Chapter Text
Such silence. Too much silence.
Feyre needed to get out of this house. Needed to do something. If the villagers didn’t want her help, then fine. She could do other things. Whatever they were.
She was about to turn down the hall that led to the study, determined to ask Tamlin if there was any task that she might perform, ready to beg him, when the study doors flung open and Tamlin and Lucien emerged, both heavily armed.
She peered around them, but found no sign of Ianthe.
One subtle sniff alerted Feyre to a sour tang in the air, wafting in on the small breeze that seemed to follow Tamlin everywhere.
And although she only had a few months of experience with her new and utterly disconcerting senses… That scent was hard. Uncompromising. As dangerous and honed as the blades lining Tamlin’s baldric.
Something deep, deep inside of Feyre cringed.
She steeled herself against it, this new part of herself. Her resurrection had granted her more than just a long life and the depthless well of magic that roiled beneath her skin night and day.
It had granted her a secondary sex. A new designation. Feyre had died a human woman, but when she woke up, she wasn’t just a faerie female.
She was an Omega female.
It was a strange biological quirk of the fae that she neither embraced nor trusted, and she did her best not to listen whenever Ianthe cooed over her. She understood the gist of it.
Alphas, magically and physically powerful fae, bred Omegas. The Omegas who carried the younglings were rarer, far more coveted, and far more fertile than most. Physical sex—male or female—had no bearing on whether someone presented as an Alpha or Omega during adolescence—or, in the case of the common Beta designation, simply didn't present. Because Feyre was an Omega, she was expected to participate in a breeding ritual not unlike Calanmai that would eventually take place.
That was all she cared to know.
It was all the knowledge her thin, wavering sense of self would accept.
Because much like Tamlin wished she would hide the sparks that crackled at her fingertips with her temper, the claws that shredded her sheets when the nightmares came for her in the dark, Feyre wanted to shove down the soft, needy, foreign thing that keened for attention whenever she was in the presence of—
Of Alphas.
All Alphas, but one in particular—
“You’re going so soon?” she asked, pushing down the instinct to bare her neck and waiting for them to reach the foyer.
Tamlin’s face was a grim mask as they approached. “There’s activity on the western sea border. I have to go.”
Feyre’s attention snapped toward the doors. The western front—that was the one closest to Hybern.
“Can I come with you?”
She’d never asked it outright, but… Tamlin paused. Lucien continued past, through the open front doors of the house, barely able to hide his wince. “I’m sorry,” Tamlin said, reaching for her. The beastly thing in Feyre’s blood curdled—wrong, wrong, wrong—and she stepped out of his grip. “It’s too dangerous for you.”
“I know how to remain hidden. Just take me with you.”
Tamlin shook his head, almost playful, but his scent thickened, suffocating her. “No amount of light stepping could hide you, Omega.” His chest rose and fell, a deep breath scenting her back, and a low sound rumbled in his chest. “No. I won’t risk our enemies getting their hands on you.“
What enemies? Feyre wanted to cry. Tell me—tell me something.
She stared over his shoulder, toward where Lucien lingered in the gravel beyond the house entrance. No horses were waiting, saddled and brushed, and she frowned. She supposed they weren’t necessary this time, when they were faster without them. The horses had been a concession to the curse and to her humanity.
But maybe she could keep up. Maybe she’d wait until they left and—
“Don’t even think about it,” Tamlin warned. “Omegas are rare, Feyre. You have no place on a battlefield.”
Feyre’s eyes whipped back to his. “Battlefield?”
He growled, and when he spoke, there was a note of authority in his voice that made Feyre’s knees weak, “Don’t even try to come after us.”
“I can fight,” she tried again. It was a half-truth; a knack for survival wasn’t the same as trained skill. “Please, I was fighting before I was an Omega.”
She had never hated a word more.
Omega.
A weakness. A twist of fate she didn’t want or need. A possessive claim growled in the dark as she was bent over and fucked by an Alpha more beast than male, with none of the softness he had used during the one night she’d had him when she was a human. A title that made her stomach and her new instincts roil when it dropped from his lips to the base of her throat.
