Chapter Thirteen Rosemary

Considering we were buying for the whole pack and all their entourage I supposed I was lucky it only amounted to two shoulder satchels and a double armful of goods, which was all I could convince Cantor to let me carry. He had more strapped to his own shoulders, but it was certainly not ten days worth of food. Most of what we had bought was fresh food and herbs. I guessed a prince pack didn't need to subsist on gruel and jerky, as the bounty hunters had done. Most likely, we would be stopping in other towns on the way to the capital.

They will be stopping, I reminded myself. Ivan and I would be leaving behind this band of merry slavers the moment they were distracted.

Only now we had something else to worry about.

I'd hoped the bounty hunters had all died in the mudslide. Or, if not died, then been strongly discouraged from chasing us by the fact that we were now the property of a powerful pack.

My father had always hoped to sell me directly to an alpha, but luckily for me none of the ones who came near our tiny village ever had the coin to match his ridiculous expectations. Alphas in Lutin were not treated kindly. The few that remained were all bandits or hermits of some description. I don't know what changed and led him to entertain the bounty hunters. Maybe he just got tired of waiting. Maybe the bounty hunters promised him all he wanted and more, since it was all a lie anyway and they never intended to pay for me.

All I knew was that one morning he woke me up, had the blacksmith break my manacle, and handed me over to a group of men I'd never seen before. None of them were alphas and neither they nor my father told me what was happening.

Colin, the blacksmith, did tell me a little bit. Maybe because his son had courted me once, or maybe he just wanted to rub it in.

" They've come to take you across the border. Gonna take you to the king there. Paid your father a pittance." He'd spat on our stone floor and kept on with his work, channeling magic into the iron that gripped my ankle. "He'll drink it all by the end of the year, if he's not in the ground before then."

" Please tell my brother," I'd begged, but he refused to look me in the eye or make any promises. Ivan had been living in our closest market town, apprenticed to the only mage that lived in our region. I knew he had given up his place in the capital to be closer to me, but stayed in an apprenticeship, so we could escape together. Living apart was a risk, but if he had stayed here we would never have the chance to be free.

As soon as I was loose and Adam had left, muttering under his breath, the bounty hunters had struck my father, laughing at his outrage and stripping him of the payment they'd promised, and even taking the shotgun he'd valued so much. They'd left him sprawled on the floor as they ran with me for the border.

Colin, for all his grumbling, must have immediately sent word to Ivan, since my brother came for me half a day after we crossed the border, two days after I'd been dragged, kicking and screaming, onto one of their horses.

I'll never forget the terror of realizing how close they were to us, just before the mudslide hit, or their screams as the water and jagged debris swept them into the river.

I had believed they were dead to a man, and yet now I had seen one of them in the market. The leader. Dark blond, dark eyes, a faint but nauseating scent of raw meat. He'd pinned me with his stare, brief as it was, and I had no doubt at all he intended to get me back.

They would not be fooled by the spellstone. They knew what I was.

The only question was, should I tell the prince pack?

Telling them would put them on guard, which would be good if the hunters came. However, we didn't want them to be on guard, since Ivan and I needed them to relax so we could escape.

They probably wouldn't bother to guard me, anyway, since they'd think Ivan was the target. I had no intention of letting them know that wasn't true.

Damn Ivan. Why did he do such a stupid thing? My shoulders tensed as we walked, and I could feel the alpha beside me tense as well. I couldn't make myself calm down as angry thoughts swirled in my head. Ivan could have said we'd had an omega with us but they drowned, or ran away. He could have used his magic to get rid of my scent altogether before they even noticed it existed. He could have done anything but put himself at the mercy of these horrid men.

As if that thought had stung him, Cantor put a hesitant hand on my arm. I snatched it back and glared at him for a moment, before realizing he had been deliberately imitating what I had done for him in the market.

" Are you alright, Rosemary?" He asked, his voice low. I glanced around and realized we were only a few steps from the inn now. People were entering and exiting it all around us. He was trying for privacy.

" Can I…" He licked his lips and my gaze fastened on them, then flicked up to his pale green eyes. Like new shoots in the spring. "Can I help you at all?"

" No," I said sharply, and he winced and nodded, stepping back from me. Without a scrap of thought in my head, I instinctively reached out to him as he retreated and gripped his hand. We both looked at our joined hands for a moment, as if they were something startling, and then I dropped it like it burned me.

