The Male Omega

Chapter 8: A Mate in Name Only

No one moved.

The silver light between us trembled once above the bowl, then sank slowly into nothing, leaving only blood, smoke, and a silence so complete I could hear my own pulse in my ears.

Fated mates.

The words did not fit inside my head.

I stared at the silver bowl like if I looked hard enough, the light would undo itself. The cut in my palm stung. Xervic stood only a few feet away, his blood still bright against his skin, his face unreadable in the moonlit hall.

Around us, the room had changed.

Not in shape.

In feeling.

Shock had weight. I could feel it pressing against my skin from every side.

Someone behind the elders made a noise of disbelief. Another person hissed something too low for me to catch. I heard Amanda’s voice again, sharper this time, though still hushed enough to pretend at decorum.

“That can’t be right.”

But it was.

The Moon Goddess had already spoken.

That was the cruelest part.

If this had been a scandal, people might have argued with it. If it had been a rumor, they might have denied it. But this was a bond rite before the shrine itself. Blood, scent, moonlight.

Sacred things.

And I was still certain they would hate me for it.

My hand trembled where the blood still welled slowly across my palm. I wanted to pull away, but I did not know if I was allowed. I did not know what happened now. No one had ever explained mate rites to someone like me, because no one had ever imagined I would need to know.

Elder Thorne released my wrist first.

The sudden absence of touch made me sway very slightly. I caught myself before it became obvious. Or maybe I didn’t. My body no longer felt like something I could fully trust.

The elder looked at Xervic, not me.

“As decreed by the Moon Goddess,” he said, voice as hard as carved stone, “the bond is confirmed.”

Confirmed.

A word that should have sounded solemn.

In his mouth, it sounded almost like a sentence.

My throat tightened.

I should have looked away from Xervic.

I didn’t.

For one terrible second, our eyes met fully across the dim silver light of the shrine hall.

His expression had changed.

Only a little.

But enough.

There was shock there now, beneath the control. Not loud shock. Not visible enough for anyone to call him undisciplined. Just the brief, cold stillness of someone forced to understand that fate had no intention of asking what he wanted.

And then, beneath that—

Displeasure.

Not rage.

Not disgust.

But something grim and deeply restrained that made my stomach twist so violently I had to lock my knees to remain standing.

Of course.

Of course.

He had not wanted a scandal. Now he had been handed one wrapped in Moonlight.

I lowered my gaze so quickly it made the room spin.

Somewhere behind me, fabric rustled sharply. A woman whispered, “Impossible.” Another voice said, “The bond does not lie,” in a tone that sounded far less like comfort than it should have.

Then Amanda Vale laughed once.

A small, brittle sound.

I felt every eye in the room shift again.

When I dared to glance sideways, Amanda stood rigid beside Xylie, her face pale with disbelief and fury. Her mouth was set too tightly to be graceful. Xylie looked only a little better—stunned first, then angry in a way that brightened quickly behind her eyes.

I knew, with a horrible sinking certainty, that whatever they had thought of me before, it would be worse now.

Much worse.

Because now I was not only wrong.

I was attached to the alpha.

Rowan moved before I heard him. One second he was outside the ritual circle, the next he was at my side, not touching me yet but close enough that the air around me changed with his presence. That alone nearly undid me.

I had never loved him more than in that moment.

Elder Thorne did not tell him to step back this time.

Perhaps even he understood there were limits to how much a person could bear standing alone in a room like this.

Xervic’s mother, Luna Seraphine, was the first to recover enough to speak.

“This matter,” she said, every word measured and cold, “must remain confined to the family until a formal response is decided.”

Family.

Response.

As if I were a breach in the walls.

The old grandfather turned toward her slightly. “The rite was witnessed.”

“Then the witnesses will keep their tongues,” Seraphine replied.

Her gaze slid over me in that moment.

Not long.

Not openly cruel.

But I felt the recoil in it all the same, quiet and aristocratic and impossible to protest without looking foolish.

I kept my head down.

If I looked at any of them too long, I thought I might shake apart.

Amanda stepped forward before anyone else could speak.

“With respect,” she said, though the words carried no softness at all, “there should be another rite.”

The whole room tensed.

I stopped breathing.

Amanda’s eyes were on the elders, not on me. That somehow made her worse. She was not emotional. She was not weeping or raging or making a scene.

She was offended.

Offended enough to stand before the family shrine and suggest the Moon Goddess had made a mistake.