The place now decorated by a soft patch of skin—a mating gland, to be bitten once their bond snapped. Another way for him to claim her body, aside from the heavy emerald ring on her finger.
He shook his head, crossing the foyer to the front doors.
She followed him, blurting, “There will always be some threat. There will always be some conflict or enemy or something that keeps me in here.”
He slowed to a stop just inside the towering oak doors, so lovingly restored after Amarantha’s cronies had trashed them. “Feyre, we have had this conversation before.”
“Tamlin, I’m not like the other—“
“You are.” Frustration laced his words, and he squared his shoulders, making himself impossibly larger. “You’re an Omega, Feyre, just like all the others. You are meant to be here, in your home, cherished and protected. You are meant to build nests and raise our younglings and be the lady of this court—not follow your Alpha into a fight.”
Feyre bristled, but deep inside, she ached. “I can do all of that and fight by your side. I don’t have to pick one or the other.”
“You can barely sleep through the night,” he said carefully, and she saw the way his mouth tightened with a disagreement he did not voice.
Fine. If that was how he wanted to play it…
“Neither can you,” she shot back.
But he just plowed ahead, “You can barely handle being around other people—”
“You promised.” Her voice cracked. And suddenly, she didn’t care that she was begging. “I need to get out of this house.”
“Have Bron take you and Ianthe on a ride—”
“I don’t want to go for a ride!” She splayed her arms. “I don’t want to go for a ride, or a build a nest, or pick wildflowers. I want to do something. So take me with you.”
That girl who had needed to be protected, who had craved stability and comfort… she had died Under the Mountain. Feyre had died, and there had been no one to protect her from those horrors before her neck snapped. No one to insist that she was worthy of coddling thanks to the fact that she smelled nice and could get pregnant more easily than someone else.
So she had done it herself. And she would not, could not, yield that part of herself that had awoken and transformed Under the Mountain, no matter what her physiology demanded of her. Tamlin had gotten his powers back, had become whole again—become that Alpha protector and provider he wished to be.
But Feyre was not the human girl who needed coddling and pampering, who wanted luxury and easiness. She might be an Omega, but she didn’t know how to go back to craving those things. To being docile.
She didn’t know if she could.
Tamlin’s claws punched out. “Even if I risked it, your untrained abilities render your presence more of a liability than anything.”
It was like being hit with stones so hard she could feel herself cracking. But she lifted her chin—an act of defiance that made Tamlin’s lips pull back in a way that almost made Feyre's resolve quail—and said, “I’m coming along whether you want me to or not.”
“No, you aren’t.” His voice was full of power that went beyond his abilities as a High Lord—a growling timbre of authority and magic that Feyre had never heard before, not even when he was a creature of fur and fangs and antlers. “Stay, Omega.”
The rumble of his order sank through her defenses, coiling itself around her limbs, hugging her bones. It made the soft beast inside of her shrink back and obey. Nausea churned in her stomach, a sickening sense that only obedience could soothe her now.
Wrong. It was all wrong. Her body obeyed, but her soul revolted. That sort of order shouldn’t come from this male, from this Alpha—
In that moment, she hated him.
Feyre swallowed down the bitter taste rising in the back of her throat. She beat back the scrabbling panic, the fear of failure, of disappointment. It was all artificial, all manufactured by that snarling enchantment in Tamlin’s voice she’d never heard before, but she didn’t know how to resist it.
She hated him.
He strode right through the door, his claws slashing the air at his sides, and was halfway down the steps before she broke free of that unwelcome order and gave chase.
She reached the threshold and slammed into an invisible wall.
She staggered back, trying to reorder her mind around the impossibility of it. It was identical to the one she had built that day in the study, when Tamlin’s temper and the small universe in that room exploded, and she searched inside the shards of her soul, her heart, for a tether to that shield, wondering if she had blocked herself, but—there was no power emanating from her.
She reached a hand to the open air of the doorway and met solid resistance.
