Chapter 6

Elouera

The Empress’s words chased me through the freezing corridors of the palace, sinking their claws into my fractured rib with every ragged breath I took. I didn't walk; I practically crawled through the shadows of the servant passages, my boots slipping on the damp stones.

Tomorrow at dawn. Less than twelve hours.

If the Royal Physician stripped away my bindings, the beta illusion would die on the cold examination table. If they drew my blood, the microscopic traces of the suppressants and the undeniable, biological markers of a purebred Omega would scream from the glass vials. The executioner’s block wouldn't even need to be warmed up. My mother would drown me in the harbor herself.

Panic, raw and suffocating, seized my throat. My vision blurred at the edges, tunneling until all I could see was the heavy door at the very end of the East Wing.

My sanctuary. The only place in the entire Sovereign Empire where I didn't have to wear the armor of a prince.

I fell against the door, my bloody, trembling fingers fumbling with the heavy brass handle. I practically fell inside, kicking the door shut behind me and twisting the heavy iron deadbolt until it clicked.

The air in the room hit me like a physical embrace.

It smelled of old parchment, dried chamomile, and burning cedarwood. A massive stone fireplace crackled cheerfully against the far wall, casting a rich, golden, flickering light over towering bookshelves that scraped the vaulted ceiling. It was warm. It was quiet. It was everything the brutal, cutthroat court outside was not.

"Elian? Is that you, my boy?"

The voice was a low, soothing baritone, entirely devoid of the sharp, Alpha aggression that coated every other male voice in my life.

I pushed myself off the door, clutching my left side as I limped past the heavy velvet armchairs toward the center of the study.

Archduke Holden Sovereign sat near the fire in his high tech, reinforced wheelchair. A thick blanket was draped over his motionless legs. The firelight caught the silvering edges of his hair and warmed the deep, gentle lines around his mouth. He looked up from a tome, pushing a pair of reading glasses down his nose.

His warm, crinkling eyes locked onto my face. In an instant, the gentle scholar vanished, replaced by a fierce, paternal alarm.

"Good gods," Holden breathed, wheeling himself rapidly toward me. "Elian, you’re bleeding."

The moment he reached me, the last thread of my absolute, rigid control snapped. The dam broke. I didn't care that I was supposed to be a strategist, a cold calculator, a survivor. In this room, I was just a terrified, exhausted girl who was entirely out of time.

My knees gave out.

Holden caught me before I hit the floor. His arms were surprisingly strong for a man confined to a chair, gripping my shoulders and easing me down onto the plush rug by his wheels. He didn't demand I stand up. He didn't look at me with disgust.

"Callan again?" Holden asked softly, his voice thick with a quiet, helpless fury as he reached out, his thumb gently swiping the dried blood from my scraped cheek.

I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut as a hot, humiliating tear tracked down my face. "Callan broke my rib this morning. But it isn't him. It’s her."

Holden’s hand stilled on my face. He let out a heavy, tired sigh. "Your mother. What has my sister done this time, little bird?"

"She ordered a physical," I choked out, the words tasting like ash. I leaned my forehead against the padded armrest of his wheelchair, utterly defeated. "Tomorrow at dawn. The High General demanded it. She said I have to be stripped and blood drawn, Uncle Holden. I’m dead. By this time tomorrow, they are going to kill me."

Silence blanketed the room, broken only by the sharp crackle of a log spitting sap in the hearth.

I waited for him to panic. I waited for him to tell me to run, to pack a bag and flee into the unforgiving Outback where I would surely starve.

Instead, Holden’s hand moved to the crown of my head. His fingers, warm and steady, began to slowly, rhythmically stroke my short, messy black hair. It was the only physical affection I had ever known. It grounded me. It made the chaotic, terrifying pounding of my heart slow to a manageable rhythm.

"Hush now," Holden murmured, his tone as calm as a placid lake. "Breathe, Elouera. You are safe here. I will not let them touch you."

"You can't stop the Royal Physician," I whispered into the fabric of his chair.

"I can do many things from this chair that the Empress underestimates," he replied gently. He gave my hair one last pat. "Come. Sit in the armchair. Let me look at that rib, and I will pour you some tea. We cannot think with frozen blood and panicked minds."

