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“Just how attached are you to that mane of hair?” I ask, flicking my eyes to his copper curls. He gasps in mock outrage, clearly receiving my reference.

Once, as boys running around while our fathers handled this business, we got into an argument. Denvil got me by breaking my favorite remote-controlled truck.

I got him by sneaking into his room in the middle of the night and spreading a thick wad of Bubble Tape in his hair. Always chewing that shit, his parents had no reason to believe it; he hadn’t just fallen asleep with it in his mouth, no matter how much he’d protested.

The next week, he came to the Kault packs meeting with no hair and a brand-new baseball cap, glaring at me.

“My father said shaving my head was a natural consequence for being careless,” Denvil had said, face caught somewhere between shame and aw shucks. It was especially meaningful for his father to shave his head, considering the Southern pack’s affinity for hair, most of them having the copper hue that Denvil sports now. Then, as slyly as a ten-year-old could, he pulled a brand-new truck out from behind his back and set it down in front of me, making solid eye contact. “Even? To be honest with you, I don’t have much interest in seeing what you decide to take next.”

Despite myself—despite the cold-hearted way my father had raised me and the ridiculous set of manners and decorum he’d insisted on around the other pack leaders and their families—I’d grinned, stretching out my hand.

“Even.”

Now, I slide into a chair across the table from Denvil and set my tablet down flat on the surface. Brack, Western Pack king and quietest of us all, silently rises from his chair, crosses the room, and dims the lights, flashing a look in my direction.

Picking up on the look, Denvil softens his voice—only slightly—and asks, “Still having those headaches, man?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Yeah, but it’s been like, four years of nothing,” Zade, shaggy-haired and mild-mannered king of the eastern tribe, says, leaning back in his chair and looking at me. “Why not just see a doctor about it? Could be a sinus thing.”

It is not a sinus thing. Unless having scented that omega once counts as a sinus thing.

Mylah.

I can recall her now, like I saw her yesterday. The shape of her curves, the impossible rightness I felt with her in my hands. Holding her was like picking up a kitten, my entire body filling with the urge for protection, and also to squeeze as tightly as I could.

Cuteness aggression, the internet had supplied, when I went looking for the term late one night, hard as hell and suffering on my own in bed. I’d thought, maybe, that distracting myself with vocabulary might help to keep me from going into a full-on rut.

It’s only happened a few times since that night.

Before that, it had never happened to me. Not before meeting her, not even when around several omegas in heat. That was always a part of my father’s doctrine—are you really an alpha if you can’t control your own body?

It was his inference that only a weak alpha goes into a rut.

And I have no intention of being a weak alpha, a weak king.

A painful twinge starts at the back of my head and ends just behind my left eye, reminding me that despite my best efforts, I have gone into several ruts over the past four years. Always during the time of the month that I can feel her, feel her need. Hear her crying out for me, begging me to come to her.

At this point, the staff in my house know, without asking, to lock the doors to my room, to barricade them and not listen to my commands to be let out. I have threatened to fire them, to tear them limb from limb if they do not obey, and still they’ve kept me confined.

And, as far as I know, none of them has decided to run their mouths about what occurs at my private residence. I know because if they did, these three would be the first to hear of it, and then I would never hear the end of it about having found a fated mate.

A fated mate from the rebel pack. An omega with nothing.

Well, all omegas have nothing. But at least some of them come from families with good standing, are well-cared for, groomed, doted on. Treated like fine porcelain dolls to be sold to the highest bidder.

Just like the woman I am betrothed to now. Picked by my father from the Southern Pack, with soft waves of copper hair. A strong political choice from a fine family. Assurances from her father that she has never been touched by another man.

Something about the whole thing makes my stomach turn.

“…Auggie, are you paying attention?”

Brack swipes Denvil upside the head, and the copper-haired king dances out of the way, cackling as he does.

“Listening to what?” I ask, which is essentially an admission that I was not, in fact, listening.

“We were discussing what to do about Gavyn’s pack,” Brack says, his deep voice level and smooth. He barely moves as he speaks, an insanely large man used to keep his body contained. From under his short-sleeved shirt, several tattoos snake out, a marker of the Western pack’s shifters. “Specifically, about the fact that his shifters keep getting into our storerooms and stealing our supplies.”