The Alpha’s Omega

Chapter Two Arrival

POV: Kael

"The princess is really that beautiful?"

Finn looked up from his papers. "A lord from the eastern territory sent her a white stag. Hunted it himself. Three days in the mountains." He paused. "She sent it back skinned."

I looked at him.

"She wanted the fur, not the animal. Apparently she specified that in the original request and he misunderstood."

"And the lord?"

"Challenged the man who laughed about it to a duel and lost." Finn turned a page. "Beautiful enough to make men stupid. In my experience, the most dangerous kind."

The carriage rolled on.

Outside, the landscape had shifted from open road to packed dirt track. Ashford territory. Organized, well maintained. Gregor kept a tidy pack, which told me he was either genuinely disciplined or deeply concerned with appearances.

I was leaning toward the latter.

"The border situation," I said.

Finn was already finding the page. "Southern line compromised twice in the last eighteen months. Forty men lost in the second incident. Gregor reported it as a training exercise gone wrong." He glanced up. "It was not a training exercise."

"No."

"He needs this alliance more than he has told anyone publicly. His pack's finances reflect about three more months of sustainable military operation before he starts making cuts he cannot recover from." He set the papers on his knee. "He will agree to your terms. He has no real alternative."

"And the daughter?"

"Lyra Ashford. Twenty three. Positioned for a match at this level since she was a girl. Intelligent, politically aware, and fully aware of what this visit means for her personally." He paused. "She will be at the gate."

"Of course she will."

Finn closed the folder. "You forgot the name of Gregor's head advisor again this morning."

I said nothing.

"Aldric," he said flatly. "Nineteen years of service. He will be visibly offended if you don't use it at least once in the first meeting."

"I know his name."

"You called him Edmund at breakfast."

I had nothing to say to that.

He looked at me now with the expression he used when he had already decided to say something regardless of my response.

"It's been weeks," he said. "The forgetting. It's getting worse."

"I'm aware."

"You're not sleeping either. And your wolf has been agitated since we left the capital. Something is off with you and it has been off for a while and I think you should—"

"We're here," I said.

The carriage slowed.

Finn pressed his lips together and looked back down at his folder. He knew when the conversation was over.

I straightened my coat and looked out the window as the gates came into view. Banners freshly hung. Guards in polished armor lining the path in two neat rows that had clearly been standing long enough to be uncomfortable about it.

And at the top of the steps, exactly where Finn said she would be, stood Lyra Ashford.

Even from this distance she was arresting. Tall, dark haired, dressed in deep green that caught the afternoon light in a way that was almost certainly deliberate. She stood beside her father with her chin lifted and her hands clasped loosely in front of her, eyes already moving toward the carriage with the calm focus of someone who had been preparing for this exact moment for a very long time.

The door opened.

Alpha Gregor descended the steps as I stepped out. Broader than I expected from the portraits. Barrel chested, grey at the temples.

"Kael Dravyn." He said my name like he was testing the weight of it. "Welcome to Ashford territory."

"Alpha Gregor. Thank you for the invitation."

It was not an invitation. He had requested this meeting through three separate channels over four months before I agreed. But I said it pleasantly and he accepted it pleasantly and we both moved on the way men in our positions always did.

He turned slightly. "My daughter. Lyra."

She descended two steps and stopped, which put us at nearly the same height. I suspected that was not accidental.

"Lycan King." Her voice was smooth and unhurried. "We've heard a great deal about you."

"I hope some of it was accurate," I said.

The corner of her mouth lifted. "The parts worth keeping."

She was good. The smile was timed perfectly and the words were light enough to be charming without overreaching. She had done this before, or practiced it enough that it amounted to the same thing.

Gregor laughed and gestured toward the entrance and started talking about the evening's arrangements. I walked beside him and listened carefully to everything he said and paid equal attention to everything he didn't.

Finn appeared at my shoulder as we crossed the threshold.

"Aldric," he murmured. "Grey beard. Blue coat. He's already in the council chamber."

"I know," I said quietly.

"You're doing it again."

He meant the forgetting. The restlessness. The weeks of broken sleep and a wolf that wouldn't settle and small details slipping through my hands no matter how firmly I tried to hold them.

I rolled my shoulders and followed Gregor down the corridor.

I didn't know what was wrong with me.

But I had a treaty to close first.

Whatever it was could wait.

Except it didn't wait.

We had turned into a long corridor near the guest wing when it hit me. Faint. Barely anything. But my wolf caught it before I did and went completely still.

Not the restless unsettled stillness of the past few weeks. Something focused. Something certain.

I slowed without meaning to.

"Kael." Finn's voice behind me.

I turned.

A girl was on her knees at the far end of the corridor with a brush in her hand and a bucket beside her, working in tight circles across the stone floor. Head down. Sleeves pushed to her elbows. Whispering something to herself too low to make out.

She had not heard us.

I stood there and breathed and could not remember what I was supposed to be doing.

And then I placed her.

The servant from the corridor that morning. The one I had stopped to ask directions. The one who had looked at me for just a moment before walking away, and who I had not been able to stop thinking about since without understanding why.

Now I understood.

"That's no one." Lyra's voice had gone cold and flat. "A rejected omega. She handles the floors." She gestured ahead. "Your chambers are just this way."

I looked at Lyra.

She looked back at me with an expression that had gone very careful very quickly and then smoothed itself back into composed.

I said nothing and followed her down the corridor.

But my wolf did not follow.

He stayed exactly where he was, turned toward that scent like a compass finding north, and he did not move until the distance made it impossible.

And even then, he kept trying.