I obeyed, dragging my battered body up into the oversized leather armchair opposite him. I unbuttoned my military coat with shaking fingers, letting it fall open to reveal the blood stained collar of my shirt and the tight, suffocating linen bindings wrapped flat across my chest.

Holden wheeled over to a small mahogany sideboard. He poured hot water from an iron kettle into a delicate porcelain cup, adding a generous spoonful of dried herbs. The sweet, calming scent of chamomile and mint filled the space between us.

"Drink this," he instructed, pressing the warm cup into my hands. "It will ease the inflammation in your chest."

I brought it to my bruised lips, the warmth of the liquid instantly soothing my raw throat. I trusted him implicitly. Holden was the only person in the palace who knew the truth of my gender from the beginning. When I was fifteen and terrified of my changing body, it was Holden who found me crying in the archives. It was Holden who had bribed the apothecaries to create the first batch of suppressants. He was my uncle, my father, and my savior all rolled into one crippled, kind hearted man.

"The blood test is the real danger," Holden said thoughtfully, steepling his fingers beneath his chin as he watched me drink. "The bindings we can explain away as a prince's vanity a desire to hide a weak, sunken chest. But the blood will show the Omega hormones. We must mask it."

"How?" I rasped. "The current suppressants barely mask my scent anymore. This morning Callan and Stirling I think they almost smelled me. My temperature keeps spiking."

Holden’s eyes darkened with concern. He wheeled himself over to a heavy iron safe embedded in the stone wall next to the fireplace. He quickly dialed the combination, the heavy tumblers clicking into place.

"I feared your body was building a tolerance to the standard dosage," Holden said, his voice echoing slightly from inside the safe. He pulled out a small, velvet lined box and wheeled back to me.

He opened it. Inside sat a row of pills. But they weren't the chalky white tablets I was used to. These were slightly larger, tinted a faint, ominous crimson.

"What is that?" I asked, a sliver of unease cutting through the exhaustion.

"A concentrated synthetic blocker," Holden explained, his warm smile returning, entirely reassuring. "It is harsh on the system, Elian. It will make you feel as though you have a terrible fever for a few hours. But it will completely scrub your blood of any Omega markers by dawn. To the Royal Physician's needle, you will register as a pure, unremarkable Beta."

Hope, desperate and blinding, flared in my chest. I stared at the crimson pill nestled in the velvet.

"It will save me?" I whispered.

"It will give you your life back," Holden promised. He picked up the pill and held it out to me. "Take it now, with the rest of your tea. Sleep here in the study tonight. I will watch over you while the fever burns through, and tomorrow, you will walk into that medical ward and prove them all wrong."

I didn't hesitate. I couldn't afford to.

I took the crimson pill from his fingers, tossed it to the back of my throat, and washed it down with the last of the hot chamomile tea.

I expected the usual heavy, suffocating numbness of the suppressant to settle over my limbs. I leaned back in the armchair, closing my eyes, waiting for the chemical cage to lock my biology away.

But the numbness never came.

Instead, five seconds after the pill hit my stomach, a violent, searing spike of heat exploded behind my ribs.

My eyes snapped open. I gasped, my hands flying to my chest as a cramp so agonizing it rivaled my broken bone tore through my lower abdomen. It wasn't the dull ache of a suppressant. It was a vicious, uncontainable wildfire in my veins. The faint, sweet scent of wild honey and rain my scent suddenly bloomed heavily in the closed room, thick enough to choke on.

" Uncle Holden," I choked out, sliding sideways in the leather chair, my vision swimming with red spots. "Something is wrong. It burns."

I looked up at him, expecting him to call for help, to wheel forward in a panic.

But Holden didn't move.

He sat perfectly still in his wheelchair, the firelight casting long, dancing shadows across his face. The warm, paternal crinkles around his eyes had completely smoothed out. His expression was utterly blank, his eyes watching my body convulse with a cold, terrifying fascination.

"Shhh," Holden whispered, his voice sounding entirely different now devoid of any warmth, hollow and sharp as shattered glass. A slow, chilling smile stretched across his face. "Just let it take hold, little bird. I promise you by tomorrow, your mother's reign of terror over you will be completely over."