The bath should have steadied me.
The tower always knew the right temperature. The water had been deep and clean, steam curling softly around the stone walls in the bathing chamber adjacent to my nest. I sank beneath the surface and tried to quiet the noise in my thoughts. For a little while, it worked. My muscles loosened—the trembling from earlier eased. The sharp edges of memory softened into something I could hold without flinching.
But the stillness never settled fully.
I spent the rest of the morning in my nest, the only place in the tower that truly felt like home. The furs were newly cleaned and freshened, and I pulled them around me like a cocoon, and read the book the tower had left for me.
A History of Omegas.
The book was enlightening, a treasure trove of information about omega biology, bonds, and alphas that I had never heard about. How could the tower have hidden this from me for all these years? It had provided me with novels, romances about omegas and packs, histories of our world, and magical theory that had me hoping I would find my power. But never a book about who I was.
Maybe I wasn’t ready for it. I had known that I was an omega. My mother had assumed I would be, since she was and my father was an alpha. But we had not discussed much about it. Maybe, once Malric and Thane arrived, that was when I needed the information, needed to know who I was.
But it didn’t help me understand why my father would imprison me or what powers I had. It talked about omegas gaining more strength from a bond, and it talked about alphas also increasing their powers. But I had no powers that I knew of. What could I offer anyone but pain and death?
I put the book aside and curled up in a small ball in my nest. Cushions layered over furs, low shelves carved into the curve of the wall, blankets I’d folded and refolded so many times their edges had gone smooth beneath my fingers. The ceiling arched above me like the inside of a cupped hand. It had always felt protective.
It felt inadequate today.
I drew my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, breathing slowly, trying to anchor myself in the familiar texture of wool and linen. The stone wall held a faint warmth, as if the tower was aware of my restlessness and attempting to compensate.
It wasn’t enough.
It felt like my skin was overly sensitive. Too aware of the air moving over it. The faint brush of fabric along my thighs seemed amplified. Heat gathered low in my body, not sharp like pain, but insistent. A pressure that made it difficult to sit still.
I shifted, pressing my palm against my stomach as if I could smooth the sensation down.
This had happened once already. I knew what it was now. I had a name for it.
Heat.
The word didn’t frighten me the way it had earlier, when I didn’t understand what my body was doing. Now the fear was different. Quieter. More precise.
I leaned back against the cushions and let my head rest against the wall, staring at the curve of stone above me.
Father had always told me he was a good king.
He’d spoken about duty the way some men speak about faith. About sacrifice. About hard choices made for the greater good. He’d told me the realm needed stability. That strength sometimes looked like cruelty to those who didn’t understand the pressures of a crown.
When I was younger, I believed him without question. It was easy to believe the only voice you ever hear.
For a while, even before Malric and Thane showed up, I’d sensed that things weren’t right.
It hadn’t been dramatic. No grand revelation. Just small moments. The way Father’s gaze lingered too long when I stood near the balcony. The way his hand would settle at my waist, not in affection but in control. The way the warmth inside me would dim whenever he touched me, narrowing instead of expanding.
I used to think that meant safety, protection. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Malric had said I wasn’t a weapon. Thane had said I wasn’t broken. They hadn’t said it gently. They hadn’t tried to wrap the words in comfort. They’d simply spoken them as if they were facts.
I didn’t know them. Not truly. They had walked into my world less than two days ago and dismantled everything I thought I understood.
And yet, somewhere beneath the confusion and the fear, there was a quiet certainty I couldn’t deny. When Thane stood near me, my body didn’t recoil. It leaned. His inner storm raged,yet it never directed itself at me. It felt like a safeguard against a world spinning too quickly.
Malric was different. Sharper. His control wrapped around him like armor, but beneath it I sensed something older and deeper. A structure that had been forced into place and held there for years. When he spoke, the tower seemed to listen.
And when he looked at me, he didn’t look as if I were a problem to be solved.
He looked as if I were a variable in an equation he was trying to understand—and then, gradually, as if I were something else entirely.
