"She's not my omega."
"He's telling the truth," rumbled a voice from below.
I whipped around. Ivan and Gregor had materialized at the bottom of the stairs like guilty bookends. Ivan was doing the weight-shift shuffle of a man who'd rather be anywhere else. Gregor was doing his granite impression.
"Don't." I pointed at them. My finger was shaking. Fine. Let it shake. "Don't lie to me. Not you three. I can't do this twice."
"Maeve." Ivan took one slow step onto the bottom stair. "It's political. A show for the council. That's all."
"A show."
He winced. Even he'd heard how that sounded.
The word wedding was still ricocheting around my skull, and my body was a terrible historian but an excellent alarm system, and it didn't care about context. It cared about the last time an alpha had used those words while looking at me like something to be traded.
The marble under my feet stopped being marble.
It became the cold tile of Finn's hallway. The chandelier became the yellow bulb above his bed. Artem's raised hands became Finn's hands, not because they looked the same, but because fear is not a careful archivist. It grabs whatever is closest and screams.
My scent must have turned, because all three of them reacted at once.
Artem's face went gray. Ivan's hand pressed flat against his own chest like I'd physically struck him. Gregor stepped sideways, not blocking me in, just blocking the world out.
It almost helped.
Then the word wedding bounced again and the old cage slammed shut.
"You think I haven't seen this before?" I wasn't shouting now. I was much worse. I was calm.. "You think I don't know how this ends?"
"Maeve—"
"My father sold me." The words came out in pieces, sharp and unstrung. "To an alpha. I tried to run. So many times. But I was an omega. I was—" My throat closed. I forced it open. "He didn't want me. He wanted the bond. The status. He brought other omegas into my home. He fucked them in my bed.”
Artem froze. "Maeve—"
The three men went perfectly, horrifyingly still. The air in the foyer suddenly dropped ten degrees, thick with a lethal, suffocating anger that wasn't directed at me, but at the ghost of the man who had broken me.
"I escaped," I sobbed, tears blurring my vision. "I made it out, but he found me. And to make sure I couldn't ever leave again... he pinned me down and put his teeth in my neck."
I grabbed the collar of Artem’s oversized shirt and yanked it down, exposing the jagged, ugly scar over my scent gland.
"I never presented my neck. He claimed me without my permission! He kept me locked in his house, cut off from my family. I hated my father for selling me, but I spent years in a cage missing them anyway! Years of torment, until I finally found the strength to run!"
My knees gave out. "I had his bond dissolved, but it didn't take away my fears. The hurt he caused me, the pain of being left by my own father for the sake of a political alliance... it doesn't just disappear, Artem." The adrenaline vanished, leaving nothing but sheer exhaustion and heartbreak.
I strode down the marble stairs with nothing to lose.
Artem rushed to me and dropped to his knees on the step, pulling me flush against his chest. A second later, Ivan was there, wrapping his massive arms around my back, shielding me from the world. Gregor knelt below us on the stairs, his large, calloused hands enveloping my bare feet, grounding me.
"No," Artem growled, his voice vibrating against my cheek. He buried his face in my neck, right over the scar, his scent washing over me in a thick, heavy wave of our match, champagne-bright and caramel-warm. "No. Never again. Moy malen'kiy tsvetok."
Ivan pressed his face into my hair, inhaling deeply. "We are not him, Maeve. We don't want anyone else. We want you."
"You’re pack," Gregor murmured, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles into my ankles. "You are the center of what we are."
They held me. Three of the most dangerous men in Europe knelt on a staircase and poured their scents over me, blanketing my panic with pure, protective Alpha pheromones. They didn't try to silence me. They let me cry until there were no tears left, until my body went entirely limp in Artem’s arms.
I took a shuddering breath, staring at Artem’s chest. "If she's just a political move," I whispered, my voice completely hoarse. "If she's just a show for the council... take me to the cottage. Let me meet her."
