Chapter Twenty-Eight Rosemary

I had convinced myself that the pain wouldn't be so bad by the time I put myself to bed that night. Lynter had made me stretch, then had insisted on massaging my legs and shoulders, his calloused fingers clinical but still unnervingly intimate. I made up my mind to try and make some seductive moves while he did it. Moan or something? Jiggle? But my exhausted body betrayed me and I could barely keep my eyes open as he loosened my muscles one by one.

He ordered me down to the dining hall when I would have simply collapsed into bed that night and piled my plate with dinner. The mound of food he gave me was so high by the time he finished adding to it, it seemed to me like there was no chance at all that I could fit it all inside me. Somehow, though, I managed it all, and even had seconds.

I wondered if I would get fat now that I was eating my fill every day. My father had been scrimping on my food for years, only letting me have access to the kinds of roots and vegetables we usually fed to cattle and hogs, while he ate the somewhat decent meals I was forced to cook for him. As a teenager, pre-reveal, I'd been plump and strong, and pretty enough to catch the eyes of several boys in the village. I hadn't really known I was pretty though, not until I lost my looks and realized what I'd once had.

Life is just a downhill race like that, I guess.

I decided that if I was going to get fat, I would welcome it. Fat, or maybe even muscular, with strong, bulky ankles so no one could shackle me ever again. If Lynter put me through more lessons like he did today, that was definitely a possibility.

Maybe I'd get so fat and bulky they wouldn't want me.

Somehow I doubted I would be allowed to eat that much.

Lynter had guided me back to my room after dinner and insisted I drink more water, then left without another word or gesture. No winks, no innuendos, no insistence on a goodnight kiss. For some reason this made me unhappy even as I cursed my stupid omega weakness. Or, right, I should be unhappy, shouldn't I? Because of the whole seduction thing.

It was hard to keep my mind straight on that.

Anyway, with all that fussing, I assumed my muscles would be fine the next day. Hell, maybe they would be better than their usual, flaccid uselessness.

That was definitely not the case.

Even rolling over in bed was somehow the worst thing I'd ever done. After waking, I lay on my back, for half a candle, desperate to go onto my side, so I could put weight on different parts of me, even knowing those parts would hate me just as much as all the ones that hated me right now.

Even my fingers hurt. Why did my goat-bred fingers hurt?

I watched the sky outside my window fade from a murky indigo to pale ashes and wondered if Cantor was in the kitchen right now, getting food for his little ‘friends'. I hadn't talked to him since I freaked out and ran away yesterday morning. I saw him at dinner, but Lynter had been hovering over me like a mother hen, and Cantor had avoided my eyes with a look on his face that made my stomach clench. I had planned to take my shiny new muscles down to see him again this morning, but that plan had gone the way of unicorns. I was simply too stiff and sore.

Instead, I let myself drift into a half-waking dream in which Lynter chased me around the yard with a switch and fed me an orange slice every time it cracked on my bare ass. For some reason the sharp bite of pain each time he struck had slick dripping down my naked legs. I was running more and more slowly, as if through lemon-scented molasses, letting him reach out with his free hand and brush my…

A thunderous knock on the door startled me out of my sleep. It took a long moment to figure out where I was. Right. I was in my room in Fort Madder. Outside the window the sky was now a bright blue, and I suspected it was much closer to lunch than to breakfast.

Did that mean I had missed out on coffee?

The impatient knock came again and I groaned, still foggy and much too warm from the dream. I had never dreamed such blatantly lurid, slutty dreams before I got involved with this stupid pack. Alpha pheromones were ruining my life.

I flung back my sheets, hobbled over to the door, and yanked it open.

"What the hell do you want?"

The two men outside my door reeled back as the air from my room hit them and I immediately felt my face blaze red when I realized what had happened. A beta could have a sexy dream without anyone suspecting a thing, but an omega… If the stickiness between my thighs was any indication, the air that just hit them was drenched in my scent.

Horrified, and just realizing I was also still dressed in my nightclothes, I began to slam the door shut, but Bastian recovered quickly and stepped forward into the doorway.

"We wondered if you would like to go to the market with us," he said, calmly, as if I hadn't just essentially slicked all over them. He kept his eyes respectfully on mine, not letting them drift lower, or rise to inspect the ceiling the way Cantor was doing. Cantor had turned several shades darker than I judged my own face to be and looked like he wanted to flee even more than I did.

