The Alpha’s Omega

Chapter Three: Scent

POV: Kael

I did not sleep.

The scent had faded somewhere around midnight and my wolf had spent the remaining hours pacing the inside of my chest looking for it, which made rest impossible and morning unwelcome.

Finn let himself in at dawn with a folder under his arm and the expression of a man who had already been awake for two hours and had opinions about the fact that I had not.

He set the folder on the writing desk and opened it without preamble.

"Aldric. Head advisor. Nineteen years. Grey beard, usually a blue coat." He turned a page. "Commander Hess. Leads the southern battalion. He'll be at breakfast and he'll want to discuss the border terms directly rather than through Gregor. Let him. He knows more about the actual situation down there than anyone else in this pack." Another page. "Elder Macon. Old. Quiet. Says very little but Gregor watches his face after everything I say, so watch his face too."

I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my elbows on my knees and my eyes not fully open.

"Kael."

"I heard you."

"Aldric. Hess. Macon."

"Aldric. Hess. Macon," I repeated.

Finn looked at me for a moment. "You look terrible."

"Thank you, Finn."

"Did you sleep at all?"

I didn't answer. He closed the folder and sat down in the chair across from me with the particular stillness he used when he had decided to wait me out.

"Finn."

"Yes."

"Why would someone reject a fated mate?"

The silence that followed was the specific kind that meant he had not expected the question and was deciding how seriously to take it.

"Context," he said carefully. "Are we speaking generally?"

"Generally."

He thought about it. "Fear. Pride. Circumstance. Someone who doesn't want what the bond demands of them, or someone who wants something else more. Power. A better match on paper." He paused. "It's not common among Lycans. The pull is too strong to ignore without significant motivation."

"But it happens."

"It happens." He held my gaze. "Why are you asking?"

I stood and reached for my shirt. "No reason."

He did not believe me. I could tell by the way he picked the folder back up and said nothing further, which was Finn's way of filing something away for a later conversation I had not agreed to yet.

We ate breakfast with Commander Hess and two of Gregor's advisors. Hess was exactly what Finn had described. Straightforward, direct, and unexpectedly funny in the dry way that had become rare in rooms like this. I liked him immediately.

By midday we had resolved three of the five outstanding treaty points. Gregor seemed pleased. I seemed pleased. Aldric took notes with focused energy and used his name twice in the first meeting without prompting, which I could tell mattered to him.

We broke for the afternoon to allow the house to finish preparing for the evening's banquet.

Finn walked beside me as we moved back through the main corridor toward the guest wing. He was already talking about the two remaining treaty points and a revised proposal on the eastern access roads that had one clause buried in the fourth paragraph that needed to be removed before I signed anything.

I was listening.

And then I wasn't.

We turned into the long corridor with the high windows and I slowed without deciding to. My eyes went to the stretch of stone floor near the left wall where she had been kneeling the evening before.

Empty. Clean. Completely unremarkable.

I stood there and looked at it.

Something like vanilla. Something like warmth underneath it, deeper than the surface note, the kind of scent that didn't announce itself but stayed with you after it was gone. I had reached for it in the dark all night and found nothing. Now I was standing in an empty corridor staring at clean stone like it owed me something.

"Kael."

I blinked.

Finn was watching me with the folder held against his chest and an expression caught somewhere between concern and patience.

"The eastern access clause," I said. "Remove it. Don't let Gregor's secretary reinsert it in the final draft."

"I know." He looked at the empty stretch of floor and then back at me. "You stopped walking again."

"I know that too."

He opened his mouth.

"Don't," I said.

He closed it.

We walked on. The afternoon moved through minor business. Two letters that needed responses. A meeting with Dax about the security arrangement for the evening. A revised guest list from Gregor's office with three names added at the last moment, all eastern lords whose presence was almost certainly meant to signal something about Gregor's other alliances.

I noted it and said nothing.

By early evening Finn appeared in my doorway while I was pulling on my coat and held out a small wrapped package with the energy of someone who had nearly forgotten something important and was not going to admit how close it had been.

"For the princess," he said. "Her birthday. A silver hair comb. Not too personal." He straightened his own jacket. "Give it to her before the meal, not after. After looks like an afterthought."

"It is an afterthought."

"She doesn't need to know that." He picked up his own folder and moved toward the door, then stopped. "Kael."

I looked at him.

His expression had gone quiet in the way it did when he had decided to say something he knew I would not want to hear.

"The servant girl," he said. "The one in the corridor last night."

I said nothing.

"I saw your face when you looked at her." He held my gaze steadily. "And I saw it again this afternoon when you stopped walking." He paused. "If there is something happening with your wolf, something you haven't told me, I need to know before we walk into that ballroom tonight."

The room was quiet.

"Get the carriage ready," I said. "We'll be late."

He looked at me for one more moment.

Then he walked out without another word.

But we both knew he wasn't finished.