Page 4 of The Omega Princess

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AND THEN, FINALLY, we were alone.

We hadn’t been alone yet.

We’d sat together in the back of his car while his driver took us places, and the driver hadn’t spoken to us and we’d only spoken to each other, but it wasn’t the same thing.

So, we were alone in a room in Neltingham Palace, which was on the far side of the city. It was the palace where he lived, and this room he was showing me was going to be my room, and I would have been more interested in looking at it, I thought, except he was dazzling and he smelled so good, and he was holding my hand, and he was all I could think about.

He shut the door on the woman who’d led us up here, even as she was saying she could go over whatever was in here for my use, and then we were alone.

For several long moments, we didn’t speak.

He took both of my hands in his, and stood in front of me, looking down at me, simply taking me in.

I looked up at him, intertwining our fingers, sucking in the wondrousness of his scent, and feeling good, just good, in a way that I never felt. It was like that feeling of waking up from a nightmare, when you realize that none of that actually happened, that you were actually at home and safe in your own bed. Everything about him reassured me. He was safety and security and home.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“What could you possibly be sorry for?” I whispered.

“I’m just standing here, staring at you like an idiot. I haven’t spoken at all.”

“Well, neither have I.”

“You must have so many questions. You must be confused and a bit frightened. This must be overwhelming for you.”

“No,” I said. “You make me feel like everything’s going to be all right.”

“Good.” He pulled me closer. “It will be. Everything’s going to be just fine now that you’re here. I’ve been waiting for you my whole fucking life.” He cringed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to swear like that.”

I giggled. “I’ve heard that word before.”

He laughed, embarrassed.

“True, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say it. I guess they don’t want you to say bad words when you’re in public.”

“They do not,” he said, grinning.

“But it’s fine,” I said. “I think I must have been waiting for you my whole fucking life. I just didn’t understand that I was waiting for something.”

“Right,” he said. “We don’t know how you even happened. Designations aren’t supposed to work this way.”

They really weren’t. There were never alphas or omegas outside of the peerage. Of course, even within the peerage, designations were rare. There were usually only three or four per generation, an heir and a collection of spares. The peerage was vast at this point, consisting of a wide array of earldoms and dukedoms and the like, but any one of the members could produce an alpha or omega and any of them could inherit the crown.

Bloodlines were part of it, but the crown wasn’t inherited like primogeniture. Instead, the crown was inherited in terms of who had presented with their designation first. Since omegas tended to present later, when they were older, this did tend to mean that omegas were rarely monarchs. The Queen was a special case.

Long ago, the royals had been a real ruling body, but now they were just figureheads. Our country had a senate and an elected prime minister.

Once a member of the peerage presented with a designation, he or she became a royal. There were generations of royals with heirs and spares, but it was all very complicated.

So, for instance, in the Queen’s generation, there were actually two other royals with designations, Princess Marguerite and Prince Alfred. However, when the Queen died, she would not be succeeded by either of these people. Heirs of the Queen’s generation would only ascend to the throne if the upcoming generation’s heirs were too young to become monarchs.

The upcoming generation wasn’t Devlin’s generation. Devlin was actually the third generation to the crown, and there was a fourth generation of even younger alphas presenting now.

The second generation had consisted of Princess Emily before she drowned to death, but now only Prince Mark. Technically speaking, there was another heir in that generation, Prince Gabriel, but he was an omega who had mated to an alpha in the country of Nilthin.

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