CHAPTER FIVE

Kei caught the exact moment my gaze landed onto his collar.

His sharp eyes narrowed into a dangerous slit, and without a word, he reached up to tug the high fabric of his uniform back into place to completely conceal the mark.

The room grew suffocatingly cold, but with me being naturally curious, the silence didn't last long.

"So, you have a fated mate," I blurted out before I could stop myself. "Do you... do you love them already? I didn't know a Beta could have a fated bond like that."

My tutor didn’t even answer. He simply stared down at me with an expression so deadpan and freezing that the remaining words died in my throat.

The atmosphere immediately shifted. The air around us became hot, and with vibration of an unspoken warning that made my lungs ache.

So left with no choice under that quiet warning, I quickly lowered my face, pursing my lips in a silent pout.

'He is so incredibly grumpy,' I grumbled to myself, staring intensely at the floorboards.

'Maybe his mate rejected him.' I mused quietly, snickering.

That would explain why his attitude is so completely unlikeable. I mean, who would want a tutor who acts like he’s perpetually preparing for a funeral?

***

Hours crawled by like a slow torture of history dates and political boundaries I couldn't comprehend. The time limit had passed minutes ago, yet he still hadn't dismissed me. So now I was forced to sit pretty here, waiting for his permission.

I sighed as I stared at the window then back at him. I narrowed my eyes as he focused on whatever he was doing.

'How can someone be that infuriating.'

'I pity whoever he was being mated to. I pity his mate the most.' I snickered as I imagine him being taken from behind, again and again and.... wait, why am I building a scenario of my tutor being a bottom?

My mouth twitched in embarassment as I averted my face away.

'He doesn't have the vibe of being a bottom. Then does it mean, he's the top? But he's a beta, and a beta being fated with an alpha is unheard of. So him having a omega mate is the only possibility and a omega being a top?' I shivered at the thought of his omega mate topping him.

But then if it was my omega...

"Stop grinning like a dog." A sharp voice snapped me back from my thoughts. His voice alone was enough to kill my grin instantly.

By the time I was finally dismissed, the sun was already dipping below the horizon. I practically dragged myself down the grand corridors back to my private chamber, murmuring bitter, childish curses under my breath with every step as I thought back from my test results.

I hadn’t even been allowed to finish when the time reached its limit, hell, he did give me more times of just staring there than give me a time to answer my test paper. And out of a hundred questions on that evaluation, I had only managed to scratch down answers for ten of them.

And when Kei graded it right in front of me?

Only five were correct.

The red ink he used to mark my failures looked like fresh blood on the clean white parchment.

I fell face-first onto my large, newly changed sheets bed, letting out a loud, pathetic groan into the mattress.

At least I got the easiest ones right. I knew there were only two major kingdoms in existence, both ruthlessly ruled by Alphas. I knew the full name of the King, considering the tyrant was my own father. I knew the animal representation of an Alpha was a lion, because naturally, they considered themselves the kings and leaders of everything.

And then, there were the last two. I had written that Betas were represented by foxes, clever, adaptable, the second-in-command who kept the empire running behind the scenes. But for the Omega? I had written a bird. Because to the rest of the world, to the high-society Alphas of the court, an Omega only truly existed when they were locked inside a cage, singing for their master.

I rolled onto my back to gaze up at my room ceiling. My forearms were still throbbing slightly from where Kei’s wooden stick had struck earlier.

He was a horrible tutor. Rough, arrogant, and completely devoid of the proper respect he should use when to talking to royalty like me.

This was the first time in my entire life that anyone had ever dared to treat me this way. Even if my body was weak and plagued by the remnants of childhood illness, no one had openly shown their distaste in my face before, I was still an Alpha after all.

I belonged to the dominant dynamic by blood and heritage, so to speak ill in front of me is to asks for punishment.

Yet, as I lay there in the quiet room, I didn't think of a punishment I could order to give, instead, there this strange, traitorous shiver rippled beneath my skin.

I couldn't deny the terrifying, intoxicating intrigue of it all, especially thinking about the scenario I made about my tutor being a dominant top.

