The Male Omega

Chapter 6: The Alpha’s Eyes

The doors shut behind me with a soft click.

For a second, I forgot how to breathe.

The room was wide and dimly warm, the kind of room built to make people feel small without ever saying that was the intention. Dark wood. Tall windows. A low-burning fire that gave off more light than comfort. Everything was orderly in the severe, expensive way I had come to associate with the Blackthorne estate.

And standing near the hearth, one hand resting against the mantle, was Xervic Blackthorne.

I had seen him before, but never like this.

Not from across a training field.

Not half-hidden behind other pack members at some gathering I should never have attended in the first place.

Up close, he seemed even more dangerous for how little he needed to do to look powerful. He wasn’t dressed for ceremony, only in dark fitted clothes and a long coat, but nothing about him looked ordinary. He stood like the whole room had already shaped itself around him. Like the walls knew who ruled them.

I kept my eyes lowered.

“Look at me.”

His voice was calm.

Not harsh.

Not loud.

That should have made it easier.

It didn’t.

I lifted my head anyway.

His gaze settled fully on me, and my stomach tightened so quickly it hurt.

I had spent the whole carriage ride trying not to imagine this moment. Trying not to think about what the alpha of the Blackthorne Pack would see when he looked at me now.

A problem.

A shame.

A mistake.

Xervic’s face gave me almost nothing.

That somehow made it worse.

“Mr. Knox,” he said.

I swallowed. “Alpha.”

He watched me in silence for a moment.

Not the kind of silence that felt empty. The kind that felt like judgment was happening quietly inside it.

My hands had begun to tremble again. I tucked them into my sleeves and prayed he would think it was from the cold.

He did not seem like the sort of man who missed much.

“Mara’s report states you entered late differentiation yesterday,” he said.

His voice was level and distant, more formal than unkind.

I nodded once. “Yes, Alpha.”

“And the symptoms began before that.”

“Yes.”

He stepped away from the hearth then, not close enough to crowd me, but enough to make the room feel smaller. His scent reached me properly for the first time—pine, cold stone, smoke, and something sharper beneath it that made the fine hairs rise on the back of my neck.

I hated that I noticed it.

I hated that my body noticed it.

It made everything worse, the simple fact that even now, even while I stood shaking in front of him, my senses kept reaching toward things I had never been aware of before.

Xervic stopped a few feet away.

His gaze moved over me once. Not slowly. Not intimately. Just enough to take stock.

I felt each second of it like heat under the skin.

“You have been examined fully?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And the report is accurate?”

The question caught somewhere in my chest.

Not because it was cruel.

Because some weak, miserable part of me had wanted him to say something else.

Wanted him to say there had been a mistake.

That the healer had acted too quickly.

That none of this was really happening and I would be allowed to walk out of this room and become forgettable again.

But he had not said that.

He had asked for confirmation.

I made myself answer. “Yes, Alpha.”

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

I saw it.

I wished I had not.

Not anger exactly.

Not disgust.

Displeasure.

Controlled, but there.

My face grew hot.

Of course he would be displeased. The whole pack would be. But seeing it on him—on the alpha, in this room, with his eyes on me and nowhere to hide—made the truth of it settle heavier inside my bones.

For one terrible second, I thought he might ask to scent me directly.

Instead he said, “There will be no discussion of this outside the formal channels until the elders are informed.”

I blinked. “Yes, Alpha.”

More silence.

I could hear the fire crackling behind him and my own pulse beating in my throat.

Xervic looked at me another moment, then asked, “Has anyone outside the lower district spoken to you directly?”

It took me a second to understand the question.

“No.”

His expression did not change. “Has anyone threatened you?”

My mouth went dry.

I wanted to say no and end the conversation as quickly as possible.

That was what I always wanted—to make things smaller, shorter, less troublesome.

But Rowan had told me once that silence was often just a slower form of bleeding.

I looked down. “Not directly.”

Not yet.

Whispers had already started. Stares too. And if the lower district commoners were willing to speak through walls and behind shutters, then the higher houses would be worse once they had time to decide what shape of offense I was.