It cracked something inside me. How could an alpha be so… sweet? Made so nervous by me?

I heaved a sigh as though they were putting me out, but I stopped trying to close the door.

"I'm uh… Lynter trained me yesterday so I'm quite sore," I said, in a not-quite refusal.

"All the more reason to go," Bastian said, encouragingly. "If you stay abed all day, your muscles will tighten further and cause you even more pain. Once you've had enough sleep it's best to move them gently, as much as possible. Walking is ideal." He cleared his throat, a mild, teasing smirk on his face. "You have had enough sleep , haven't you, Wildcat?"

I blushed harder. I don't even know why. I was sleeping, no matter what he wanted to imply, but I knew better than to protest and make it sound like I had something to hide. There was just something about his voice. It was deep, and dark, and sultry even with all that innuendo, and I was suddenly grateful for my dirty dream because at least the scent of it hid the immediate reaction I was having to Bastian's filthy tone.

"Fine, I'll come with you," I snapped, as if he'd twisted my arm. "Just give me a moment." He stepped back, out of my room, and it was satisfying to close the door on his stupid, handsome face.

He was right though. The burning ache in my muscles did seem to ease the more we walked, and by the time we had eaten an early lunch in the near-empty dining hall- complete with two cups of milky coffee- my body only felt like a savage punishment was being wreaked upon me every time I moved, rather than outright torture.

"We'll have to go see your brother first, if that's OK with you, Rosemary?" Bastian asked as we finished up our cold meat sandwiches. "We need to recharge your spellstone. Unfortunately, an unbound omega wandering through town would cause a stir. Especially one who smells as enticing as you."

He grinned at me, and I couldn't quite stop myself from smiling back. The man was so incredibly charming. Such a talented bullshit artist.

I had to keep reminding myself that he was evil. That he wanted to charm me as much as I wanted to charm him. He wanted to lure me into the same trap that all the others in his pack were keeping baited and ready. I was the rabbit, and they were all herding me, with stick and carrot, closer and closer to the snare.

The only one I couldn't quite believe the worst of was Cantor. I sneaked glances at him as we walked towards the library and every time he darted his gaze back at me, then away, with an emotion in his eyes that I hardly dared to name. As if I were the source of all light in his world.

I couldn't believe that such a gentle man was evil. But then, Cantor obviously trusted Bastian. Shouldn't that mean Bastian was also trustworthy? It left me confused, but in the end it didn't matter. No matter what sweet kindness Cantor had in his heart, he was beholden to his pack, and he had not tried to stop Davos from bonding me.

I suspected the two had only sought me out today because I had freaked out on poor Cantor, agreeing to let him touch me and kiss me and then running when he had only done what I wanted. What I wanted to want. Because I was an omega. Because I was seducing them.

Not because I longed for their hands and mouths on my…

"That's a very sweet shade of pink you're turning, little Wildcat," Bastian said, gently. He deliberately traced my gaze to Cantor and back and his eyes danced with delight even as my face grew hotter. I lowered my eyes to the floor.

By the Beta, this was worse than when I'd tried to seem meek. I had one currency with these men, and that was lust. No one was going to lust after a shy, bumbling idiot. When I tried to be meek, I was blustery. When I tried to be seductive, I was meek. I was useless.

Thankfully, Cantor still seemed unable to look directly at me and Bastian only smiled and kept walking.

We made our way to the library where Ivan was having his lessons. I tried my best to memorize the way there, but the castle was so enormous it seemed almost impossible to navigate. I had tried, at first, to fit my old cottage inside, to try and keep track of the vastness of the many rooms around me, but I quickly lost count. I didn't know there was this much stone in the whole world, and I wondered if it had taken lifetimes to build.

Everywhere we went Bastian, and sometimes Cantor, were greeted like old friends by the many people who were bustling around, cleaning, and crafting, and cooking. Both the men greeted back, usually by name, and often stopped to help hold a ladder or steady a frame. Bastian greeted more people in our trek than I had ever known in my life, and he asked after their families by name also. At one point we stopped so the big, amber-eyed alpha could wrestle a basket of laundry from a tiny old woman, who slapped at his huge arm and scolded him for coddling her.