I could really see it. When he commanded me, when he physically pinned my shoulder and looked down at me with absolute authority... it felt as if I were being completely dominated.

Not as a Prince, but as something else. Something smaller.

My mind once again drifted to my late night omega assassin, and then to the concept of being fated mates.

In every text I had ever sneaked a glance at, the Alpha was always the one who conquered, controlled, and claimed. The Alpha was supposed to be the master. But as I closed my eyes, the vivid image of a dark, dangerous shadow towering over my bed made my breath hitch.

I didn't imagine myself conquering them. I imagined myself submitting.

I gasped and sat up abruptly, aggressively shaking my head to beat the scandalous thoughts away. This is actually the third time I let myself be swayed by the thought of being dominated.

"No," I whispered to the empty room, my face burning with a furious, mortifying blush. "Alphas dominate. An Alpha is an Alpha. I am a Prince." I repeated each word like a mantra.

I stood up and paced the room, my green robes swishing softly against my legs. My mind was a battlefield. Why was I like this? Why did the thought of a rough hand or a sharp command make my heart stutter in such a... wrong way?

Desperate for a distraction, I reached down to soothe the sudden, nervous ache in my stomach, my fingers brushing against the hem of my royal tunic.

But I froze.

The fabric of my shirt felt slightly stiff on one side, right near my waist. My heart skipped a beat, then it began to thud like a drum against my ribs. 

Slowly, with trembling fingers, I pulled the fine silk material upward, exposing the lower right side of my ribs where the red, burning mark resided.

The red initials K.T. were still there, seared into my skin. But as I stared at the mark in the dim evening light, my eyes widened in absolute horror.

The skin around the mark wasn't just red anymore. It was glowing with a faint, pulsing light. It looked as though liquid fire was running beneath my skin, tracing the letters of a name or a title that I didn't even understand. My hand hovered over it, but I didn't dare touch it. The heat radiating from my own flesh was enough to singe my fingertips.

Then, the air in the room changed.

It wasn't a scent from the open balcony. It wasn't the scent of the palace gardens or the heavy incense my servants burned to mask the smell of the city.

There, clinging subtly to my room, is a faint, sharp pheromones, a familiar metallic mixed with wet forest leaves that perfectly matched the aroma of the dagger that had been pressed to my throat before.

It was the scent of the rebel assassin who had held my life in his hands. It was sharp, aggressive, and undeniably powerful. It was so thick and heavy that it felt like a physical hand wrapping directly around my throat, squeezing until I couldn't swallow.

My breath hitched. 'He was here.'

My eyes darted to the door. The handle didn't move. The locks remained engaged. And yet, the room was becoming hot with his presence.

I felt a sudden desperate, primal urge to kneel, a reflex so ingrained in my body that I had to grip the edge of my vanity to keep my legs from buckling.

'He’s in the room,' I thought, my blood running cold. 'Or he’s right outside.'

I spun around, my back hitting the mirror, searching the shadows of the room. The corners of the ceiling, the space behind the heavy velvet curtains, the dark void under my bed, everywhere I looked, I expected to see a white veil and a dagger.

"Are you there?" I called out, my voice thin and fragile.

Silence answered me, but the scent intensified. It was no longer just the smell of a stranger, it was the smell of my own biology reacting to the familiar intruder.

My heart was no longer thudding, it was screaming. The crimson glow on my ribs flared brighter, a beacon in the darkness, pulsating in time with the thundering rhythm of my pulse.

My hand went to my waist, covering the mark as if I could stifle the scent, but it was futile. The intruder wasn't hiding his pheromones.

He was flooding the room with them, a blatant, territorial display that left no doubt about who he was looking for.

I felt a slight vibration from the door. 

Then, a slow, calculated sound, the deliberate scrape of a blade against the metal of the lock.

'He wasn't breaking in.' I thought to myself, breathing hard. 'He was inviting himself...'

My Alpha instincts were now paralyzed, trapped between the terror of a rebel invasion and the overwhelming, intoxicating pull of the fated mate bond.

I am not an Omega.

But I felt like I was a bird in a cage, and this time, the hunter was finally standing on the other side of the bars.