A night where we were a pack again. A full pack.
With Piers right at the center of it.
The way it should always be.
I’ve failed him as an alpha. I know that. I’ve known that for a long fucking time. But I’m also a selfish arsehole who isn’t willing to give up someone I love, even if they might be happier if I did.
He’s mine. And I will protect him at all costs.
The date with Florence was a reminder of that. Of what it was like when my pack first bonded. That sense of rightness had woven itself through every moment of that date. Like my pack was finally complete with Ren.
And it was all too easy to fall under the spell, to begin to think that I could have that. Have my beta and my omega and my pack. That Court was right days ago when he said the queen won’t be able to deny us if it's recorded and aired on national television. If we just keep her until the scenting ceremony, if we let them record us smelling her for the first time without the suppressants, and the descenter, then no one would be able to deny what she is to us, even the queen.
I woke up full of plans, of…hope.Choosing Florence wouldn’t be the easy choice, but it would be the right one, and I was willing to weather my grandmother’s displeasure to have her.
It's that kind of thinking that got me into trouble.
Early this morning, while I was still buzzing from the high of tasting Florence, my grandmother called, some sixth sense of hers blaring that I’d been on the verge of ignoring her demands and following my heart. Of being happy.
Or, more likely, someone on the crew is a spy and reported back to her that I was getting too close to Florence Karlin.
There’d been the usual talk of duty to the crown, to the family. The usual reminders of everything at stake. And then, when she could tell that her words weren’t having the usual effect on me, on my alpha, she… changed tactics.
The threats weren’t blatant. Weren’t outright threats, but the subtext was there. Mentions of Florence’s mother, a nurse at a hospital, being discredited and wouldn’t that be a shame? Her family’s townhouse in Granton and how hard it must be for a single mother to pay that sort of rent.
How awful it would be if something like what ended Florence’s dance career were to happen again.
All of those things the queen is absolutely capable of, even if Florence isn’t a citizen of Bravonne. My grandmother has her fingers in all sorts of pies and I am certain she knows someone in the states who could manage to ruin Florence’s life in a handful of days.
There was a large part of me—my alpha mostly—that felt certain we could protect her and her family. That once we’re bonded there’s nothing the queen can do, if something were to happen to Florence or her family, it would be seen as an attack on the royal family, and the queen wouldn’t allow that to happen.
But then… There's the part of me that is bound by my duty, that has had the importance of honor and familial pride beat into it since a young age, a part of me that truly believes in the monarchy, in our ability to effect positive change.
The part of me that doesn’t want to make things more difficult for my sister—my twin—when she takes the throne.
That same part of me believes without a doubt that the queen would have no qualms in hurting the people Florence loves while making sure there was no possible way for it to be traced back to her.
Accidents happen all the time.She’d said after casually mentioning Ren’s little sister Ginny.
By the time I’d hung up, I knew what I had to do.
Whatwehad to do.
And I’m going to go to hell for it.
Too late, you’re already there.
I’ve come to hate this room. The one where we break omega hearts or give them false hope.
I’ve come to hate the cameras and the people watching like vultures, looking for the right amount of heartbreak, of drama, anything to get their already sky high ratings even higher.
We never should have agreed to this show.
But the queen demanded it, and we are but her humble servants.
Always.
My jaw ticks as I glance around the room, take in the space between all of my packmates. Thayer seated in a chair with his elbows resting on his knees, head bent as he stares at the floor. Grieves on the other side of the room from me, arms crossed with a stony expression on his face. Courtland is pacing, hands running through his hair in frustration, trying to come up with a way out of this, even after I told him about the threat to Ren’s family.
