My fingers skim the fabrics—silk, chiffon, soft tulle—and something in my chest loosens. These dresses are armor. My armor. My costumes.
It’s a performance. All of this.
And I am used to performing.
Or at least, I used to be.
Episode 3: The Twenty Dancing Princesses
“A royal pack must never reflect weakness. Your duty is to choose an omega who elevates the crown, not one who weighs it down.” My grandmother’s voice rings in my ears long after my conversation with her has ended. One final reminder of my duty to my family before we dive into this farce.
For most alphas, their duty is to their pack first and foremost, the family they form when they choose their bonds. That is not the case for me. It never has been, and never will.
As the prince of Bravonne, second in line for the throne, my duty is to the crown.
It always has been.
Which is why, when my grandmother told me my pack would go on international television and choose an omega infront of millions of viewers, I didn’t ask why, I just agreed. Now I’m wishing more than anything that I’d pushed back a bit.
That I’d questioned why she thought it was a good idea to put a royal pack through all this.
But even if I had, an answer wouldn’t have been forthcoming. She would have just told me to shut up and do it—though never in those words. She would have couched the order in a lot of flowery language that includes the word ‘duty’ at least three times.
“You ready?” Grieves, my pack mate and head of my security, asks from the doorway of the room that will be mine for the foreseeable future.
I turn to look at him, taking in his broad shoulders hugged in a charcoal grey suit. His shirt is white and his tie is the Ashbourne tartan. All of us will wear it somewhere on our person for this introduction to the omegas, to the world.
I smooth my hand over my vest of the same fabric and give a tight nod.
He frowns.
“You know we don’t have to do this.”
If only that were true. If only I could tell my grandmother I have no wish to find my omega currently. And even if I did, I wouldn’t want to go about it like this.
But I don’t have that luxury.
No. I am a prince, and my pack is already a disappointment to my grandmother. She was none too pleased when I informed her that Grieves would be a member of my pack. No matter that he attended Bellmont like the rest of us. He was there on scholarship. And worse, that scholarship was earned with his fists.
Court has always been too wild, too impulsive. A reaction to the bounds his parental pack put on him growing up.
Thayer has the audacity to want to teach. Something my grandmother greatly disapproves of, even if it's only part-time and mostly as a guest lecturer. Even if his classes are the most sought after for the students at Bellmont.
It only got worse when we found Piers, our beta. She barely tolerates him as part of the pack, citing that a royal pack must be full of strong alphas and a perfect omega. In her mind Piers weakens us, but in truth he does the opposite.
He is our heart, hidden away and protected at all costs. Even if we can’t claim him as such.
I look back at the mirror, checking my suite one final time, before turning to Grieves, and following him out the door. “Let’s get this over with.”
The look he gives me can only be described as rueful.
“You know that's not what's going to happen, right? The introduction scene alone will take a while to film, and then there’s the party afterward.”
Hours is what he means. It's going to take hours to get just this one thing finished. And even then there is no end in sight. Days and weeks of this. Of being on display for the cameras, of being forced into conversations I would rather not have, of choosing a woman who is not the one for my pack, not our mate.
But that doesn’t matter.
If I want to keep Piers as my packmate, if I want to be able to publicly claim him as mine, I have to do as my grandmother says. I have to choose Isadora Aureline as our omega. Of course, none of my pack mates know this.
