The Omega Secret (Book Four of the Omega Game Series)

Chapter 1

Didoka

The Main Island

One year after the events of Algonala Island…

    It was raining again.

    I looked from over the book I was reading and stared at the rain falling across the aerial bridge that connected the library with the rest of the palace. It was raining hard, the thick drops seemed to rebound against the grey stones with a heavy sound. The weather experts had reported that it had fallen more rain in the Main Island during the last year since my return than in an entire decade. It made me wonder...was it raining because of Kun? Was the rain a consequence of his turbulent emotions? Was he right there, bleeding his power like drops of water all over the stones? 

    A name was the shortest spell anyone could cast. A name had the power to put a face to words and gave you the ability to caress sounds. Every time I thought about his name my heart would beat faster and his face came into focus from the back of my memory. Even then I could see him, opening his silver eyes and staring at me with an easy smile. Kun. His name was my spell. It could either make me feel happy or sad, powerful or weak with one simple whisper of his moniker. I searched the meaning behind that one single name and came up with one simple definition. Water.  The most fluid element of them all. Adaptable. Flexible. Inexorable. Water that could quench your thirst or suffocate your lungs. Water that could be pleasantly warm or mortally cold. Water that could kill you or heal you at the hands of a merciless God.

    Kun was indeed merciless. I never imagined how terrible he would be. In his vengeance Kun had found the perfect weapon against me. Time and silence. For an entire year he had remained gone. Nobody knew anything about Prince Kun from Maccana. Not even my brother’s spies have heard a word about him. He had disappeared. Never to be seen again. In the moment when the entire world needed him the most Kun had just left. Naccanash was at war. Maccana was at war. Even the Island of Laikos was at war. And still Kun wouldn’t return. I couldn’t help but think he was waiting for something. Patiently holding off while he observed us all, calculating when and how he wanted to return to the board game he had left unfinished with his absence.

    But what exactly was he waiting for? What could make him come out from his self imposed exile? I knew his way of thinking. I knew he was an impressive tactician. An even better strategist. I’d seen Kun fighting his brothers during our journey across the world. He never attacked without knowing the reaction of his opponents three steps ahead of time. Kun was fluid like water in that sense. He just knew the right moment to strike and the specific moment to retreat. And...he knew me as well. That was my greatest weakness in this game of deception and patience he had started when he left. 

    The greatest generals I’ve ever met knew before going to battle if they were going to be victorious or not. They had mastered the art of war. They knew that you first needed to win in order to fight. If Kun was planning on doing something to retaliate for my actions he already knew all of my weaknesses and all of my strengths. And if he decided on acting against me I was sure he would only do it once he knew I would have no escape but to accept defeat. By then I had no doubt he would retaliate. His eyes, his expression that last night I’d seen him...Kun had looked so hurt back then. The kind of hurt that if turned cold could transform into vengeance. 

    Scrunching my face I pushed away the book I’d been reading and rested my head in my palm. Outside it was still raining but I could not see it. All I could think about was how my life had progressed so strangely organic since my return to the Yellow Islands. Nothing seemed to have changed at a first glance. I still attended the same royal activities. I organized the same yearly events. I kept on researching and reading books. If Kun was spying on me he wouldn’t have seen great changes that could warn him I was any different from the Omega he had met.

    And then of course were the changes that only I was aware of. The constant Heats that I now suffered as a side effect of concealing my Omega scent and my Heats for so long. The fact that one night of the month I would send my maids away from my chambers and lock the entire east wing of the palace. Nor the fact that since my father had died a week ago I’d stopped exuding the bitter scent of fear that had made the entire court whisper that I was weak behind my back.

    I had changed. I had the most exciting, rewarding experience of my life when I befriended Katala and Nira. I had grown stronger during our journey. I had grown. I’d made friends for the very first time in my life. I’d met Kun...Kun who had been my dearest friend, until he became my scariest opponent. Sometimes I wondered if things would have been different between us if I’d met him as an Omega and not as the Beta monk that he considered a little brother. There was no way to rewrite our past. We were the decisions we made. And now I had to live in a constant state of alarm. Always checking behind my back. Always waiting for the retaliation from a God that would attack when I least expected.

    I had grown equally strong and weak during the last year. I could now stand proud at court, but every week I suffered a cycle of Heat. It would start suddenly, almost like a thunderbolt of need that would surprise me anywhere, anytime and with strong symptoms. The only solution I’d found had been to hide my Omega Heat scent with strong pouches of perfume that I concealed on my skirts. I never traveled too far from my chambers in case that I needed to return fast and lock myself in my room. And then the real suffering would begin. Such short Heats were more intense and powerful. It made me feel great pain and I would sometimes spend nights after the newest episode still trembling and shaking, feeling the aftershocks of need in my empty womb. 

    Kotani knew something was wrong with me. He had pointed out recently that I've lost too much weight and that I looked tired. My brother had even threatened to call the healers if I wouldn’t start eating properly but luckily for me he had been extremely busy with his crowning ceremony. I had some time to find another solution to my painful Heats before everything returned to normal and Kotani could start connecting the dots and understand what was really happening to me. Which led me back to the reason I’d lost an entire day of research looking about Omega Heats books.

    My eyes darted to the heavy volume of “Omegas: An Encyclopedia of their traits and habits.” I didn’t know what I hated the most about that book. The fact it referred to Omegas like “creatures that needed to be tamed carefully” or the fact the author of the book had been an Alpha who had no idea how it felt to be an Omega. What was even more irritating was that the author didn’t offer any other possible solution to a painful Heat period but to be knotted by an Alpha. Angrily I read for the thousandth time in the day the paragraph that had so efficiently asphyxiated my now dying hope.

“A Heat is activated when an Omega Instinct perceives an Alpha Instinct strong enough to impregnate the Omega. It’s a natural, normal process to be expected to awaken in every Omega between the ages of 11 to 15 years old. There are methods to stop an Omega Heat from happening but these are not recommended. An Omega can suffer immensely if she autoregulates her Heats. She could end feeling intense periods of Heats, pain, fatigue, weight loss and insomnia. It is advised in these cases to pair the Omega with a strong Alpha that could knot her repeatedly. Only after an entire year of receiving a strong knot would the Omega in question be capable of returning to more natural Heats…” 

    An entire year of being sexually dependent on someone? Was that a joke? How could there not be any other treatments? I refused to believe this...this...nonsense. Barbaric. Primitive Archaic. This was exactly what happened when an Omega had to be reduced to be the medical research subject of an Alpha. What a waste of my time. I closed the book with an angry frown at the same time someone knocked at the door.

    “You might enter!” I screamed from my place near the window. It was a cavernous library and after years of practically living inside of there I knew the servants couldn’t hear me when I was all the way at the back.

One of my maids entered the room and bowed in respect.

    “Your highness, the Crown Prince requested your presence at the War Council,” I couldn’t help but to smile a little. Kotani had started to invite me over to his assembly for everyone’s annoyance. It was unheard of a King of the Yellow Island to let an Omega be present during war talks. Kotani was slowly changing the power structure in the Yellow Islands and I couldn’t be prouder of him.

    With an angry look to the “Omegas: An Encyclopedia of their traits and habits” I walked out of the library and made my way to the War Council.