Chapter Four Rosemary

What the heck did my brother do? Why did that alpha think he was an omega?

It wasn't really a question I needed to ask, because I knew exactly what Ivan had done.

I hadn't expected him to rescue me last night. I thought he was still in Koron, safely apprenticed to the only mage in our region who would have him, and completely unaware that our father had finally managed to sell me. He'd returned from the capital as soon as he realized I was stuck- physically stuck- at home, but he still needed to learn enough magic and earn enough money to get me out and make me safe. Living in the closest town was the best compromise he could come up with, even though I tried to insist that he stay with the much better apprenticeship he had had originally. Whether he was 20 jaunts away or 20,000 didn't really matter if he didn't know I'd been spirited away across the border overnight.

The hunters hadn't really hurt me, thank the gods, and only slung me in a heap next to their fire each night. The position wasn't for my comfort. They just wanted to keep an eye on their investment.

I had heard them talk about how they were going to sell me to their king. They might have come across me by chance, but they had collected the king's omega bounty before. Crossed the border into Lutin, found some poor omega being kept in a brothel, and then delivered her on a silver platter to the capital of Raksim.

The only reason they hadn't tried to rape me was that they didn't realize I was ‘ruined goods'. They thought they'd get more for me if I was still a virgin. They were all betas, and resisting an omega's charms was much easier for them than it was for alphas. They thought my father had been keeping me safe and pristine in a lonely, metaphorical tower, waiting for a mythical buyer that would never come. They thought that molesting me might rob me of my virginity and lower my value. Apparently the king preferred his omegas to be untouched.

Well, that joke was on them. I wasn't exactly going to explain the punchline though.

It was awfully ironic that the designation made for sex always seemed to hold more value when they were untouched. Alphas were physically strong, and borderline rabid. Betas were smart, calm and magically gifted. And omegas were… sexpots. The classic omega was small, curvy, cunning, and would do anything to hop on an alpha knot. If a knot was unavailable, they'd quickly turn to the closest beta. With our alluring scent and low morals, any man would be tempted to stray.

Breeding was an omega's only real purpose and, if allowed to live and reproduce, we were supposedly like any other kind of mindless vermin, and would quickly overwhelm our environment.

I had heard this all my life and yet when I suddenly found myself perfuming, with my own so-called alluring scent, I somehow hadn't immediately tried to fuck my way through my village.

Of course, that might have been the manacle.

It wasn't the first time I had benefited from someone valuing my supposed virginity though, so I kept my mouth shut when the leader of the bounty hunters ordered his men to keep their hands off me.

Ivan had shocked the hell out of me when he slunk into camp on the second night. There was only a tiny warping in the air to show where he knelt over me, alerting me to his presence with the faintest whisper of my name. He'd cut my bonds and, achingly slowly, scraped up enough dirt and debris to leave a hump under my blanket that might stand up to scrutiny in the firelight, if no one looked closely.

He'd wrapped me in the same cloaking magic and we'd snuck out together, him supporting me on my useless, wobbly legs as I took my first free steps in almost five years. I had been overwhelmed with an emotion so sharp I hardly recognized it as joy. I still didn't know how he had known that I was taken. I had begged the blacksmith to tell my brother, while he removed the manacle, but hadn't actually expected the impassive man to do it.

I'd thought I would never see Ivan again.

The joy had kept me going until we reached the cave, and that's when the argument had begun.

"It's just going to hurt for a moment, Rosie. Don't be a coward." Ivan held up the small, clear quartz stone for my inspection. He had coated it in alcohol so I knew he was lying about the pain. However, it wasn't the pain that made me try to refuse.

"Look, I have them too," he'd said and pushed up a sleeve to show me the bumps under his arm. "They store spells, so you can use more than one at once, or release the magic slowly over time. That's how I could sneak into the camp. I used a push spell on light particles and…"

"I don't care about the pain , Ivan," I had said, my head pounding and woozy with exhaustion. Apparently being enslaved and dragged across a national border takes it right out of you. "I don't want you to take on my scent. That's not how this works, little brother. I'm not going to put you in danger to save myself." I winced and corrected myself. "I'm not going to put you in even more danger to save myself."

