“I need extra broth for the new omegas,” Fallon told Yitro, consulting his clipboard. “At least three of them can’t handle solid food yet.”
“Already on it. I’ve got bone broth simmering on the back burner.”
“Perfect.” Fallon gave Yitro a quick kiss, and Fergal’s stomach swooped at the sight of it. A wolf omega and a dragon omega in love…and their third was a beta wolf, Fergal had learned. And no one thought it strange. No one judged.
Fallon turned to leave, then noticed Fergal and his massacred potato pile. A grin spread across his face. “Nice work, Your Majesty.”
He said those last two words with enough sass that Fergal couldn’t help grinning back. “It’s a learning curve.”
“Steep one, from the looks of it.” Fallon’s grin softened into something warmer. “But seriously, thank you for your help with the rescue. The omegas from yesterday… Some of them had given up hope. Knowing that people fought for them, that a king fought for them…” He trailed off, blinking rapidly. “It matters. More than you know.”
Fergal swallowed against the tightness in his throat. “I only wish we’d gotten there sooner.”
“You got there. That’s what counts.” Fallon squeezed his arm—a casual, physical gesture of connection that would’ve been unthinkable between an omega and a king at the Fitzgerald compound—and swept out of the kitchen.
Fergal returned to his potatoes. The kitchen traffic ebbed and flowed around him. A wolf beta came in to check on bread rising in the oven. Two dragon omegas sat at the far end of the counter, one teaching the other to make pie crust, their heads bent together over the dough, laughing at a shared joke. An alpha—one of the Hightower guards—wandered in looking for coffee,was handed a dish towel by Yitro, and found himself drying plates without complaint.
No one had assigned the alpha kitchen duty. No one had ordered the omegas to teach each other. No one was overseeing any of it with a schedule, a protocol, or a hierarchy. It just happened—organic, natural, a community functioning on mutual respect and shared purpose rather than rules and fear.
At the compound, Fergal had spent years fighting for this. Filing formal proposals for omega welfare reforms. Citing the Code in arguments with his father. Pushing against Brennan’s passive-aggressive objections and Donovan and Duncan’s sneering contempt. Years of battling a system that resisted change at every turn, and here it was—not as a theory or a legal framework or a policy proposal, but as a lived reality, messy and imperfect and absolutely, unmistakably real.
“Your Majesty?” A quiet voice pulled him from his thoughts.
Simon stood at the counter’s edge, a tray in his hands. The sandy-haired omega from the intelligence meeting—one of the original Murphy refugees who’d come with Fallon’s group. He was dressed simply, his posture carrying the careful stillness of someone who had spent years making himself invisible.
“Simon. Good to see you.” Fergal set down his peeler. “And please, call me Fergal. How are you doing?”
“Fine, thank you.” The response was automatic, reflexive—the kind of answer that didn’t require thought or truth. “Could I bother you? I’m just picking up a tray for one of the new omegas. He’s not ready to eat with everyone yet.”
“Of course.” Fergal stepped aside to give Simon access to the stove.
Simon ladled broth into a bowl. His hands, Fergal noticed, were trembling. Slightly—barely visible—but Fergal had spent years reading micro-expressions and body language, and heknew what trembling hands meant in someone who’d survived what the Murphy omegas had survived.
“Simon.”
The omega paused, his back to Fergal.
“There’s no rush on any of this. The healing, the settling in. Take whatever time you need.”
Simon turned. For a fraction of a second—so brief Fergal almost missed it—something crossed his face that didn’t look like gratitude or relief. It looked like pain. The raw, exposed pain of someone carrying a wound they couldn’t show to anyone. Then the expression vanished, replaced by the careful blankness that was Simon’s default. “Thank you, Your— Fergal. That’s kind of you.”
He picked up the tray and was gone, slipping out of the kitchen with the silent efficiency of a ghost.
Fergal watched the empty doorway for a moment, then returned to his potatoes. Some wounds went deeper than others. Some healing happened in the dark, invisible and slow, and all you could do was create the conditions for it and trust that it would come.
He peeled three more potatoes—better now, the strokes more confident, the results less mangled—and let his thoughts drift.
Zack passed through at some point, moving at his usual pace, which was somewhere between brisk and supersonic. He stopped long enough to check in with Yitro about dinner portions, ask about a bread-baking course Yitro had promised to teach, and resolve a disagreement between two dragon omegas about oven temperatures with a decisive “Use both ovens and stop arguing” that left no room for debate.
The omega was a force of nature. Barely a few weeks since he’d arrived from the Dragon Council, traumatized and malnourished and carrying the weight of everything theO’Connor clan had done to him, and he was already running logistics for the third-largest group in the pack.
At the Fitzgerald compound, an omega with Zack’s abilities would’ve spent his life serving food and lowering his eyes. His intelligence would’ve been wasted, his leadership suppressed, his potential buried under centuries of tradition that said omegas existed to serve and nothing more. What a waste. What a monstrous, criminal waste of talent and humanity and fire.
Fergal finished the last potato and set it on the pile. His hands were sore, his back ached from standing, and there was potato peel under every fingernail. Yet he felt more accomplished than he had after any day of signing documents and attending meetings.
Yitro inspected his work with the critical eye of a man who took potatoes seriously. “Not bad. A few of these look like they were attacked by a wolverine, but the rest are passable.”
“High praise.”
