"Fiancée," I echoed, the bottle of water shaking in my grasp.

The word tumbled out of me in a shaky breath. My face went hot and my limbs went cold, both stretching towards the extremities.

"Your Highness!" Brynn gasped upon rounding the corner, the ever stern woman nearly shoving herself into the ground trying to give a proper curtesy. "We didn’t know to expect you!"

And then, she began gushing about how delighted she was to be in her presence, glazing her with compliment after compliment, until she was ordered to join the help with carrying the rest of the boxes outside.

"Make yourself useful," I believe those were the woman’s exact words.

But there was a wall of air in my ears, a blankness falling over my mind.

The woman’s eyes returned to me. Her lips parted to speak, but at the last second, her grey eyes lifted above my shoulder. I felt it half a second later. The steady wall of heat and the smell of Mercer’s aftershave.

"Koen," she said in a scathing tone.

I heard Mercer’s voice half a second later. "Princess." His tone was edgy and even if I didn’t turn, I felt the tension shoot up to the roof.

"Is that any way to greet your guest?" she said, tone so full of frost, it burned. And I recognized the thing under it. Had seen it in my own eyes every time I looked in the mirror after a hot dream.

It was desire.

"A guest doesn’t often invite themselves over without permission," Mercer growled.

"I wasn’t aware I needed permission to visit my mates." She flashed her perfectly manicured nails. "And besides, if any of you had deigned to pick up your cellphones, you would know Her Majesty sent me here."

Another voice joined in behind me. It was Quinlan’s. "We all know you’ve never needed an excuse."

Tessa Graham smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was cruel. "I missed you the most, Chastain. You weren’t so mouthy when I had my lips around you."

Brynn who was carrying a—a piece of vanity set—choked on a cough.

I hadn’t gotten past the first part. I felt like an observer in a lovers spat. There was a spreading burn in my chest the longer I looked at her. I imagined if anyone would look like they were born wearing a crown, it would be her.

She was regal in a way that spoke of royalty embedded into her very genes.

I hadn’t understood what Brynn meant when she said I had no grace, no decorum or refined qualities or charms. Until now.

Tessa Graham was an anathema to every thing I wasn’t, and it was so staggering, I felt like the dirt beneath her feet.

Erasthai. Fiancée.

A noose tightened around my neck.

"The Queen has been worried sick about you," she continued. "She worries that your attention has been thoroughly divided lately, and you must need a reminder, amongst all of these lesser creatures, what a taste of home feels like. The wedding is in a couple weeks. It is her deepest wish that we get properly acquainted in the days leading up to it." A pause. "Did you know? It’s been made a public event. For maximum attendance, the date has been made a nationwide holiday."

Everytime she opened her mouth, the burning sensation in my chest worsened. It felt like someone had shoved glass down my throat.

Soren appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Tessa’s wrist. "We need to talk."

Her shoulder knocked into mine as he tugged her forward, and Tessa went still.

Still as a statue.

Her eyes went wide and her nose tipped to the air, sniffing once.

Her nostrils flared and her perfect brows furrowed in befuddlement as she turned those eyes of steel to me. My body went rigid. Every never in my body began screaming at me to back the hell up.

She was throwing off a terrifying amount of aura. Enough to make sweat break on my skin.

She broke free of Soren’s hold and, without warning, lashed out at me.

Her hands found my hair and she pulled me with such startling strength, my body had no choice but to follow. She crushed me into her chest, clutching my shoulder firmly. She was taller than me. She was even more startling beautiful up close. And her eyes were filled with confusion as her pink tongue darted out of her mouth and licked the air in front of me, as if to taste it. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

"Is that..." Her voice tracked off. Something feminine, yet animal rattled in her chest.

In my peripheral, I saw someone move to get me away from her. But they weren’t fast enough.

Tessa Graham struck like a viper and sunk her fangs into my neck.

Heat tingled from the point of contact, flaring hotter and hotter and I felt her tongue slide over the puncture and—

I should’ve moved, pushed her off me, but I think I might have been in shock.

She was torn off me a second later, but I couldn’t use my legs. I felt back to the ground, chest heaving as I stared up at her, clutching my neck.

My blood dribbled down her chin. Her eyes were wide and filled with such anger, I felt it shake everything.

She turned her gaze from me to Soren. "What have you done?" she asked softly.

Soren’s violet eyes were raw. I thought I saw something I had never seen in them before, and they reflected in the other four sets of eyes in the hall.

Fear.

When Tessa Graham spoke again, it was a shriek that shook the chandeliers above our heads. It was graceless. It was a freaking roar that had the help scampering outside.

"What have you done?!"

******

The sound of glass shattering echoed throughout the mansion.

Corazon and I winced for the fifteenth time, glancing over our shoulders at Soren’s bedroom door where all five of them had disappeared into over an hour ago.

The shrieking had been going on for an hour. Occasionally, we heard the crashing of furniture and slamming against the walls. Not a single one of them had been out of that room.

My foot bobbed up and down on the stool I was perched on. The glass of water in my grip was untouched. I couldn’t get my mind to focus on anything and I finally broke the silence.

"How long have they been engaged for?"

Corazon pulled on the mittens. "Since they were children. She’s always been a given. Since her mother squirted her out and took her to the Queen for her blessings, it’s been a sealed deal."

I chewed my lip. "So... she’s engaged to all four of them."

"Soren was hers first. Then he found the convergence with his brothers, and they became hers, too." She pulled out a pan from the oven. "Surprised at the speed. They’ve been putting it off for so long, no one thought it would actually happen."

"Putting it off?" Something warmed the cold spot in my chest. It felt a little too pathetic. Like hope. "It’s not a match they want? There’s no... affection between them?"

Corazon looked at me like I was stupid. "Affection? What kind of stupid wolf and human crap do you think this is? This is the royal family. They don’t ’want’. They don’t do ’affection’. They make alliances. They breed. They exchange their DNAs according to compatibility and potency to produce powerful heirs. No ordinary low born can wed a royal."

Ordinary, low born.

Beside Tessa Graham’s potent royal blood that aged as far back as a millennia, I was an ordinary, low born omega.

I didn’t come close. And I never would.

Why that hurt me, I didn’t know.

Corazon dropped a slice of strawberry pie in front of me. "Eat, girl. They’ll be at it for another hour, at least."

I bit the inside of my cheek hard, staring at the pie without even the tiniest bit of appetite.

Why didn’t they tell me? How could they keep something like this from me? I always knew I didn’t know a lot of things about them, but this... it was too much.

How could they touch me the way they did, knowing they had an Erasthai? And they were engaged to be married in what, weeks?

It felt a little too much like the woman of the house returning home and finding that her husband had a dirty little secret stashed safely in the corner.

Was that what I was to them? Their dirty secret? Did they mean it when they called me slut? Kissing me, taking off my clothes, fondling my breasts, fingering me... was that all just to prove that I was no better than their dirty little slut? I hadn’t let myself consider what I actually meant to them, I didn’t think it was that.

I felt like a complete idiot.

My lips wobbled and tears stung my eyes, one drop falling into Corazon’s pie.

She whacked the back of my head. "I spent hours making that, ya moron." Then she added with a sigh, "I told you falling for these men would kill you."

She had, in fact, never told me that.

My face crumpled when I realized that slowly, foolishly, I had begun to feel something for them.