Chapter 2

Elouera's POV

I stood at the edge of the sprawling, open air fighting pit, the morning sun offering no warmth against the biting chill of the mountain air. My stomach was still violently protesting the chemical poison of the morning’s suppressant, and the phantom heat from my encounter with Callan in the hallway continued to hum beneath my skin like a live wire.

I kept my head bowed, my shoulders slumped. Around the perimeter of the sunken sand pit, a smattering of royal guards and lesser nobles had gathered. They weren't here to train; they were here for daily entertainment. They were here to watch the wolves play with the bleeding lamb.

Down in the center of the arena, Crown Prince Callan was already a blur of lethal motion.

He was stripped to the waist, a heavy, blunted practice broadsword in his hand. Sweat glossed over his heavily muscled back and shoulders as he mercilessly battered a sparring dummy into splinters. The air around him was choked with his scent of frost and dark cedar, spiked with a feral, agitated aggression that made the Beta guards around the ring shift uncomfortably.

He was furious. I knew exactly why.

Our encounter in the corridor had rattled him. Callan was a pureblood Alpha, driven by logic, dominance, and absolute control. The sudden, inexplicable reaction he’d had to my proximity the way his pupils had blown wide, the way he had leaned in to smell me was a violation of his own iron-clad worldview. He didn't understand it, so he was trying to beat it out of his system.

With a final, devastating swing, Callan cleaved the head off the wooden dummy. It hit the sand with a heavy thud.

He didn't turn around. His chest heaved as he lowered the blade. "Elian."

The single word cracked across the silent arena like a whip. My real name, Elouera, whispered in the back of my mind, a ghost I couldn't acknowledge. I stepped forward, forcing my hands to tremble visibly as I descended the stone steps into the sand.

"Brother," I answered, keeping my voice thin and reedy.

Callan finally turned. His ice blue eyes locked onto me, devoid of the strange, dark hunger I’d seen in the hallway. Now, there was only cold, unadulterated malice. He kicked a second wooden practice sword across the sand. It skidded to a halt at my boots.

"Pick it up."

I hesitated, playing the coward. I looked around at the onlookers, letting a flash of perfectly feigned panic cross my face. "Callan, I am not feeling well this morning. The court physician said I should rest"

"I said, pick it up." He took a step toward me, his Alpha command rolling off him in a heavy, suffocating wave.

I bent down and grabbed the hilt of the wooden sword. It was heavy, weighted with lead in the core to mimic real steel. In the shadows of the lower city, my clandestine combat instructors had taught me how to wield a blade with deadly, fluid grace. I knew how to find the balance point, how to pivot my hips to generate devastating torque, how to slip beneath a larger opponent's guard and slice the tendons behind their knees.

Instead, I gripped the hilt with two hands, locking my elbows awkwardly, and held it too high.

Callan sneered. "Pathetic. Attack me."

I swallowed hard and lunged forward, executing a clumsy, telegraphed downward strike.

Callan didn't even bother to parry. He simply stepped sideways, letting my own momentum carry me forward, and slammed the flat of his heavy blade into the small of my back.

The impact knocked the breath from my lungs. I slammed face first into the crushed limestone, the rough sand tearing the skin off my cheek. Searing pain erupted across my spine. A chorus of quiet, mocking laughter rippled through the spectators.

"Get up," Callan snarled, stepping over me.

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, spitting the metallic taste of blood from my mouth. Focus, I told myself. Breathe through the pain. Watch his feet.

I stood, swaying slightly on purpose, and raised my sword again.

Callan attacked this time. He came at me with terrifying speed, a horizontal sweep aimed right at my ribs. My finely tuned instincts screamed at me to drop and roll beneath the arc. It would have been so easy. I could have swept his leg and had him on his back before he could blink.

Instead, I froze, raising my blade in a panicked, rigid block.

His strike shattered my guard instantly. The wooden sword violently slammed against my ribs. I heard a sickening crack and screamed a real, agonizing scream as I was thrown sideways into the dirt.

My vision swam with dark spots. The heavy linen binding wrapped tightly around my chest dug mercilessly into my bruised, possibly fractured ribs. The pain was blinding, but beneath it, my mind was a cold, perfectly quiet machine, running calculations.

He drops his left shoulder a fraction of a second before a heavy strike. Strike one catalogued.

"You are a disgrace to the Sovereign bloodline," Callan spat, kicking my dropped sword away. "You are weak. You are a stain. I don't know why the Empress doesn't just drown you."

I curled into a ball, clutching my side, squeezing my eyes shut to let a single tear leak out. Play the part, Elouera. Let him think he is a god.

"Get up!" Callan roared, his voice cracking with a sudden, wild intensity.

I staggered to my feet, clutching my ribs, my military coat covered in white dust and blood. Callan closed the distance between us before I could take a breath. He didn't use his sword. He dropped it and grabbed me by the lapels of my coat, hauling me entirely off the ground.

My toes scrambled for purchase in the sand. I was pressed flush against his bare, sweat slicked chest. The heat radiating off him was immense.

"Why do you look at me like that?" Callan hissed, shaking me violently. His face was inches from mine, his pupils dilated so wide his eyes looked almost black.

"Like what?" I choked out, genuinely struggling to breathe as the collar of my coat dug into my windpipe.

"Like you're hiding something," he breathed, his voice dropping to a dangerous, ragged whisper.

The air between us shifted. The adrenaline and the physical trauma were making my heart race, burning through the morning's suppressant at an alarming rate. I could feel my core temperature spiking. Beneath the scent of his sweat and cedar, the faint, undeniable sweetness of wild honey and rain began to bloom in the cold air.

Callan froze. His chest stopped heaving.

His eyes dropped to my mouth, then to the pale skin of my neck exposed by the disheveled collar. He leaned in, his nose brushing against my jawline, taking a deep, shuddering inhale. A low, terrifying growl rumbled deep in his chest not a sound of hatred, but of raw, possessive hunger.

My body went numb. If he smelled it, if he truly registered the Omega scent underneath the blood and dirt I was dead. The empire would tear me apart before the sun set.

His large hand slid from my lapel, his knuckles dragging dangerously down the center of my chest, moving exactly toward the unnatural flatness of my linen bindings. If he felt the thick layers of cloth beneath my shirt, the illusion of the Beta prince would shatter instantly.

"Callan" I gasped, trying to pull away, but his grip was like iron.

His fingers curled into the fabric over my heart, pressing down.

"Your Highness."

The voice was quiet. It didn't boom across the arena like Callan’s, yet it cut through the heavy, pheromone choked air like a serrated blade.

Callan flinched, snapping his head up. His grip loosened just enough for my boots to hit the sand, though he didn't let me go.

I turned my head, my breath catching painfully in my throat.

Standing at the top of the stone steps, blocking out the morning sun, was a towering silhouette in an immaculate, pitch black military uniform. The dark brown fade of his hair was flawless, his posture perfectly rigid. But it was his eyes that stole the air from my lungs. Storm grey, lethal, and missing absolutely nothing.

Commander Jace Corowa had arrived from the Outback sectors.

He slowly descended the steps, his boots making no sound against the stone. He didn't look at Callan. His intense, terrifying gaze was locked entirely on me, tracking the blood on my cheek, the tremble in my legs, and the exact spot where Callan’s hand was still tangled in my shirt.

Jace stopped at the edge of the sand. He tilted his head, his nostrils flaring just a fraction of an inch and in those stormy, unreadable eyes, I saw the exact moment the Commander realized the Crown Prince was holding something that didn't belong to him.