The suppressants couldn't fully mute the surge of heat that accompanied the thought. For a terrifying second, I felt my body respond to the presence of three powerful Alphas, felt something inside me rise to meet their dominance not with submission but with a strange complementary force.
Lady Morvane's fingers dug painfully into my arm, her awareness of my physical response immediate and alarming. "Control yourself," she hissed, her free hand already reaching for the emergency suppressant she always carried.
I turned inward, forcing my breathing to slow, rebuilding the walls in my mind stone by careful stone. I couldn't afford to react, couldn't risk drawing attention. Not here, not surrounded by those who would see me destroyed for what I was.
"We're leaving," Lady Morvane announced, her voice tight with barely contained panic. She pulled me backward, away from the gathering, using her body to shield me from view.
I didn't resist. The dose of suppressants already in my system made my limbs heavy, my reactions dulled. Another would push me dangerously close to unconsciousness. But as Lady Morvane dragged me toward the street that would lead us back to the manor, I cast one final glance toward the royal trinity.
Prince Silas had paused in his conversation with a merchant, his head tilting slightly as if listening to something beyond hearing. His gaze swept the crowd, searching, analyzing, almost reaching me before Lady Morvane pulled me around a corner and out of sight.
But in that brief moment before I disappeared, I felt something pass between us, not recognition exactly, but awareness. As if he had almost noticed something he couldn't quite name, a disruption in the patterns he so carefully observed and controlled.
For the second time in as many days, I had been seen by a prince. Not the servant, not the broken omega, not the ash-covered ghost Lady Morvane had created, but the real me. Nyx, the thing beneath the careful disguises. The thing even I didn't fully understand.
As we hurried through back streets toward home, I kept my head down and my expression neutral. But inside, something had shifted… a lock turning, a door opening to possibilities I'd never permitted myself to imagine. Power could change hands. Balances could tip. And I—defective, hidden, overlooked—might be the weight that tipped the scales.
CHAPTER 4
Lady Morvane’s grip had been a constant since we’d left the manor, her fingers digging into my arm like she could anchor me to invisibility through sheer force.
So when she released me with instructions to collect her package from the apothecary while she attended to "more pressing business," the sudden absence of her touch left me dizzy, untethered. And the additional suppression dose that made it a struggle to stay conscious. At least my scene was contained now.
Freedom prickled across my skin, a brief, dangerous sensation I couldn’t afford to savor. The crowded market square swallowed me, a sea of bodies and scents pressing in from all sides, and for the first time in years, I was alone.
I kept my head down, shoulders hunched, making myself smaller by instinct. The path to the apothecary was simple enough… five streets east, two north, then the shop with the dried herbs hanging in the window. Lady Morvane had repeated the directions twice, her voice tight with reluctance. I wasn’t meant to be unsupervised. I wasn’t meant to exist in the world at all.
The city breathed around me, exhaling scents both foreign and achingly familiar. Fresh bread from corner bakeries. The metallic tang of blood from butcher stalls. Perfumes and body odors, sewage and flowers, all mingling in a symphony my suppressant-dulled senses struggled to untangle. Even muted, the sensory assault made my head spin, my steps faltering as I fought to orient myself in a world too big, too loud, too much after years of ash and silence.
I counted cobblestones beneath my feet, focusing on the rhythm of my steps rather than the vastness pressing down from above. One street. Two. I passed a group of children playing some complicated game with stones and chalk marks, their laughter bright and startling. A woman selling flowers, her hands stained green, her eyes tracking me for just a moment too long. A pack of young Alphas strutting like roosters, taking up too much space, their voices carrying with inherited arrogance.
My skin prickled. I was being watched.
Not by the flower seller or the Alphas or any of the hundred strangers pushing past me. This was different, a focused attention, a weight against my shoulders. I didn't turn. Didn’t break stride. Just adjusted my path slightly, angling toward a busier thoroughfare where bodies packed tighter, where I could disappear in the crowd.
The feeling followed.
Three streets east. Four. My heartbeat quickened, mouth going dry. I should have reached the fifth street by now. Had I missed a turn? The city had changed in the years since I’d known it as a child, buildings rising and falling, alleyways appearing where once there had been solid walls. I slowed, scanning for landmarks, fighting the rising panic that threatened to crack my careful control.
A narrow gap between buildings beckoned, not the fifth street I sought, but perhaps a shortcut. I slipped into it, hopingto find my bearings in a less exposed space. The passage narrowed, the sounds of the market fading with each step, buildings pressing close on either side. Shadows pooled like water in the corners. The air grew stale and thick with the smell of damp stone and something else, something chemical and sharp that made the back of my throat itch.
I realized my mistake too late. Dead end. The alley ended in a blank wall, weathered brick rising three stories to a sliver of sky. I turned to retrace my steps, only to find my path blocked.
She didn’t look threatening, not at first glance. Small-boned and slight, with skin the warm brown of kiln-fired clay and hair cropped close to her scalp. Her clothes were nondescript, the layered, practical garments of a working person, though I couldn't place her profession. But her eyes… her eyes were wrong. Too knowing. Too focused. They caught the meager light filtering into the alley and reflected it back with amber intensity, pupils contracted to pinpricks despite the dimness.
"Found you," she said, her voice unexpectedly melodic, carrying notes of an accent I couldn’t place. "Hidden little puzzle piece."
I pressed back against the wall, fingers searching for purchase against rough brick. "I’m not who you’re looking for," I managed, keeping my voice flat, neutral, stripped of the identifying cadence of an omega. "Excuse me."
She didn’t move from the center of the narrow passage. "No one's looking for you. That’s the point, isn’t it? No one’s supposed to be looking." Her head tilted, birdlike, assessing. "Heavy dose they’ve given you. Acetylide-3 base, mixed with something else… something older. Expensive. Hmm."
My blood turned to ice. She shouldn’t have been able to smell the suppressants in my system. No one could, that was the point of the formula Lady Morvane procured at such cost.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," I said, shifting my weight to the balls of my feet, ready to move if she gave me even an inch of space. "I need to collect my mistress’s order."
"Fascinating," she murmured, ignoring my words entirely. Her eyes narrowed, head tilting the other way. "Your body doesn’t respond correctly to the suppressants. Fighting them, but not in the usual way. Almost like… they're suppressing the wrong thing."
I pushed away from the wall, straightening my spine, forcing steel into my voice. "Move aside."
