My breath faltered. Not because I feared he would hurt me.
In a short time, I had come to trust these men, though I wasn’t sure why. Deep inside, something told me they were honorable and would protect me.
His hand dropped away, but the warmth lingered where he had touched me.
“Take a bath. Go to your nest. Rest. Read if you’re able. We’ll do the same. We’ll speak again at the next meal.”
They were making a plan. With me. Not around me. Warmth spread through my chest. Not the sharp, blinding rush of the spike. Something steadier. Quieter. They believed me.
“I don’t know who I am,” I said before I could stop myself. “Not if everything I’ve ever been told is a lie. If I’m not what he said, then what am I?”
Silence stretched, but it wasn’t empty. Although I felt his draw, Thane did not advance—the restraint in it.
“Then we start with what we know,” he said. His voice was firm. No softness, but no cruelty either. “You are not a weapon he forged. You’re not a curse that killed your mother.”
My throat tightened.
“You’re an omega,” he continued, steady and certain, “who was imprisoned before she was ever allowed to understand what that means.”
The words settled into me, not like chains.
Like a door cracking open, the word no longer echoed quite so strangely. I had not been locked away because I was dangerous. I had been suppressed. Contained. And whateverhad begun to stir within me when they crossed the threshold had not been destruction.
It had been awakening.
Malric
Once Aveline departed, the dining space felt hollow.
Not because the tower had gone silent. Its hum continued, the steady thrum of magic threaded through the stone, the floor, the air itself. The remnants of our breakfast lay scattered across the table, the dishes not yet reclaimed by the tower. Morning light poured through the windows, brightening the room and reminding us that time was moving whether we were ready or not.
I remained where I was. Thane did the same, picking at the food on his plate without eating it. Neither of us moved immediately. Some things required silence before they could be spoken.
Above us, water began to move through the tower’s channels.
Not the mechanical rush of pipes. The sound traveled through the stone in a slow rhythm, as if the structure already knew what she needed and had begun preparing it. The tower tending her, the way it must have for years.
Perhaps longer than any of our histories admitted.
“Her mother,” Thane said at last.
“Yes.”
He studied the table, not the dishes, but the worn grain of the wood beneath them. “She didn’t describe draining. She described light. Warmth. A transfer.”
“Maybe.” I considered the way Aveline had spoken about it. “If her mother was a healer and recognized what was beginning in Aveline before Aveline understood it herself, she may have tried to draw the surge into herself. Not to erase it. To redirect it. To keep it from burning through her daughter.”
Thane looked up. The same conclusion was already forming in his expression.
“She was protecting Aveline,” he said quietly. “She didn’t expect Aveline to be that strong.”
“Yes.” The realization settled into place. “She overwhelmed her mother.”
“And he finished it,” Thane said.
I did not correct him.
Aveline had repeated her father’s story the way someone repeats doctrine. The words had the shape of truth but not its structure. In his version, her mother lingered in pain and he ended it out of mercy. Each detail sat close enough to reality to pass inspection.