“Tamlin,” she rasped. But he was already down the front drive, walking toward the looming iron gates. Lucien remained at the foot of the stairs, his face so, so pale.
“Tamlin,” she said again, pushing against the wall.
He didn’t turn.
She slammed her hand into the invisible barrier. No movement—nothing but hardened air. And she had not learned about her own powers enough to try to push through, to shatter it … She had let him convince her not to learn those things for his sake—
Feyre’s next shout was broken, cracked, and she bashed her fist against that solid wall. “Alpha!”
A low keening sound built in her throat, clawing out of her. Lucien went impossibly paler, his eyes darting to Tamlin. But Tamlin didn’t turn, and an expression that went far beyond shock and leagues deeper than horror etched itself onto Lucien’s face.
“Go upstairs, Feyre,” Lucien said softly, as Tamlin cleared the gates and vanished—winnowed. His voice held a similar rumble, but it was softer, soothing. She tried to breathe in, tried to scent him, but every breath was furniture polish and fresh pastry and rotting roses. The manor, no hint of Lucien’s sun-warmed apples and bonfires to be found, or even of the grass and mulch and blossoming greenery of the garden. The sudden lack of the outside world did nothing to silence the whistling blade of panic slashing through Feyre’s thoughts. “You won’t be able to get out. He shielded the entire house around you. Others can go in and out, but you can’t. Not until he lifts the shield.”
He’d locked her in here.
Feyre hit the shield again. Again.
Nothing.
“Just—be patient, Omega. Go, get in your nest,” Lucien tried. Every step he took away from her seemed to cause him pain, wincing as he followed after Tamlin, and Feyre keened again, high and horrified. “Please. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try again.”
She barely heard him over the roar in her ears. Over the sobbing, wretched plea spilling from her lips, again and again and again—Alpha, Alpha, Alpha. Didn’t wait to see him pass the gates and winnow, too.
He’d locked her in. He’d sealed her inside this house.
She hurtled for the nearest window in the foyer and shoved it open. A cool spring breeze rushed in, and she shoved her hand through it, only for her tattooed fingers to bounce off an invisible wall. Smooth, hard air pushed against her skin.
Breathing became difficult.
“Alpha?” Her voice was a whine, a quaking breath of terror.
She was trapped.
She was trapped inside this house. She might as well have been Under the Mountain; she might as well have been inside that cell again—
She backed away, her steps too light, too fast, and slammed into the oak table in the center of the foyer. None of the nearby sentries came to investigate.
He’d trapped her in here; he’d locked her up.
She stopped seeing the marble floor, or the paintings on the walls, or the sweeping staircase looming behind her. She stopped hearing the chirping of the spring birds, or the sighing of the breeze through the curtains.
The sting of failing her Alpha slashed through her.
And then crushing black pounded down and rose up from beneath, devouring and roaring and shredding.
It was all she could do to keep from screaming, to keep from shattering into ten thousand pieces as she sank onto the marble floor, bowing over her knees, and wrapped her arms around herself.
He’d trapped her; he’d trapped her; he’d trapped her—
She had to get out, because she had barely escaped from another prison once before, and this time, this time—
Winnowing. She could vanish into nothing but air and appear somewhere else, somewhere open and free. She fumbled for her power, for anything, something that might show her the way to do it, the way out.
Nothing.
There was nothing and she had become nothing, and she couldn’t ever get out—
Alpha would never find her in the darkness and ether, locked away behind this impenetrable, scent-blocking shield.
Someone was shouting her name from far away.
Alis—Alis.
But she was ensconced in a cocoon of darkness and fire and ice and wind, a cocoon that melted the ring off her finger until the golden ore dripped away into the void, the emerald tumbling after it. She wrapped that raging force around herself as if it could keep the walls from crushing her entirely, and maybe, maybe buy her the tiniest sip of air—
Of scent—
Of sharp citrus and the wind off of the water—
Of Alpha—
She couldn’t get out; she couldn’t get out; she couldn’t get out—
Slender, strong hands gripped her under the shoulders.