So, the whole meek act is just over then. Right. Good job, Rosemary.

I cleared my throat, my cheeks hot. "Thank you, Cantor. I'm fine."

He made a quiet noise, that sounded so much like a purr I felt my heart- and other parts- clench, and I gritted my teeth and turned back to the inn. It wasn't a purr. It couldn't be. Alphas only purred for children and… omegas.

I tried to force my mind back to my hate spiral but it was suddenly hollow. Some of these alphas weren't all bad. I couldn't lie to myself and say the man currently opening the door to the inn for me was horrid.

Cantor was distressingly gentle, and Bastian was a confusing mix of cheer and charm.

However, that was just two of them. The rest of them were assholes, I was pretty sure of that. Sir Petrichor hadn't even really attempted to hide it. He looked at me like a snake would look at a mouse. I tried to keep that fact front and center of my brain as we handed the parcels to one of the beta soldiers that were attached to the pack, and then again as I bathed and brushed my hair in my room.

I was chanting it to myself like a mantra as I walked down the stairs for dinner- Assholes, assholes, assholes- but the word vanished as I caught sight of Bastian and Cantor both beaming at me the moment they caught my eyes. It took a lot to stop myself from beaming back, but I did hurry over to sit between them, in a seat they had obviously left for me.

Unfortunately, that put me sitting opposite Sinclair.

As my eyes met his, his lips quirked in a movement that seemed caught between a sneer or a smile, and the sight captivated me. His lips were so pretty. They didn't suit his cold, blue eyes at all.

I realized I was staring at his mouth about half a second after he did, and he cocked his head at me as if I was a puzzle he hadn't solved yet. I flushed and met his eyes defiantly, only for them to crinkle at the corners as if he were actually giving me a full, warm smile instead of a slight upturn of his lips. The strangeness of it on his cruel face made me jerk my eyes away from him, flushing even hotter as I glanced around the table as if I was casually making note of who was present. It was only then that I belatedly realized that Ivan had made it out of his room and was seated at the table with the rest of the pack.

" Brother!" I leaped out of my seat and rushed to him where he was sitting between Sinclair and Sir Midwinter, and hugged him. I had to choke back a gag when Ivan's scent- my scent- hit me as I pulled him tight.

" Rosemary, uh… it's good to see you," he said, awkwardly. He hugged me back, gripping my forearm as if to steady me.

" God's knot, Rosie, you're almost out of juice already," he murmured in my ear. I felt the stone heat as he poured more magic into it and tried not to react. Wasn't Sinclair a mage? What if he could sense the magic? I hoped Ivan knew what the hell he was doing.

" What happened that you're using the stone up so fast?" He said it so quietly it was barely a breath in my ear. "And what happened to being meek?" He pulled back to look in my eyes and I had no idea what to say to him.

A meek Rosemary wouldn't have jumped up and flung herself at her brother, especially since I only saw him a few candles ago. A meek Rosemary would have kept her place and not looked anyone in the eye.

I kept losing my head around these alphas.

I kept feeling safe , when I wasn't. I couldn't be.

The second they realized I was the omega, I'd be carted off to the king. They might be nice to me now, but it wasn't like they were letting us go. Even now, everyone was silently watching us.

No, not us . They were watching the omega.

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. The omega , as if an omega was an object. The butt of a joke or a prize to be won in a raffle. Whether it was Ivan or me, they were coveting a thing to be owned, not looking at a person they wanted to cherish.

No matter how much my stupid omega heart tried to convince me otherwise.

I smiled at Ivan sheepishly without answering his pointed questions. I was close with my brother but I had absolutely no intention of going into those kinds of specifics with him. He did not need to hear about my body reactions around alphas. Not to mention we had already risked enough, whispering in front of them all.

A quick glance at the six men around the table seemed to satisfy him anyway. Ivan followed my eyes and scowled, then wiped his expression clean. I wanted to stay next to my brother, but Davos wasn't exactly going to give up his seat at the head of the table and asking anything of Sinclair seemed dangerous. Instead, I shuffled back to my seat between Cantor and Bastian. For some reason, the bulky warmth of their bodies felt like a shield from the rest of the room, even though I knew in my heart, that was just more wishful thinking.