mates can turn into wolves.” He shut the book. “So, there. You’re totally lying.”
Elian’s speech was crude but honest, and I saw its effect ripple over the crowd. Now that everyone had heard the true story from Elian and seen two men shift into wolves—one alpha from the lowest imaginable rank, and one royal omega prince—their minds were changing. Instead of being poisoned by the King’s fearmongering, they were starting to tease out the truth. The King was actively eliminating our forgotten culture, in more ways than one.
“How many copies of the myth did you destroy?” I asked Father.
He ignored me. He stood with his shoulders back, projecting the last scraps of his poise. “This is meaningless. Let me remind you, Sebastian, that you have no more power. Cecil is next in line for the throne, not you.”
Elian’s jaw dropped, his face aghast with horror. “What? What about me?”
“You’ve made it clear you align yourself with traitors,” Father spat.
I tried to stifle my smile. Father was only making this worse for himself now. He was ruining his own image, and in public, no less. By stripping Elian of his privilege for the crime of defending his brother, Father made a complete fool of himself. Now everyone knew just how unfit he was to lead this kingdom.
But he had made a fatal flaw.
I looked over to Cecil, waiting for him to speak up. I knew this would be difficult for him. It was no secret that he was the favorite prince, and that he still loved our father even now.
Cecil opened the large book in his hands to a bookmarked page. He put his finger to the text with a frown and said, just loud enough for Father to hear, “It says it here.”
Father paused. “Says what?”
Chewing his lip, Cecil said, “For the King to disown his eldest omega son, there are two clauses. One is that he must use his true name.”
Father’s face fell. In abandoning our culture, he had also inadvertently forgotten the royals’ own laws. When he’d said his piece to me, he’d called me Sebastian, not Arctos.