Xervic’s gaze sharpened slightly. “Meaning?”

I hated this.

Hated standing there answering questions with my own voice while he watched me like some strange animal brought in from the edge of the woods.

“People are talking,” I said quietly.

His expression remained unreadable.

That should not have stung.

It did.

Of course people were talking. Why would that surprise him? The first male omega in pack memory, appearing at nineteen like some insult to every rule anyone had ever believed in.

I pressed my fingers tighter into my sleeves so he would not see them shake.

“You will remain on estate grounds until this matter is brought before the elders,” he said.

Matter.

The word hollowed something out in me.

I nodded because what else was there to do?

He continued in that same controlled tone, “Temporary rooms have been arranged in the east wing. Your brother may remain with you as personal aide unless the council objects.”

Relief hit so hard it almost made my knees weak.

Rowan could stay.

I had not realized until that moment how badly I needed to hear that said plainly.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Something flickered in his expression then—small and gone too quickly for me to understand. His gaze shifted from my face to the side, like he had looked too long and caught himself doing it.

That hurt in a strange, immediate way.

Because I knew that movement.

I knew it from market stalls and family tables and hallways and every other place where someone looked at me, paused too long, and then remembered they did not want to be seen doing it.

I could feel heat climbing higher into my face.

He thinks I’m shameful.

The thought came with no drama attached. It simply settled into place with the awful neatness of something I had expected and still been stupid enough to dread.

Xervic said, “This will be handled.”

Handled.

Like an outbreak.

A violation.

A record gone wrong.

Not because he had raised his voice.

Not because he had insulted me.

Because he had not.

His calm made everything feel colder.

I lowered my eyes again before I could humiliate myself by showing too much on my face.

“Yes, Alpha.”

A long pause followed.

Then, more quietly than before, “Are you unwell now?”

The question startled me enough that I looked up.

He was still watching me.

Not softened. Not warm.

But not entirely distant either.

Maybe I only imagined that because I wanted to.

I swallowed. “A little.”

He nodded once, almost to himself.

“Mara will continue treatment until the symptoms settle.”

Treatment.

I clung to the ordinary shape of the word because everything else in the room felt too sharp.

Then he said, “You may go.”

That was all.

No reassurance.

No cruelty.

No condemnation either.

Somehow, that made it worse than if he had openly shown disgust.

Because if he had looked at me with pure rejection, I could have braced against it.

Instead he had looked at me like something difficult. Something unprecedented. Something to be managed.

I bowed too quickly. “Yes, Alpha.”

My hands shook when I turned toward the door.

I prayed he did not notice.

The doors opened, and the coldness of the hall struck me like water.

Rowan stood the moment he saw me.

He took one look at my face and came toward me at once. “Kyle?”

I wanted to say it was nothing.

Wanted to say he was just as polite as any alpha had to be. That he had done nothing truly cruel. That I could survive this if people would just stop looking at me.

Instead what came out was smaller and more ashamed than I meant it to be.

“He was displeased.”

Rowan’s expression darkened instantly.

I hated how much that comforted me.

Not because I wanted him angry.

Because I wanted someone to understand that a person did not have to shout to wound you.

Rowan stepped closer, his body half-turned like he was already placing himself between me and the room behind those doors.

“What did he say?”

“That I’m staying here,” I whispered. “Until the elders decide… what to do.”

My voice nearly broke on the last two words.

Rowan heard it.

His hand came to the back of my neck briefly, warm and careful. “You’re not a thing to be done with.”

I stared at the floor because if I looked at him, I might actually cry, and I could not bear that here.

Not in the Blackthorne halls.

Not with servants within earshot.

Not with the scent of the alpha still clinging faintly to the air and making this whole morning feel even more unreal.

“He let you stay,” I said, because I needed to say something.

Rowan let out a slow breath. “Good.”

I nodded.

But as he led me down the corridor, I could still feel it—the memory of Xervic Blackthorne’s eyes on me, cool and unreadable.

And worse than that, the tiny, unmistakable moment of restraint in them.

As if he had looked at me and disliked what he saw, but chosen not to say it aloud.