I held my breath and prepared to intervene on her behalf, but Bastian only chuckled and asked after her grandchildren, as he strode on, leading the way to a huge laundry room. He paused there, chatting with the men and women who sorted the new basket of laundry and activated the spellstones controlling massive copper cauldrons of soapy water.

Part of me wanted to insist that this was all an elaborate farce. Alphas didn't care about the people under them. The alphas of a prince pack of Raksim should be the worst of the worst. The rulers of this country were slavers. They were cruel, merciless men who wanted to use my kind as breeding stock and treated betas as disposable.

Not for the first time, I pondered what the hell they were hoping to achieve with me. Davos had been prepared to bond me. My attempt at escape into death had obviously shocked him, but he clearly believed that when I was bonded he could prevent it happening again.

Somehow, though, I couldn't imagine Bastian or Cantor forcing me to love them. Or even forcing a bite on me. Cantor with his tiny, feathered friends, who had fearlessly eaten from my hands and then flew away again, free in the sky. Would he bond me, if his packlead ordered him to do it?

Imagining Cantor with his teeth in my throat had an unexpected effect. As we waited on Bastian, who was still gossiping with the laundress, I pictured the pale, gangly alpha with his mouth in the crook of my neck and my face heated up all over again. Without my prompting, my brain helpfully added Bastian to the scenario, sandwiching me between them, and my body betrayed me entirely. A gush of fluid flooded my underclothes and I had to clench my teeth against a whimper.

Bastian and Cantor's eyes both shot to me, and the little old laundress smirked at me.

For the Gods' sake this was why I needed Ivan to recharge the bloody stone.

I marched back out of the room, and stood with my forehead against the cold, stone wall of the corridor while Bastian finished his flirty banter.

Cantor, instead of leaving me to wallow in my embarrassment, followed me out.

"Rosemary," he said, his gruff voice soft and hesitant. I sighed and turned to face him. "I'm… I'm very sorry I scared you, or… or hurt you." His pale green eyes looked so mournful. "If I can do anything to make it better…"

I winced. I had realized he would probably blame himself. I knew it in an intellectual way, though. Somehow my heart had still expected anger. Disappointment. Rejection. I had run away from him, and alphas didn't like that.

Well, most of them didn't.

And yet, Cantor wasn't lashing out at me. Not physically or verbally. He couldn't be this good of an actor. This was him, dismayed, ashamed, begging me to forgive him for a harm that wasn't even his fault.

Every part of my stupid omega self wanted nothing more than to take this alpha in my arms and soothe him. Doing so would comfort him. It would comfort me . It would get me that much closer to having a solid ally.

And yet I couldn't do it.

I needed these stupid bastards to reject me and yet my whole heart was cringing away from the idea that Cantor might not want my stupid, broken self.

So even though my whole body was aching with the need to put my arms around him, I kept myself stiff and let him suffer alone.

"It wasn't anything you did," I said. "I was… I was enjoying what we were doing. It was just that…" I trailed off and he looked at me with his beautiful, pale green eyes, his lashes so blond you couldn't see them in the sunlight, but here in the shade they were lush and pretty. Quivering with the need to please me.

I wanted to kiss him.

For some reason, instead of doing that, I opened my damn mouth again.

"My father let visiting alphas… and sometimes betas… uh… do things to me. For money." I swallowed and lowered my eyes. It was a good thing to tell them this, right? Maybe if they knew I was a whore, it would help with the whole not-wanting-me thing. "I guess I just… when you touched me, I wanted you to touch me, but my body… it thought I was back there."

The difference being that now I wasn't chained to the ground. My father wasn't sitting in the corner of the room with his gun on his knees. The acrid scent of near-feral alpha pheromones wasn't saturating every breath I took.

The most important difference of all was the man in front of me, his usually mild eyes suddenly burning with pain and fury on my behalf.

Cantor growled, the sound low and rolling like thunder through the corridor. For the first time, he seemed like a real alpha to me and not just a sweet man in a very large body. He seemed like a predator, one that could rip prey to pieces. One that could protect our nest from all threats.

It should have scared the shit out of me, but instead, somehow, it made me feel truly safe for the first time in years. Something inside me crowed with the knowledge that I belonged inside that nest. That he would protect me with that strength, that anger.

That this was my alpha.

I reached up to cup the back of his neck and pulled him down to me.

