The Omega Who Knew Too Much

Missing

The room was small, and it smelled like old paper and dust.

My eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, and at first I thought it was just a forgotten study — shelves, a desk, a single chair. Then I saw the wall.

It was covered in names.

Hundreds of them, written in neat rows, each one followed by a date and a small symbol I didn't recognize — a circle with a line through it. My breath caught in my throat as I stepped closer, scanning name after name after name.

Lia of the Hallow Pack. Bryn of the Iron Creek Pack. Sarai of the Whitestone Pack.

Omegas. All of them. I could feel it in my bones even before I saw the small note carved into the wood beneath the list: *Sent. Never returned.*

My hands were shaking as I reached out and touched the closest name. This wasn't a trophy wall. This wasn't a king bragging about the women he'd killed.

This was someone keeping track. Someone who cared enough to write every single name down.

That didn't fit the story everyone told.

I heard footsteps in the hallway and my heart slammed into my throat. I spun around, looking for somewhere to hide, but the room was too small, too bare, too obviously a place I wasn't supposed to be.

The door opened.

A man filled the doorway — tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair pushed back from a face carved out of stone. A scar cut through one eyebrow. His eyes, when they landed on me, were the coldest thing I had ever seen, colder than the stone walls, colder than the wind outside.

I didn't need anyone to tell me who he was.

"Who let you in here?" His voice was quiet. That was somehow worse than if he'd shouted.

"Nobody," I said, because it was the truth, and because lying felt like the fastest way to die. "The door was open."

His eyes moved past me to the wall, to the names, and something shifted in his face — something quick and sharp, like pain, gone before I could be sure I'd seen it at all.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.

"Why do you have a wall of names?" The question came out before I could stop it. Fear should have kept my mouth shut. It didn't. "If you killed them, why would you keep count?"

His jaw tightened. For a long moment he just looked at me, like he was deciding something, weighing something I couldn't see.

"That's none of your business."

"You made it my business the second your guards dragged me into this palace," I said, my voice shaking but not stopping. "Every omega in that hall back there thinks they're walking into a grave. If that's not true, then what is?"

"You think you're the first omega brave enough to ask questions?" His voice dropped even lower, dangerous now. "Brave doesn't keep you alive here. It gets you killed faster."

"Then kill me," I said, lifting my chin even though my whole body wanted to run. "Because I'm not going to pretend I didn't see this. I'm not going to disappear quietly like everyone expects me to."

Something in his expression cracked — just slightly, just for a second — like nobody had ever spoken to him that way before. Like nobody had ever dared.

He took a step closer. I made myself hold my ground, even as every instinct screamed at me to back away from a man who radiated power like heat off a flame.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Emilia."

"Emilia." He said it slowly, like he was testing the shape of it. "You have no idea what you just walked into."

"Then tell me."

His eyes flicked to the door behind me, to the hallway beyond it, like he was listening for something — someone. Whatever he heard made his whole body go rigid.

"Not here," he said, voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "Not where they can hear."

"Who's they?"

He didn't answer. Instead he reached out, gripped my arm — not hard, not cruel, but firm enough that I knew there was no arguing — and pulled me toward the door.

"You're going to walk beside me, you're going to say nothing, and you're going to look like you belong here," he said. "If anyone asks, you're the new omega assigned to my chambers tonight. Do you understand?"

My pulse spiked. "Why?"

His eyes met mine, and for the first time I saw something underneath all that ice — something that looked almost like fear.

"Because now that you've seen that wall," he said, "you're not safe anywhere else in this palace."

His chambers were nothing like I expected.

I thought a man with a reputation like his would live somewhere cold and bare, but the room was warm, lined with books stacked two and three deep on every shelf, a fire crackling low in the hearth. It didn't look like a monster's den. It looked like somewhere a person actually lived.

He shut the door behind us and threw the bolt, and the sound of it made my whole body go tight.

"You're not going to hurt me," I said. It wasn't really a question. I needed it to be true.

"If I wanted to hurt you, you'd already be dead." He moved to the window, glancing out at the dark grounds below like he was checking for something. "I need you to listen to me very carefully, Emilia, and I need you to believe what I'm about to say, because I don't have time to convince you twice."

"Try me."

He turned to face me fully, and in the firelight I could see exactly how tired he looked — not weak, never weak, but worn down in a way that didn't match the stories about him at all.

"I have never killed an omega," he said. "Not one. Every name on that wall is a girl who came to this palace and never left it — but not because I touched her. Because someone on my own council has been taking them."

The words hit me like cold water. "Taking them where?"

"I don't know." His hands curled into fists at his sides. "I've spent three years trying to find out. Every time I get close, the trail goes cold, or the person I'm questioning dies before they can talk. I let the rumors about me spread because as long as the kingdom believes I'm the monster, the real one stays hidden, free to keep doing whatever he's doing without anyone looking in his direction."

"You let everyone believe you murder women," I said slowly, "to protect a secret you haven't even solved yet?"

"I let everyone believe it because the alternative was telling the truth and watching whoever is responsible disappear completely. As long as they think I'm covering for myself, they don't realize I'm hunting them."

It was insane. It was reckless. And looking at his face, at the exhaustion buried under all that ice, I believed every word of it.

"Why tell me?" I asked. "You don't know me. I could walk out of here and tell the whole palace what you just said."

"You could," he agreed. "But you won't. Because you're the first person in three years who looked at that wall and asked the right question instead of running."

My chest tightened at that. He was right, and I hated that he was right, because it meant something had shifted between us in that small dusty room — something I didn't have a name for yet.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"Now you stay close to me," he said. "Not because I want a toy in my bed like the rumors say. Because the second my council realizes you found that room, you become a target. The only way I can protect you is if everyone believes you belong to me."

My stomach dropped. "Belong to you."

"It's a lie," he said quickly, like he could see exactly what I was thinking. "A story for the guards, the staff, the council. Nothing more."

I should have argued. I should have told him I'd rather take my chances with the truth than pretend to be his. But I thought about Hana's shaking hands in the van, about the wall of names, about every girl who never got the chance to ask the question I'd asked.

"Fine," I said. "But I want to help you find out who's taking them."

His eyes narrowed, studying me like he was trying to find the trick in it. "You'd be putting your life in more danger, not less."

"My life was already in danger the moment my father handed me to a guard like I was nothing," I said. "At least this way it means something."

Something shifted behind his eyes — surprise, maybe respect, I couldn't tell. For the first time since he'd walked into that hidden room, the ice in his expression cracked just enough for me to see the man underneath it.

"All right," he said quietly. "But you do exactly as I say. The people behind this are dangerous, and they will not hesitate to remove anyone who gets in their way."

I nodded, even though my heart was pounding so hard I thought he might hear it.

A knock hit the door, sharp and sudden, and we both went still.

"Your Majesty." A man's voice, low and urgent, came through the wood. "It's Lucien. We have a problem."

The King's whole body went rigid. He crossed to the door in three quick strides and opened it just enough to slip into the hallway, pulling it shut behind him so I couldn't hear what was said.

I pressed my ear to the door anyway.

I only caught one sentence, but it was enough to turn my blood to ice.

"Another one is missing," Lucien said. "And this time, someone saw her talking to the new girl first."