She didn’t have the strength to fight them off. One of those hands moved to her knees, the other to her back, and then she was being lifted, held against what was unmistakably a female body.
The acrid scent of a furious female Alpha stung Feyre’s nostrils—the same vicious, mind-numbing note she had woken to in the throne room Under the Mountain. Hatred and death and sweetness, all married in one terrible breath.
The scent of the mistress of that wretched court.
Feyre only knew of one female with that designation.
Her entire body stiffened, ice frosting her veins. She couldn’t see her, didn’t want to see her.
Amarantha.
Come to take her away again; come to kill her at last.
There were words being spoken around her.
Two women.
Neither of them… neither of them was Amarantha.
“Please—please take care of her.” Alis.
From right by Feyre’s ear, the Alpha with murder in her voice replied, “Consider your pack very, very lucky that your High Lord was not here when we arrived. Your guards will have one hell of a headache when they wake up, but they’re alive. Be grateful.”
Mor.
Mor held her—carried her.
The darkness guttered long enough that Feyre could draw breath, that she could see the garden door she walked toward. She hadn’t gotten close enough to Mor to determine her secondary gender during those few weeks in Rhys’s moonstone palace.
She tucked her head into the crook of Mor’s neck, gulping down lungfuls of air. Sweet, fresh Alpha—calmer, gentler now that they were together. Close, but not quite…
“Good, Feyre.” The hands banded around her shoulders—a bit of praise Feyre didn’t know she needed to wash away the last of the thrumming discontent from Tamlin’s order. Feyre opened her mouth, peering through loose golden waves, but Mor said first, “Did you think his shield would keep us from you? Rhys shattered it with half a thought.”
“Rhys?”
His name was a mindless whine—and then another, because Feyre didn’t spy Rhys anywhere, not even as the darkness swirled back in. A low tug in her gut tormented her, a sense of yearning that went beyond words, and she clung to Mor, trying to breathe, to think.
“Shh, Omega. I’m taking you to your Alpha. You’re free,” Mor said tightly. “You’re free.”
Free. It drowned out anything else Mor might have said.
Not safe.
Not protected.
Free.
She carried Feyre beyond the garden, into the fields, up a hill, down it, and into—into a cave—
Feyre must have started bucking and thrashing in her arms, more mindless pleading on her lips, because Mor said, “You’re out; you’re free,” again and again and again as true darkness swallowed them.
Half a heartbeat later, they emerged into sunlight—bright, strawberry-and-grass-scented sunlight. Wrong—it was wrong. All wrong. She had a thought that they might be in Summer, not Night, but then—
Then a low, vicious snarl split the air before them, cleaving even Feyre’s darkness.
“She’s yours, she’s yours,” Mor said quickly, her hands disappearing from around Feyre’s body as another set of arms tore her away. She was crushed to a broad, heaving chest that rumbled with a low growl, the embrace so tight it was almost painful.
Yes. Yes, this was right, this was safe, this was good, this was—
Feyre curled into the body holding hers.
“I did everything by the book.” Mor said to the owner of that growl. Her voice was cautious, placating, and it sounded as if she were already dozen yards away, as if she had winnowed the distance the moment Feyre was out of her arms.
Feyre’s nose found the raised, soft gland tucked between his neck and shoulder a moment before her lips did. A shuddering breath rocked her, gusting over her hair as his face dipped toward the crown of her head.
The tip of her tongue darted out, testing the taste of salt and skin and ambrosia.
As if that one small taste had drugged her, the fight fled from Feyre. Her stiff limbs went loose, lax, her head lolling on her neck until it fell into its intended place on his shoulder. Her clenched shut eyelids relaxed, but remained far too heavy.
And Rhysand’s voice was strained when he said, “Then we’re done here.”
Wind tore at Feyre, along with ancient darkness, and a sweeter, softer shade of night caressed her, stroking her nerves, running its fingers over the sensitive skin at her wrists and throat until it seduced her into sleep.