All of them turn their glares on me now. Even Piers. Especially Piers. And worse he looks… betrayed.
“Look. I did know but telling you wouldn’t have changed anything other than that for the last month you all would have been as miserable as me.”
“But Florence. She’s sick, Grieves!” Piers snarls at me, hands fisted at his sides so tight his knuckles are white. “She’s fucking sick and it’s our fault.”
I shake my head. “I know thatnow. But I didn’t then. I’d hoped that her omega wouldn’t have realized it. I believed that to be the case. She never scented us, never even caught a whiff of us, because of the requirements of the show. The only reason I recognized her was because I scented her in her hotel room.”
They’re all still glaring at me but without as much heat. I think they’re angrier at themselves, at the situation.
“At least now we know why you’ve been letting your opponents beat the shit out of you for the last month," Court mutters, swiping his hand over his face.
“So what are we going to do about this?” Piers asks, looking at all four of us. “We have to do something, we can’t just let her suffer for the rest of her life.”
Silence. It stretches on and on.
I clench my teeth around the words I want to say, the demands I want to make. I know it won’t make any difference. The same way nothing we said before or during the show made a difference. Forsythe is our prime and his word is essentially law.
“We’ve made a commitment to Isadora on international television,” he says eventually, voice rough like he had to force the words out of his throat. “We can’t just go back on that.”
“No, fuck that!Fuck that!Pixie is our mate, Forsythe. She’s a gift from fate. Ours. We can’t just marry and bond someone else. We can’t-”
“We don’t have a choice, Court.”
“If we announced that she’s our scent match,” Thayer tries to reason with our prime. “That we didn’t realize on the show. How could we without scenting her? People will understand.”
“Will they?” I ask, rushing on when Thayer opens his mouth to respond. “I’m not supporting Forsythe’s decision. I’m just asking, will they understand? Or will they look at us as the pack that couldn’t recognize their fated mate? Or worse, the pack that did recognize her and rejected her on international television anyway?”
“I don’t fucking care how they view us,” Court snarls tugging at his hair. “I don’t care. She needs us. That’s the only thing that fucking matters.”
Truer words have never been spoken. They take up residence in my chest. Pounding with each beat of my heart.
She needs us.
She needs us.
She needs us.
Fuck. I want to go to her right now, want to sweep her into my arms, curl my body around her and protect her from fuckingeverything.
But it’s not my call to make.
And it never will be.
Episode 8: The (Un)Fairest of Them All
Thayer
I stare at the headline on the news site I peruse every morning, not quite believing what I’m seeing.Royal Advisors Deny Misconduct, Cite ‘Emotional Manipulation’ by Contestant.I don’t have to read the article to know which contestant they’re referring to.
It's Florence. Always Florence.
Almost as soon as the show ended I became aware of the campaign against our omega. The one that declares she was manipulating us through the entire process. That she wound us around her little finger through lies and crocodile tears. That she garnered sympathy from the viewers via the same means.
There are always quotes from the other omegas. Chiefly those who flocked around Isadora—Odette, Joanie and Rosamund among others—and they are always more than happy to share all the ways in which Florence was a liar.
In some cases, the show is all too happy to provide video ‘evidence’ to back up the claims, but it’s just b-roll footage taken out of context or edited for the purpose of discrediting her.
I shouldn’t be surprised that this is the case. After all, the public had loved Florence during the show. She was a fan favorite for a reason and having her speak out against the crown and the new—completely fucked up—omega laws, holds a lot of sway with a lot of people.