“The result is unnatural,” she said. “Surely—”

“That is enough.”

Xervic’s voice cut through the room.

It was not loud.

It did not need to be.

Everything inside me went still at once.

I looked up before I could stop myself.

He had not moved much, but the room itself seemed to have tightened around him. His expression was controlled again, sharper now, stripped down to something colder and more dangerous than simple displeasure.

Amanda paled.

For one second, I thought he was defending me.

Then I realized no—that was too hopeful, too easy. He was defending the rite. The order of things. The authority of the shrine and the family and the bond whether he wanted it or not.

Not me.

Never me.

Still, Amanda stepped back.

Xervic looked toward Elder Thorne. “The bond is confirmed. There will be no second rite.”

No one argued.

Even Amanda.

Even Xylie, though fury had settled bright and ugly in her face.

I should have felt relieved.

Instead I only felt smaller.

Because now it was undeniable. No one could pretend this away. No one could send me back to the lower district and let me sink into quiet usefulness again.

I would be remembered now.

Not kindly.

Not gently.

But remembered.

Elder Thorne drew himself up and looked directly at me for the first time since the light appeared over the bowl.

“Kyle Knox,” he said, voice formal and hard, “until the family reaches a final decision on the public handling of this bond, you will remain under Blackthorne authority.”

Public handling.

My palm throbbed.

I swallowed. “Yes, Elder.”

My voice came out thin and humiliatingly small.

No one commented on that.

That was somehow worse too.

Seraphine spoke next, still without looking fully at me. “The east wing remains suitable for now.”

For now.

Aunt Eveline made a disapproving sound in the back of her throat, but did not object aloud. Uncle Darius said nothing. Lucan Blackthorne—one of the cousins, I thought dimly—watched me with a sharp, unreadable expression I did not trust at all.

Then Elder Moira, the grandmother, spoke for the first time.

“The Moon Goddess has made herself clear,” she said.

Her voice was quieter than the others, but somehow the room listened to it all the same.

I looked at her.

She was elegant in the severe way old women from powerful bloodlines often were, silver hair pinned neatly back, hands folded in front of her dark gown. Her face did not look warm.

But it did not look disgusted either.

Something in my chest tightened painfully at that.

A scrap of relief that felt too fragile to touch.

Thorne’s expression did not soften. “The goddess has confirmed the bond. Nothing more.”

Moira’s gaze remained steady. “Sometimes that is already more than enough.”

No one answered her.

The silence that followed felt dangerous.

Then, at last, Xervic spoke again.

“Take him back to the east wing.”

Not “take them.”

Not “my mate.”

Not even my name.

Just him.

I felt the word like a hand pushing me out of the room.

Rowan stepped closer at once.

This time, when his hand touched my arm, I nearly flinched from the force of my own relief.

“Yes, Alpha,” he said.

I turned to go.

That should have been the end of it. A clean retreat. A chance to get out before I embarrassed myself by crying or stumbling or doing anything else weak enough for the Blackthornes to remember in detail later.

But before I reached the doors, I made the mistake of looking back.

Xervic had not moved.

He stood where the silver thread had tied us only moments before, one hand still blood-marked at his side, his expression remote enough to freeze the whole room around him.

And he was looking at me.

Not warmly.

Not possessively.

Not like a man who had just found his fated mate.

Like a man trying to decide how deeply fate had insulted him.

The hurt of that was so sharp I almost missed the step down from the shrine platform.

Rowan caught my elbow immediately and steadied me.

No one laughed.

No one had to.

I could feel the humiliation burning through me all the same.

The doors shut behind us.

The corridor beyond was cooler, darker, quieter.

For a few steps I managed to walk.

Then my breathing went wrong.

Not enough to stop entirely.

Just enough that I could no longer pretend I was holding myself together.

Rowan guided me to the wall before my knees gave out completely. His hands were on my shoulders, then gentler at my arms.

“Kyle.”

I stared at the floor.

My cut palm was still bleeding slowly where the shrine cloth had only partly cleaned it. A bright line of red against skin that no longer felt like it belonged to me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Rowan went very still.

Then, with terrible patience, “Why are you apologizing?”

Because they all looked at me like I had done this on purpose.

Because the alpha looked displeased.

Because Amanda Vale’s face will haunt me forever.

Because I had just been tied by Moonlight to a man who did not want me.

I shook my head.

“I don’t know.”

That was a lie.

I knew exactly why.

Because I had become too much trouble to be anything else.