I had wanted a future with Ivan. One that didn't involve him being hunted down by bounty hunters, who already knew what I smelled like anyway. Taking on my scent now wouldn't do squat, except make future potential slavers interested in my brother as an omega. If that was his big plan, he could keep it.

"If I have your scent, and someone captures me, they'll lose interest the second the scent wears off," he argued back.

"Or they'll murder you immediately as a male omega! There's no need for it," I snapped. "The hunters already know I'm the omega. They'll know it's a spell. As long as you can hide my scent, anyone else will just think we're two betas anyway." I wanted to punch him in the arm for this stupid plan, but I also wanted to hug him.

I settled for an angry hug.

"This is just an added…"

" No ."

He fumed at me. "Fine. I'll just set off the spell to conceal your scent and won't activate the one that transfers your scent to me." He scrunched up his nose, as if the idea of an unactivated spell offended him. "But that will mean I have to recharge your spell every day, since your pheromones will have nowhere to go. It won't last long otherwise."

My scent had dissipated quickly after he inserted the spellstone chip, even in the tiny cave. As he worked, Ivan lectured me about the mechanics of the spell, explaining that strong emotions, exertion, or anything ‘omega-like' would cause the spell to work overtime to contain my scent, and would go through the magic more quickly. I decided it was better not to make him elaborate on what he meant by ‘omega-like'. It's not like I was planning to sex it up with any alphas.

After my brother had finished lecturing me I had sniffed several times, but couldn't smell anything from him except his usual, comforting chalk and chamomile scent. He had respected my wishes.

He was the only one who ever did.

I had slept after that, and only woke when freezing water spilled into the cave and soaked through my tattered clothes.

Then we had fled.

When had he done it? I glared at the lump he had inserted under the skin of my arm, about the size of my thumbnail and still aching. The storm and the chase had been so confusing. It had filled all my exhausted senses, and it wasn't difficult to imagine Ivan doing whatever the hell he wanted when I wouldn't notice.

If he'd left the stupid thing alone, we'd have been seen as two lost betas by whoever had picked us up, and my brother wouldn't be captive in a room somewhere, held by alphas who were planning to do who knew what to him. They could be hurting him right now .

He could already be bitten.

I paced the empty room as horrible visions of Ivan in pain, Ivan enslaved, Ivan treated as an omega, swamped me.

On our desperate run, Ivan had poured all his magic into spells to keep us warm, to throw the hunters off our trail, or to beat them down to give us a few more precious moments of lead time. Towards the end, as we were stumbling along the river, when the hunters were almost on us, I could see the color draining from him. In my panic, my pheromones had strained against the newly inserted stone and burst free.

And then the mudslide had roared past us and he had been struck.

It took every ounce of my panicked strength to stop his body from falling into the raging water and being swept away, and then to try and stumble further down the river, until we fell in the mud. I used the last of my energy to cover his body as I heard the hooves approach us. That kind of panic and suffering would have heightened my scent until it was blasting out like a geyser.

So my scent was already smeared across both of us when we were found. There would have been no hiding, even though he'd managed, at the last second to reactivate my spellstone.

"That stupid, gods-damned kid," I muttered to myself. It made perfect sense to his hero-complex-addled brain to misdirect everyone to him, rather than to me. He'd wasted more of his precious magic, probably tapping into his own lifeforce to set off both spells. No wonder he hadn't woken up yet.

And without a word to me. Because I would never have agreed!

These men were just as likely to sell him to the king as they were to sell me. He'd be forced into a bond with a female alpha, or even a pack of them, so they could all be used as breeding stock to satisfy their king's weird obsession with designation. For all we knew male omegas were even more highly prized than female ones in this bizarre country, since they weren't relying on a single womb to reproduce.

I hammered my fist into the unyielding stone wall then hissed and cradled my hand. Why did I have to be an omega? I wasn't perfectly happy with my life as a beta, but it had at least been mine . Now every purulent prick in the universe wanted to claim me and they were dragging my brother into it.

I forced myself to calm down, taking deep dragging breaths. In. Out. It made me realize I could still faintly smell the alpha who had snuck up on me and locked me back in here. I dragged the blanket I had used as a toga up to my nose and took a deep inhale. Once I started breathing in his scent, it was difficult to stop myself. It was a cool musk, like a touch of icy water in the summer heat. Something about it felt almost wicked and unsettled me, as if I were standing in a lightly spitting rain. I was usually disgusted by alpha scents, but for some reason this one drew me in, fascinated. I wanted to curl up in my bed and roll around in the blanket so I could get the scent all over me.

