All Chapters of Rejected Omega Princess: Meet My Overprotective Brothers: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The second time I woke up in Mooncrest, I knew better than to think it was a dream.The smells were the same as before: herbs, beeswax, and clean smoke. The mattress had the same solid give under my shoulders. The faint murmur of voices outside the door had the same low, disciplined cadence.Bloodthorn nightmares didn’t come with clean sheets.I lay still—for a moment—just breathing.No one burst in to yell at me to get up. No hand slammed into my shoulder. No bucket of cold water upended over my head.Silence, edged with unfamiliar safety.Then habit shoved me upright.My muscles complained less this time. The worst of the fall’s bruises had eased under Theron’s care; my head only ached faintly when I moved too fast.The room looked different in daylight.It wasn’t large, but it felt bigger than any space I’d had to myself before. A single bed, neatly made except where I’d wrinkled the blanket. A small chest at the foot. A chair by the bedside. Shelves on one wall, holding folded lin

After Alden left with orders on his lips and my heart in my throat, the room felt too small.I sat on the bed, staring at the closed door, trying to reconcile two worlds in my skull.In one, I was Aria—the omega servant, the girl who scrubbed floors and took beatings and signed nothing because no one thought her worth the ink.In the other, I was Lyris Aria Mooncrest—the burnt name on a file, the ghost in a portrait, the flare in four men’s chests.Some part of me wanted to curl into a ball and wait for someone else to decide which one survived.The rest knew that was how I’d died last time.***Alden came back that evening.No entourage. No trumpets. Just a knock and then the door swinging open because princes didn’t have to wait for permission.He stepped in, closed it behind him, and leaned back against the wood for a moment, as if he, too, needed a breath before this conversation.I stood automatically, hands knotting in the hem of the tunic Ida had foisted on me.“Your Highness,”

“She already has,” Alden said.The scout blinked, thrown. His gaze darted from the prince to me and back again, as if his brain was catching up to a story his body had already sensed.“So the seer is…" late,” Jax muttered, half amused, half annoyed. “For once.”“Or we’re early,” Theron replied. “Unlikely, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”Alden’s eyes stayed on me for another heartbeat, something like resolution settling there.“Tell the capital we’re on our way,” he said to the scout. “And have them prepare the council.”The scout bowed his head. “Yes, Your Highness.”He swung back into the saddle and galloped off, cloak snapping.The rest of the journey blurred after that.The road widened as we moved north, flanked by more frequent outposts and waystones carved with twin crescents. Villages cropped up now and then—clusters of stone houses around wells and shrines, banners fluttering with the Mooncrest sigil in the wind.People paused as we passed, bowing to the pr

They didn’t make me wait long.By nightfall, the entire castle seemed to hold its breath.Servants moved more quietly. Guards spoke in low tones. Somewhere above, bells chimed the hour, their notes echoing down stone corridors like a countdown.Alden met me outside a set of heavy double doors I hadn’t seen before, deep in the castle’s inner wing.“This is the ancestral chamber,” he said. “Rituals. Oaths. Some people say it’s where the curse first bound itself to our line.”“Reassuring,” I muttered.He huffed a short, almost reluctant laugh.“Theron insists on calling this a procedure,” he added. “Rowan calls it theatre. I’ll let you decide which it feels like.”I swallowed.“What happens if it… doesn’t work?” I asked. “If it says I’m no one?”He hesitated.“Then,” he said carefully, “we reassess what protections we can afford you as a… guest. And I have a very long conversation with the Goddess about Her sense of humor.”It's not exactly comforting.“But we don’t sell you back to Bloo

The words hung in the air like a drawn sword.“We do not return family as property.”Alden laid the Bloodthorn letter on the table, smoothing it with two fingers as if he could press the arrogance out of the ink.Around him, the room tensed.Jax’s jaw clenched hard enough that a vein stood out in his neck. Theron’s mouth went flat, eyes iced. Rowan toyed with the stem of his goblet, spinning it slowly between his fingers in a way that suggested he was picturing someone’s neck instead.I stared at the letter.Even from across the table, I could see the tight, self‑important script, the blot where Father’s name probably sat, the flourish that would be Alpha Blackthorn’s mark.Runaway omega servant. Stolen property. Damage to reputation.They’d always been good with words.“Read it out,” Rowan said lightly, though his eyes were sharp.Alden exhaled through his nose, then obliged.“‘To the esteemed Mooncrest court,’” he began, voice flat. “‘It has come to our attention that you are harbor