Page 4 of Vicious Kings
The smoke swirls and forms shapes. I look for the sign of blood. For raw physical power. For death.
Instead I see myself surrounded by four figures. Two flicker between human and beast—shifters. The other two have that particular Fae quality, that too-perfect, unsettling beauty, even rendered in smoke and spectral light.
And above all of it, glowing like a brand burned into the air…
The omega symbol.
The mark of human cattle. The mortals whose very biology betrays their own kind, capable of bearing the spawn of the creatures who've subjugated us for centuries, of guaranteeing the continuation of the very bloodlines Seveline and every hunter after her spent their lives wiping from existence.
No. That's wrong. That can't be right.
The vision dissolves and I crash back into my body, water breaking against jagged rocks.
Pain everywhere. Blood in my mouth. The stone floor cold against my cheek. The gown twisted around my legs.
Silence. Complete, absolute silence.
Then the whispers start.
I push myself up on my elbows. The faces of my kin are frozen in disbelief. My father's jaw is locked tight, but I can see the horror in his eyes.
The shame.
The Shepherd stares down at me. When he speaks, his voice carries across the chamber like a funeral bell.
"Omega."
An accusation. Or a condemnation.
"No." It tears out of my throat raw and desperate. "That's impossible. Hunters aren't omegas. Our bloodlines are protected. We're bred to kill supernaturals, not?—"
Not carry their children. Not be their fucking broodmares.
"The resonance doesn't lie." His voice has gone cold. "You are an omega, Wilhelmina Moreau. The vision showed your true nature. Four mates. Two shifters, two Fae."
Four mates.
A sick joke. I'm supposed to be a weapon. I'm supposed to avenge my mother. I'm supposed tokill Prince Corvinus, not… whatever the hell this is.
"This is wrong." I claw my way to my feet, the gown's weight fighting me. "Run the ritual again. The poison was tainted or the spell was corrupted or?—"
"Enough." He raises one hand and my mouth shuts, not by choice. The command resonance in the Shepherd's voice just closes it. Another reminder of why he occupies his current position, and exactly how much power I don't have right now. "The ritual has spoken. You are an omega."
The whispers get louder. Shocked. Confused. The sound of a world, a life, rewriting itself around me.
The girl who was supposed to be the greatest hunter of her generation is instead its greatest liability.
Omegas don't hunt. Omegas get detected and extracted by the Fae the moment their resonance blooms. They are funneled into schools and colleges where they're trained and brainwashed for a destiny that runs in exact opposition to everything I am. Everything I've spent twenty years becoming.
"What do we do with her?" someone in the crowd demands. My aunt, I think. I can't make myself look.
The Shepherd considers me like I'm a particularly inconvenient problem. "She cannot roam free. Now that her resonance has been Unmasked, she is a threat to our very way of life. The Fae will sense what she is, eventually even through the wards. They will come for her."
"Then we hide her." My father speaks for the first time, his voice rough with something I haven't heard from him in eight years. "Keep her here, protected, until?—"
"Until what, Rowan?" The Shepherd's tone sharpens. "Until her mates come calling? Until every supernatural in the territory catches her scent and decides our compound would make a fine target?" He shakes his head. "No. There is only one solution."
My blood turns cold.