I half-expected him to pull away. I had just confessed to being a broken-winged bird, and as much as I knew instinctively that Cantor would nurse me back to health or die trying, being broken wasn't exactly an aphrodisiac.

Instead his lips crashed onto mine with such force my back bowed to accommodate it, and he immediately slipped into my mouth, as if he intended to erase every terrible thing I'd ever experienced with lashes of his tongue.

His big hands gripped my ass and lifted me with ease, so that our faces were level, making me gasp and squirm as I wrapped my thighs around him. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and dug my hands into his hair. He only kissed me more thoroughly and then began to suck on my throat in a way that made even more slick burst into my underclothes.

I should have felt unnerved that I was in his arms and unable to ground myself, but instead I still felt safe. Like a boat that had finally been lowered to the waves, cradled by the water that was always meant to keep it aloft.

I buried my nose in his pale hair, sucking down big lungfuls of his sweet, golden scent. My mind went hazy with bliss. Small sounds were starting to escape me, and Cantor's sucking kisses were drifting very close to my cleavage, when someone loudly cleared their throat next to us.

Cantor snarled at the interruption, until he realized it was Bastian. His face turned crimson, flooding with the color in a wave that started at his throat and crept quickly up to his ears and made me want to nibble… I shook my head, trying to clear the fog from my slutty, omega brain.

Bastian chuckled, his voice even darker and richer than usual.

"I see the two of you have made up. You know, Wildcat, we don't have to go to the market. We can all go back to your room, if that's what you prefer."

We? As in… all three of us? Now my face was burning, not helped by the fact that Cantor was gazing into my eyes and he looked… eager.

I knew alphas lived in packs, but the specific sexual dynamics of that had always been murky to me. My father had never allowed more than one man to paw at me at a time, and the vast majority of the alphas he met with were loners anyway.

The idea of both Cantor and Bastian with their hands on me had seemed like the kind of foolishness that was often in dreams, as likely as Sinclair showing up as a spider, or Lynter chasing me with a switch in the middle of the yard. Still here was Bastian, offering me my dream.

My body lit up like a firefly with pulsing warmth.

I didn't trust it.

"Uh, no," I mumbled, avoiding their eyes. "We should go to the market. I like the market."

"OK little Starling," Cantor said, without a trace of disappointment in his voice. He placed me gently on the ground. I hadn't even realized he'd still been holding me.

I felt him take my hand in one of his. His hand was so calloused it felt like it had been roughly carved from wood, but it was achingly gentle. It engulfed mine with heat. "Let's go."

We made our way straight to the library this time, Bastian limiting himself to nods and single word greetings when we met people on the way.

The library was a huge room, easily as large as the entire inn, which had become my new basis of comparison. The ceiling soared high enough to allow for a second floor, and both floors were lined with bookcases, and stuffed to the brim with books. I gaped at them, wondering if it was even possible to read so many books in a single lifetime.

All the ones on the first floor appeared to be huge, leather-bound tomes that I knew from my meager experience with Ivan's books would be packed full of the cure for insomnia.

I only hoped the upper bookshelves were hiding some novels. Maybe they'd let me read while I was in my little prison cell.

We found Ivan in a small room which was set off from the main area. Smaller, anyway. Its walls were lined with even more shelves of books, and there were several tables scattered around the stone floor.

Ivan and the blonde woman were close to the doorway, and Sinclair was seated at another table towards the back of the room. Their scents hit me the moment we walked in the door, Sophie's buttery candy scent making my nose wrinkle. It hit me the same way my own did at times, just way too sweet. Sinclair's rich mushroom scent, on the other hand, snaked in past my defenses. It mixed with the sweet hay and fresh cucumber that already surrounded me and suddenly my heart was speeding up. It was ridiculous. I didn't even particularly like his scent… right? It was just… strange. One of those smells that isn't really good , per se, but you just keep huffing it for no reason.

The dark-haired alpha had stacks of books in front of him, and was studying a particularly fat and musty-looking one when we walked in. His eyes shot directly to me and his face settled into an expressionless mask. He obviously wasn't affected by me at all, and I had absolutely no plans to try and seduce him. I wasn't that stupid. Spiders were pretty to look at, but you don't touch them.

I decided the safest route was to ignore him.

