I focus on her rose scent, the feel of her arms wrapping around me in the petal strewn water, and her burning, claiming kiss.
My claws and fangs slowly retract.
I sit back on my heels.
My Omega is part of my soul.
She is what has been missing; I never understood why I struggled, alone with my demons. But I’m not alone anymore.
“She called for me,” I say, unable to stop myself from smiling. “Not Hadrian. She chose…loves…me.”
I glance up at the fresco, which is painted on my bedroom wall above the shrine.
It is a grand fresco of Tarquin, which I had commissioned on his death. I needed to feel close to him somehow, whenever I returned from my war campaigns that kept me away from court most of the time.
It is the Tarquin that I remember from my childhood: charming, laughing, and handsome. The brother who invented codes for me alone, meeting with me in secret and teaching me not to trust any of the other traitorous fuckers in the Shadow Court.
I created the Golden Family around myself, each a more dangerous monster than the one before, because I wanted to follow the lessons that Tarquin taught me. They became my best warrior, adviser, assassin, and spymaster.
Also, to protect me from the lessons that I learned at the cruel but too soft hands of my uncle.
I shudder.
My Golden Family became my court within a court.
My bodyguards.
Yet Tarquin was my only brother, the one who sneaked me honey cakes from the royal kitchens (when I was still small enough to live in the palace), after a beating from Uncle.
Still, he never stopped me from being beaten. With Tarquin, familial love was being hurt for your own good, then being comforted as a sign of forgiveness.
My brow furrows.
Only Freya has shown me that love doesn’t need to hurt.
Yet now, it does.
It fucking killed me to see my two dragon riders hanging from chains, then to be ordered to execute them.
I would have rather hacked off my own head.
I shove myself to my feet, balling my hands behind my back.
“Brother,” I mutter, “what secrets did you hide from me? What were you going to tell me that night in the tower, before you were murdered? Sometimes,” the admission is wrenched from me unwillingly, but the words bubble out, “I am so fucking angry with you that you left me. Died and abandoned me. By the Shadow Gods, I wasn’t ready. Why did nobody train me for the role of king? Why did you let me be sent away to the academy? Did you know about the cell that was prepared for me from birth in the dungeons? The whippings? What…what Uncle Max d-d-did…?”
I break off with a furious growl, shaking.
The dead fresco stares down at me. It doesn’t answer.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper over the shrine. The candles gutter. “May your spirit fly eternally with the Shadow Gods.” I start to turn away but then, I add, “The court is trying to match me with the silver Omega, Liviana, who you were courting. I would never dishonor your shade by accepting that. You wouldn’t approve of my chosen Omega, Freya, but she’s my Golden fated mate, and I love her. It’s funny. If you were truly here, I could never have told you that.”
I turn away from the shrine to face my large bedroom with a swish of my cloak.
It’s not long until the official peace treaty ceremony.
Not long until I hand over both my secret King and Queen to the Shadow Vampire King to seal the deal.
I pace the marble floor, as anxiety builds in my chest.
