Phee shook her head. With only a year before discharge from his thirty years of king’s service, Talis was older than Phee. He’d been doing his King’s duty since before she was born. Phee had always thought of him as a fine alpha specimen compared to the brothers of her omega friends. She and Talis shared their mother’s ruddy coloring, but his hair was more auburn than Phee’s. He wore a beard, much to Mother’s dismay, but kept it trimmed and oiled along with his hair. When he touched her, Phee noticed calluses, but his fingernails were always so clean she thought he might buff them. She knew he had a drone manservant who he shared with two others to keep his clothing and gear in order.
“Not now.” She couldn’t go in there with all those people.
He frowned. Like all of Phee’s brothers, the youngest omega of the house had earned his lifelong loyalty. Where their mother hardly touched anyone, Naya always clucked over her siblings. She petted them, hugged them, teased them, played tricks on them, and did everything Mother thought of as lowborn beta behavior. Naya’s natural way toward them had earned her their undying adoration.
Phee looked at the floor, searching for excuses to give her brother, because she would not go into the dining room and sit there with a smile pasted on her face, pretending everything was okay.
It was not. Nothing was okay.
“I don’t feel well, Talis,” she said.
“You haven’t been well since you got back. You don’t want to see Naya? She can’t have good memories of her last time in this house.”
Phee shrugged. “No. She probably does not.”
“You could help her feel better.”
“What can I say? I think you can do that fine.”
“I’m not an omega. I’m not her sister,” Talis said.
“Mother is in there.”
“Mother.” Talis didn’t smile at that idea. Phee knew Mother had no clue how her sons returned her own critical regard.
“I can’t.” She met her brother’s eyes, willing him to understand. The world had tipped like an over-packed wardrobe, all the contents spilling out and making a mess. There were a hundred things to see and feel, and Phee wanted none of them. This was making her head hurt and her skin hot.
If she went into that dining room, Mother would expect her to be entertaining. Everyone would look at her. Phee shivered at the thought of the three alpha guards. They would know she had no mate. She felt their attention, like a prey animal might feel the attention of a starving predator.
Before today, the vulgar nuisance of being singled out like a slice of meat always earned the sharp edge of Phee’s cold malice. Who would dare? She would not tolerate that kind of lewd behavior in a male, and always let them know it. Whether it was Grayson Swift or one of her father’s associates, no one had the right to look at her like she would happily bend over and take their little alpha knot.
But today, inside her head, everything jittered and jerked her off-center. Phee didn’t know what she wanted. Independently willful, her own thoughts wanted to dance around the three unbonded males guarding Naya and her mate. Her attention flitted to them, moth to flame, helpless with speculation.
No. No. No. What was that?There was nothing to speculate.
But as if she were some kind of crazy, hopeless dreamer who believed in possibilities, her mind and body told her that one of them might be a potential mate.
She was going crazy. She had the womb of an old lady. Nothing could change that. Maybe she smelled like an available omega, but she was not.
Still frowning, Talis looked over his shoulder at the sounds of everyone coming back into the house. Naya was talking, and the boys. Mother’s voice was above theirs, inviting everyone to eat.
“Phee.” There was censure in his tone, and disapproval. But he kept his admonishments to himself and left her to join the others.
Phee took the narrow stairs, gripping the rail. All things considered, she was a young woman, but right now she felt old and worn out. Her own emotions chewed at her joints and behind her eyes. She’d never had to endure a migraine until this last season, but this felt like another one coming on.
As if she had summoned him, that male with the club appeared on the landing of the main staircase on the opposite end of the hall. She stopped abruptly. She’d expected to see Talis, come back to hound her again, but it was that male from Sector 2.
He was out of place. Guests didn’t belong on the family floor. There was no good reason for him to be there. Her immediate response was fear, but that fled when he didn’t move, seemingly as surprised to see her as she was him.
She could smell him, sense him, in the way that omega females always sensed an alpha. He broadcasted a primal masculinity no beta or drone could match. Phee’s early menopause had taken control of her reproductive ability, robbing her of the thing that made her a breeder woman so how could she be this aware of him? How could she sense his sensual threat, his physical prowess, his strong, proud character?
As if pulled to him, Phee took a step closer, taking a breath, lost for a moment in her own instinct. Had she ever smelled a male like this? Mother called his type common, but there was nothing common about this smell. Of all the carefully arranged parties and dinners Phee had attended, none of the scribes, laymen, or administration politicians smelled like this.
A fist squeezed her insides in a painful cramp—punishment for where her thoughts were going. But she couldn’t help herself. This was the type of man who picked a woman up and pushed her against a wall. He’d press his face into her neck without permission and start making demands. He’d tell her what he wanted and how he was going to get it.
There was a determined, squared-off set to his jaw, hinting he wasn’t a male who took “no” for an answer. Ruffian that he was, he’d think nothing of polite behavior and proper social protocols.
He’d come as an attendant, serving another. A guard for the broken prince of Sector 2. But alone here on the stairs, this was a male who served his own will first, a man who easily won the respect of others. He was not a pandering sycophant, she could see that clearly enough. He was all alpha.