Ivan was directing streams of magic up and down his own arms, skimming the deep brown lines into intricate patterns as if he was wearing filigree cuffs. His face was beaded with sweat and he was concentrating so hard he didn't notice us approaching.

My brother tied off the glowing lines somehow, leaving himself with the magical cuffs shining on his arms. His tutor nodded in approval, and began pointing out flaws in his work. Even though she was facing us and obviously realized we were there, she just kept talking until Bastian cleared his throat and Ivan jumped.

"Rosie!" He exclaimed. "Look at this! I've…" Unfortunately, as soon as his attention was pulled away from the cuffs they began to dissolve. Ivan knit his brows in frustration as they dripped away altogether, the magic dissolving into the ether.

"Concentrate," the woman ordered him, her voice low, but stern. "In battle you can't focus on your magic and nothing else. You have to divide your attention. You should only focus the smaller part on the magic."

Battle? Ivan was going into battle over my dead body. He wouldn't thank me for saying that in front of his pretty tutor though, so I held my tongue.

Having said her piece, she cocked a brow at Bastian. Her eyes flicked to me and then away and I wondered what that flicker of emotion was. I'd never met a female alpha before. I wondered if they were more like women, or more like alphas. I couldn't imagine a combination of the two… but then my ideas about alphas were starting to be called into question lately.

"Hello Sophie," Bastian said, with his trademark charming smile. "We just need to borrow Ivan for a few moments."

"Of course," she said and rose immediately. She sauntered back to talk to Sinclair, her hand falling with familiar ease onto his arm as she murmured. I decided I didn't like her very much.

Sinclair hadn't taken his eyes from me.

"Rosemary, I've learned so much! I was doing so many things wrong, my old teacher was an idiot. I'll show you tonight," Ivan said, beaming at me with such genuine happiness, that my heart clenched. I'd never seen him so happy.

"That's wonderful, Ivan" I said, hoping I could keep my voice steady. "You… you'll have to teach me some tricks when you get a chance. I desperately need to learn something that isn't just housekeeping spells."

"Of course I will," Ivan said. "Maybe… maybe you can take lessons with me?" He just barely managed to say it with a straight face, and I loved him for it.

I wasn't going to let him squander his precious lessons on me. It would be like teaching a toddler in a university class, a waste of time for everyone.

"No, no, that's fine. I only have half your capacity, there's no point," I said, laughing stiffly.

"You have half his capacity?" Sinclair suddenly blurted, interrupting whatever Sophie was saying to him. She frowned, then shot a glare at me.

I guess I really don't like her then.

"Uh, yeah, I guess? I've never had lessons or measured it though," I said, shrugging. I'd long-since made peace with my inability to blast holes in walls like my little brother could. It had upset me a lot as a child, but I'd found plenty of other things to be upset over as I grew up.

"Ivan is the talented one," I said, smiling at him and patting him on the arm. He rolled his eyes at me. "I can just… Heat water, or blast away dust. That kind of thing."

Sinclair had really intense eyes when he stuck them on you. It felt almost like he was stabbing me with them, then refusing to draw out the blades as I squirmed.

"I see," he said at last and finally let his eyes drop back to the book, still ignoring the woman beside him who seemed to be almost clawing at his arm now.

I assumed he'd finished talking to us and was turning back to Ivan when the alpha mage met my gaze again, his dark blue eyes fractionally softer.

"I will teach you, if you like," he said. "Some basics of magic. Would tomorrow evening suit you?"

Too surprised to do anything but agree I nodded, pressing my lips together so I wouldn't gape like a fish.

A quick glance at Ivan made me wince. He looked like he'd bitten into an unripe apple, his unhappy face matching that of his blonde teacher. I couldn't blame him. Sinclair exuded competence in a way that Sophie couldn't match.

Flustered, I wondered if I should try to offer Ivan the spot instead, but I knew there was no point. Sinclair didn't really want to teach me. This was just another ploy. Surely Ivan recognized that too. The alpha mage wouldn't actually bother teaching me, he just wanted to be alone with me so he could… My thoughts trailed off as I realized yet another cloud of my perfume was hitting the air. What in the Beta's name was wrong with me? My cheeks burned as I cursed my stupid, stupid omega brain.

Grumbling, I sat next to Ivan and shoved my arm at him. The spellstone couldn't be activated fast enough.