Page 60 of The King's Omega
But first I needed to understand what I was doing here.
“Roya, tell me—who are you all? What is this place?” I waved to the group, most of whom were lounging on pillows on the floor. “Why are you here? You’re all Omegas, right?” They all looked like Selene: blonde, curvy, dewy, pale skin, ruby lips, the complete Omega package.
Except none of them carried any scent whatsoever.
“We are,” Roya replied, looking around at the other women. “We are broken ones. Failed Omegas, is what our father calls us.”
My stomach lurched. “Milian?”
Another woman, who introduced herself as Haven, nodded. “The kings of Verdan have kept Omegas as pets of a sort for centuries. Separate from the world, they weren’t as susceptible to the plagues that swept across the continent. Milian became obsessed with breeding Omegas thirty years ago, when the last of his father’s harem died from a plague transmitted by a servant. Women in Verdan have never had much autonomy. Milian issued royal decrees allowing him to seize almost any woman he thought might produce Omegas and started the secret hallmark of his reign.” She waved to the room. “An Omega breeding program.”
“Where are your mothers?” I breathed. “Who were they?”
Haven struggled to answer, then rose and crossed the room, where another woman hugged her. What had I said? I glanced at Roya, who was cleaning her nails with a wicked stiletto dagger.
Her lips grew tight, but she answered, “They were women who had physical traits of Omegas, or who had known Omega ancestors before the plagues. They were forcibly mated to Alphas.”
“Milian?”
“No, though he calls us his daughters.” But she didn’t meet my eyes when she answered. There was something she was hiding, but I let it go. We all had secrets.
“We are all titled,” someone else added. “Duchesses, mostly.”
Roya shushed her. “If one of us had turned out to be an intact Omega, he needed to make sure she wasn’t his own biological daughter.”
I didn’t ask why; it was apparent. “What did he do with your mothers?”
“Either they died in childbirth, or they were given to his officers after they could no longer bear a live child.”
“Given?”
Roya couldn’t answer; eyes filling and smile quavering, she excused herself. I had a bad feeling it wasn’t sadness about her mother, though. This was something more immediate. When she’d said the wordofficer, her demeanor had shifted to pure fear.
Another woman, an older one, took Roya’s place next to me, introducing herself as Valerie. “He had an unbroken Omega here for a while. He and every other man in Verdan City took turns… attempting to mate with her.”
Oh Goddess. I knew what that meant. “Don’t they know it won’t work? The Goddess forbids it. The Omega chooses!”
“They know now,” Valerie murmured. “So at least you have that to… well. We’ve learned not to hope, here.” She waited for me to settle, then began a story.
“The Omega’s name was Cerise. She was lovely, older than me by at least a decade. His men took her off a ship near the coast; her people weren’t from the continent, so they hadn’t suffered from the plagues. Milian spent half his treasury on ships and crews seeking her island, but never found it.
“For months after her capture, Milian wooed Cerise, all the while harvesting her scent, using oils to collect and preserve it. He would gift a bottle of it to his officers when they received one of our mothers.” She took a breath, then went on, “When the scent ran out, as it always did, the officers lost interest, and needed fresh mates.”
“They set them aside?”
Her look was pitying. “After a fashion.”
Had they killed their own mates? “But—the mating bites.” I had read that part of the book, and asked King Rigol about it, trying to see if there was a loophole, a way out for Rigol with Selene as his bitten mate, but there didn’t seem to be.
Roya had recovered her composure, and her tone was tart. “They wouldn’t bite a temporary mate, would they?”
I fought back bile. “The officers. They’re Alphas?”
“Every last one, but as broken as we are. They don’t protect at all. They are predators. They commit atrocities for Milian, all for the chance at receiving an Omega.”
“But without your scent…” I wasn’t sure how to say it.
“They don’t care that the King’s Omegas are damaged, not when he can supply them with the scent that makes us—their property—smell like a perfect Omega, for a while at least.”