The impulse made me sick to my stomach. This was why omegas were treated like slaves. One hit of alpha stank and we lost our minds. I didn't know this man. What I did know about him, I didn't like. He had come across as the type of snooty person who thought he was superior to me, and he didn't even know me.

Besides, I couldn't even say that I liked the scent, exactly. It was the type of scent you just wanted to keep huffing, even if it wasn't exactly pleasant. Like garlic, or bread yeast, or puppies.

Or maybe I was just weird.

Well I wasn't going to let my body win. Not when Ivan had given up everything to keep me safe.

I threw the blanket on the bed and turned back to the door to pick my lock again. If I had to, I'd go out naked to get Ivan. The linen shift would serve me just fine.

However, just as I approached the door, it was flung open. I froze, expecting the alpha back to ask his questions, but instead found myself confronted by an older beta woman.

She stopped abruptly, just as surprised to be face-to-face with me as she entered, then she drew herself up. Plump as she was, the gesture reminded me of an angry, nesting chicken.

"I'm Madam Etner, proprietor of The Mad Hornet," she said, her voice pompous, but not unkind. "Our girls are busy, so I've come to get you dressed for dinner."

"The… The mad what?" I gaped at her, then peered past, through the open door. To my dismay, yet another alpha was just outside the room, this one shorter than the last, but younger and more muscular, with black hair and eyes. He was dressed in the garb of a soldier, with dark blue linen under a leather jerkin. He saw me looking and smirked at me. As he shut the door behind the madam, I caught a faint hint of lilacs and smoke.

"The Mad Hornet is my inn, where you are currently staying, Miss….?"

I started to answer and then fell silent. What if Ivan had told them false names? I had no idea what he wanted me to do.

Crap, we really needed to get out of here and have five wicks together where we weren't being chased or beaten to death by a rainstorm. We needed contingency plans.

Thoroughly annoyed by the situation, I did the only thing I could think of… I burst into more tears.

It was a good thing I wasn't doing this whole weeping act to try and fool someone similar to myself, because I would have slapped myself silly by now.

Luckily the innkeeper was much nicer than me.

"Oh you poor dear," she said, actually clucking in dismay, and gathered me into her arms. Her faint beta scent was comforting, like dried, dusty roses, and reminded me a little bit of my mother.

For a moment the tears I was forcing out became real.

"I don't know what's going on," I sobbed as she patted me on the back. "I got caught in the storm with my brother and…"

"It's fine dear, it's all fine," she said soothingly. "Don't you worry. The Phoenix Pack brought you in and they'll look after you and your brother. You've got nothing to worry about."

I fought to stay pliant in her arms as that horrific news struck me and sunk in. The Phoenix pack. The gods-damn Phoenix pack ? I'd assumed they were some kind of alpha pack, maybe more bounty hunters, or even actual soldiers, but I'd had no idea how unlucky we'd been. Everything Ivan had done was to keep me out of the hands of the Raksim royal family, and somehow we'd ended up prisoners of a royal pack.

Even in Lutin we'd heard of the two competing prince packs. In fact they were a favorite source of gossip, or at least they had been back when I'd had people to gossip with.

Pack Gorgon was led by the eldest born prince, and they already had an omega, so they were considered the main contender for the throne when the king stepped down. Pack Phoenix was weaker in terms of legitimacy, but the rumors said they were much more feral. The last I'd heard, they'd already rejected half a dozen omegas, including a princess from another kingdom. Before my father locked me up I'd heard a dozen different stories about them. That they were too insatiable to be locked down to a single mate, omega or not. That they were cold killers who planned to murder the Gorgon pack and steal their omega. That they liked to bathe in the blood of omegas to increase their magic.

I sincerely hoped that last one wasn't true.

There was no way I could fight these alphas. The smallest, most docile alpha was twice as strong as the most hearty, muscular omega. And these were princes, trained in warfare. Even if I hadn't been kept practically immobile for five years, I wouldn't have a chance.

