Then we put up the lights: battery-powered fairy strings and old Christmas LEDs, wound around the window latch and draped over the headboard. I plug them in and the whole room shifts, bathed in warm pink and yellow. For a second, it looks almost magical. Almost not like a cell.
Eloise helps me set up my easel, positioning it so I get the best possible daylight through the window. We arrange my paints and pencils on the desk, stash the sketchbooks in the top drawer. She hangs my first-ever gallery print on a nail above the bed, not caring that the glass is still cracked.
We step back and survey the mess. It’s not perfect, but it’s mine. For now.
“You’re going to kill it here,” Eloise says, collapsing into the nest and pulling me down beside her. “They won’t know what hit them.”
“I hope it hurts.” It comes out softer than I intend.
We lay there for a minute, staring at the ceiling, the fairy lights casting weird, dancing shadows above us. It’s the first time all day my heart doesn’t feel like it’s about to break my ribs.
Eloise nudges me. “You’re thinking too loud. Stop.”
I laugh. “I’m just… what if it doesn’t work out? What if I mess it up?”
She rolls her eyes. “Then we’ll go backpacking through Europe and I’ll introduce you to a French alpha who smells like croissants. You’ll live.”
A tap on the door interrupts us. It’s Wyatt. “Sorry, but visiting hours are over.”
Eloise sits up, grinning. “You afraid of girl talk, Whitlock?”
“Terrified,” he deadpans. “But Bastion gets grumpy if you’re not gone by curfew. House rule.”
Eloise stands and zips her bag. “You take care of her, or I’ll break your kneecaps.”
Wyatt gives a little salute. “Understood.”
I hope he knows that goes both ways. That if they treat her as bad as they’ve been treating me, I’ll take them down myself. But Wyatt is much younger than Bastion and Ranier. Maybe he needs to learn a lesson or two.
They start to walk out of the room together but Eloise turns back and launches herself into my arms for a long, tight hug. “Text me if you need anything,” she whispers. “Anything at all.”
“I’ll need everything.”
Eloise laughs. “Love you, cotton-candy.”
“Love you, too,” I whisper.
And then she’s gone, leaving me in an omega nest inside a home with three cold-as-ice alphas.
A challenge indeed.
I climb back up to my room and slip into the nest, pulling the blankets up to my chin. The lights glow soft and steady, and for the first time since the ceremony, I feel like I might actually sleep.
The house is silent, but I can feel the presence of the alphas, their scents leaking through the walls: woods, fire, ozone, a cocktail of threat and possibility.
I burrow deeper, inhale, and let a dark thought settle.They don’t want me here.
I smile. That’s fine.
I’m going to make them want me. I willnotlet all my years in finishing school, all my yearsdreamingof becoming an omegafor an alpha pack, go to waste because of three royal alphas who think they’re better than me.
CHAPTER 10
Wyatt
The foyerof Everhart Manor is a monument to acoustics. Every door shut resonates down the columned spine. I never liked it, even as a kid. Right now, the echo is a stand-in for the nervous tremor in the air as I walk Eloise out, keeping three careful steps between us.
I hold the door for her. “You want to wait inside? Driver’s on a personal break for another five.”
