"What makes you think I'm not?" he countered, voice dropping lower, the words carrying a dangerous edge that sent a shiver down my spine.
Before I could respond, movement to my left caught my attention. Prince Silas was making his way toward us, his expression carefully neutral but his eyes sharp with interest. He’d spotted me at last, recognized me despite the glamor that had protected me from lesser notice. The awareness of his approach altered the balance between Prince Kael and me, adding a new current to waters already dangerously deep.
"Your brother approaches," I said softly.
Prince Kael didn’t turn to look. He didn’t need to. "Yes," he agreed. "And he knows exactly what you are, doesn’t he? That’s why he helped you escape the Convergence. Why he told you how to return."
The accuracy of his assessment startled me. "How did you?—"
"Silas collects information the way other men collect fine wines," Prince Kael said, a hint of something almost affectionate beneath the statement. "He would have recognized the potential in you immediately. What I don’t understand is why he let you leave at all."
I had no answer for him. Prince Silas’s motivations remained as mysterious to me as my own nature. But as he drew closer, something strange happened. The vial at my throat pulsed once, hard, and the energy field that had formed around Prince Kael and me... expanded. Not diluted, as I might have expected with the introduction of another powerful presence, but enriched. Deepened. As if adding another instrument to perfect harmony.
Prince Kael felt it too. His eyes widened marginally, his attention shifting from me to the approaching Silas and back again. Understanding dawned across his features, followed quickly by disbelief.
You were never meant for one.
The strange woman’s words echoed in my mind with new clarity. Not just a statement about my independence, but a literal truth about my biology. I wasn’t meant to respond to asingle Alpha, to amplify a single source of power. I was meant for more.
I was meant for three.
The realization struck with such force that I took an involuntary step backward. The movement broke whatever delicate balance had formed between us. Prince Kael’s hand twitched as if to reach for me, to hold me in place, but he mastered the impulse before it could manifest.
"I need to go," I said, the words tumbling out with uncharacteristic haste. I couldn’t face both of them at once, not yet, not when I barely understood what was happening to me, between us.
Prince Kael watched me with that same unsettling intensity, making no move to stop me yet somehow holding me in place all the same with nothing but his regard.
"This isn’t finished," he said quietly. Not a threat, not a promise. Just a simple acknowledgment of inevitability. "Whatever is happening here, whatever you are to us—to me—it doesn’t end with your departure."
"I know," I whispered, and I did. The connection forming between us felt ancient and new all at once, like remembering something I’d never experienced. Like recognizing a truth written in my bones before I was born.
I backed away, maintaining eye contact until the last possible moment before turning to slip through a side door, away from the gathered nobility, away from Prince Silas’s approach, away from the disturbing intensity of Prince Kael’s focused attention. The vial cooled against my skin as the distance between us increased, but the memory of that connection, the way our energies had recognized and enhanced each other, lingered like a physical touch.
In the relative quiet of the empty corridor, I pressed my hand against the wall to steady myself, breathing deep to clearmy head. The stone felt cool beneath my palm, grounding me in physical sensation as my thoughts threatened to spiral into overwhelming possibility.
I’d come seeking answers about what I was. Instead, I’d found confirmation of something far more dangerous than mere biological irregularity. I was an amplifier omega… something thought extinct, something deliberately removed from the bloodlines of the kingdom. My very existence disrupted the careful balance of power that maintained social order.
And not just an amplifier, but something specific to the royal trinity. Something meant to complete them, to enhance them, to transform three powerful individuals into something greater than their sum.
The implications were staggering. Terrifying. Exhilarating.
I pushed away from the wall and moved deeper into the palace’s shadowed corridors. I needed to think, to plan my next move carefully. Prince Kael had let me go this time, but he was right… this wasn’t finished. It had barely begun.
And when I returned, as I knew I must, I would need to face not one prince, but three. Three sources of power, three potential bonds, three paths that somehow all led to the same destination.
A destination I was only beginning to comprehend.
CHAPTER 9
Ihadn’t made it thirty steps from Prince Kael when I felt it… a shift in the air, a disturbance in the careful balance of scents and sounds that filled the palace corridors. Something wild approached, something raw and barely contained, moving with purpose that felt like pursuit.
My body tensed before my mind could name the danger, the vial at my throat pulsing a warning against my skin. I didn’t need to turn to know who followed. Prince Rhex. The warrior prince. And unlike his elder brother, he wasn’t one for careful distance or measured assessment.
The corridor stretched before me, empty of witnesses, the marble floors reflecting lamplight in pools of amber and shadow. I could have run, there was a service door just ahead that surely led to the maze of staff passages, but something held me in place. The same instinct that had driven me back to the palace, perhaps. Or something deeper, something tied to the vial’s insistent heat against my skin, to the dawning understanding of what I was. What I might be to them.
You were never meant for one.
I turned to face what pursued me, squaring my shoulders despite the flutter of panic in my chest. Prince Rhex filled thecorridor like a storm given human form, his massive frame making the generous proportions of the royal passage seem suddenly confining. Where Kael moved with precise economy, Rhex surged forward with barely restrained force, each step vibrating with potential violence. His scent reached me before he did, and beneath it, the unmistakable musk of Alpha aggression.