My only choice was stealth and trickery. I had to get them to let their guard down. I had to pretend to submit, to give me and my fake-omega brother a chance to escape.

Good thing I was well-practiced in that.

I didn't have to fake meekness as the innkeeper helped me into a blue wool dress that was plain, but still finer than any I'd ever owned. Sickly fear had settled just under my skin and I felt like I would burst from it. I had always been unlucky, but this was beyond the gods-damned pale.

Even if, somehow, they never suspected I was an omega, they definitely thought Ivan was one. I knew from the rumors that at least one of them was a mage. In fact, that was probably Sir Petrichor, the mushroom-and-rain-scented alpha I'd met earlier. The idea that he was a prince gave me chills. No wonder he had seemed so cold and cruel. I shivered, remembering his suspicious reaction to what he thought was my brother's scent. If Ivan suddenly lost his omega scent while we were here, it wouldn't take a decent mage five wicks to guess our ruse.

It might only take him ten wicks to figure it out, regardless.

What would they do with us? Would they try to separate us? Send Ivan down to their king to be bitten and bred? How long could he maintain my scent alone? I suspected not long without me nearby to renew it. Omega scent was difficult to fake or every brothel in both countries would do it. And he had implied that his spell would use my pheromones somehow, rather than generating it spontaneously.

As I thought, I let the woman fuss and grumble over my hair, which was admittedly a rats' nest. I stared into space and barely reacted to her tugging a comb through it, although she must have ripped out a good quarter of my curly brown strands.

Finally, I was up to her standards. She took a firm grip of my arm and swept me into the corridor. The alpha there grinned at me again, without saying a word, and followed behind us. His lilac scent swirled around us, not unpleasant, but not helping to settle my stomach either.

We headed down some stairs and found ourselves in the biggest room I'd ever seen in my life.

The biggest building in our village was the blacksmith's home, which had four rooms as well as the actual smithy attached. It was considered extravagant, to the point of wasteful by the rest of us. My father had often complained bitterly about the blacksmith and how he thought too much of himself.

Several times as a child I'd traveled half a day to Koron for the market, and I'd seen an inn there from the outside. We'd never gone in, because my father didn't want to spend a single coin on luxuries like decent ale, or food, or music. It had looked gigantic to me, at least the size of the blacksmith's house, but with a whole other story on top.

The room I entered now could fit two of the smith's house inside it, including the smithy, and have space to spare. I counted at least a dozen tables, mostly full of men. Alpha scents rushed into my nose like I was being hit over the head with them. My eyes watered and I sneezed loudly, the sound cutting through the chatter.

Half the room snapped to attention and I found myself squirming under what seemed like hundreds of eyes, the majority of them male.

The majority of them alphas .

I had never seen so many alphas. So many predators. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. But Ivan needed me to play this role, so I lifted my chin internally, and externally I cowered behind the innkeeper. She played her own part nicely, gently coaxing me down the stairs as if I was something fragile. She pulled me towards the closest table, which was the largest in the room. The scent of petrichor, that cool musk that follows the rain, flooded my nose again, cutting through the disgusting mess of other scents, and I almost collapsed with relief.

"Here she is," the innkeeper announced without fanfare and Sir Petrichor pulled out a chair for me, right next to him. I glanced around to see if there was a better option but the innkeeper didn't give me a chance to pick. She pulled me to the table and pushed me down onto the chair. Instinctively I glared at her, then abruptly remembered I was supposed to be meek.

"Uhh… thank you?" I stammered, trying to sell it, and Petrichor snickered as if he saw right through me. Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the innkeeper's sleeve even as she turned to leave.

"You're leaving?" I gasped, as if panicked. As if I cared what she did when she so obviously worked for these alphas.

"Now, dear, I need to get back to work," she said, patting my hand but looking over my head to the rest of the room. Her eyes narrowed as if she spotted something that needed her attention. "Be good," she said without looking at me. "The pack will look after you." She was gone before she finished talking.

I peeped around the table, as if afraid. I was not afraid, I told myself, as I took in the six men, the six alphas seated there, all of their eyes trained on me. All of them huge, all of them part of the Phoenix pack.

A pack that would enslave me without a second thought if they knew who I really was.

I wasn't afraid. Not at all.