Page 127 of The Omega Princess

I scratched the side of my neck, thinking about it.

“You’re not into that,” said Maguire, looking me over.

“I would have been,” I said. “Only a few weeks ago, I would have agreed. I would have said to give Devlin whatever he needs, because I want Devlin to be happy, because I’m in love with him, and I don’t mind.”

“And now?” said Eleri.

“It’s only that he’s not her only alpha,” I said. “He’s not, and I don’t see why he gets to have her all to himself for any period of time just because he’s got pain. We all have pain, Maguire.”

“He wouldn’t do it, anyway,” said Eleri. “He wouldn’t, because he knows that’s not what I want, and he wants to make me happy, because he’s in love with me.”

She was right about that.

“But he is the pack leader,” said Maguire. “And in packs, there’s a hierarchy, and it feels good to give in to it. It’s not fair, necessarily, but it’s not about fairness, it’s about settling into your proper place. Submitting to him, it feels good.”

“Well, I have to agree with that,” I said. “But I’ve been looking into that, too, and it’s apparently not true.”

“What isn’t?” said Eleri.

“The pack leader thing,” I said. “There’s no such thing, apparently.”

Maguire’s eyebrows shot up.

Eleri pushed out of my arms. “But in the press, whenever they report on packs, especially with that alpha pack in the Valhn Kingdom, they’re always talking about who the pack leader is and how that changes the dynamic.”

“Yeah, apparently, the tabloids made it up.” I shrugged. “It’s not easy to get information about this, because there really haven’t been any formal studies on people with designations, let alone alpha packs. But I’ve been reading some history books. In the past, it seems like designations within the peerage were more prevalent. It wouldn’t be only four or five per generation. It would be more like twenty, and they were more omegas. Sometimes, there weren’t enough alphas for all of the omegas, and that was when these packs started emerging, but they weren’t alpha packs. They were one omega with a bunch of normal guys, because the omega couldn’t be satisfied otherwise.”

“When did it change?” said Eleri.

“Why did it change?” said Maguire.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if what Sinclair was saying is true, that it’s an adaptation that happens for mating purposes, it would make more sense if it was more likely to result in, you know, offspring when the world was less populous. This kind of thing, four alphas for one omega, anyone can see that’s not going to result in a lot of babies, right?”

“I guess not,” said Eleri. “So, we’re… nature is trying to breed us out?”

“Then why are we commoners presenting?”

“No one knows,” I said. “It’s all speculation. Sinclair thinks it’s because of the peerage trying to keep all the designations in the bloodline. It’s like when you breed purebred animals and they start mutating in ways that don’t make sense. If that’s true, then commoners presenting only makes sense.”

“Are you guys all inbred?” said Maguire, making a face.

“Not nowadays,” I said. “But… I mean, go back a few generations?” I shrugged.

“Everyone knows this,” said Eleri. “It’s one of the reasons they changed the rules of succession to favor alphas and omegas instead of primogeniture. Didn’t you get taught this in history class, Maguire?”

“I got taught all kinds of things,” said Maguire. “I didn’t pay a lot of attention in school.”

“Anyway,” I said, “the point is, it’s not ‘natural’ for alphas to pack up. It’s something that alphas started doing because of a lack of omegas. And the fact we can submit to each other, it’s maybe dependent on the situation. Right now, I submit to Devlin, and Sinclair submits to me, so it’s obvious I’m not fully submissive or else I’d always submit.”

“But I am,” whispered Eleri.

“Well, yeah,” I said.

“Except not exactly,” said Maguire. “Because I think we’d all agree that the omega has power over us in a way that another alpha never could.”

That was true. I nodded slowly.

“Back to Devlin and Sinclair hurting each other,” said Eleri. “We need to go back, don’t we? We need to intervene.”

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