Page 153 of Run Little Omega

"Let them think we're making our stand in the birth chambers," I say, mind racing ahead. "Let them focus their forces there. Meanwhile..."

"We prepare this room as our true sanctuary," Cadeyrn finishes, a predatory smile spreading across his face. "Hidden in plain sight, protected by magic older than the courts themselves."

The audacity appeals to the part of me that survived the Hunt through deception and strategy. Let them expect us to follow traditional protocols. Let them think us predictable when we've been anything but since the moment he claimed me in the Bloodmoon Forest.

"But remember what they truly fear, Briar," he adds, expression darkening with ancient satisfaction.

"And what's that?"

His smile turns predatory, all teeth and primal hunger. "That we've already won. That what they feared for centuries has already happened and can't be undone."

The palace shudders around us as if agreeing, walls shifting and corridors rearranging as Wild Magic continues to pour from the throne where we claimed each other. The ceiling opens wider to the crimson moon rising higher in the night sky—the same blood-red eye that watched over our first meeting at the Gathering Circle.

I lean against him, suddenly weightless with exhaustion. "Two days," I murmur, the words a countdown, a promise, a challenge.

His arms tighten around me, fierce and protective without constraining. "Two days to prepare," he corrects. "For the birth that remakes everything."

The certainty in his voice steadies me as we leave the transformed throne room. Behind us, winter ice continues its metamorphosis into something balanced and whole—spring growth, summer heat, autumn change, and winter stillness all coexisting where only one season ruled before.

Just like the children I carry. Just like what Cadeyrn and I have become—no longer just alpha and omega, predator and prey, fae and human, but something altogether new.

Wild Magic rushes ahead of us through palace walls, preparing the way for what comes next: a birth that will either shatter the courts entirely or forge them into something true. Something balanced. Something free.

CHAPTER52

POV: Briar

I waketo the unfamiliar sensation of not hating my own skin. My transformed body hums with residual magic from last night's claiming—a pleasant resonance beneath frost-patterned flesh that finally feels like mine instead of a prison I've been trapped in for twenty-three years.

Cadeyrn sleeps beside me, face slack in a vulnerability I've never witnessed. The Winter Prince surrendering to unconsciousness. I study the changes wrought in him—broader shoulders, more powerful frame, cillae now incorporating elements from all four courts spiraling across his chest like rivers breaking through winter ice. No longer purely geometric Winter Court designs, but something fluid and alive.

Seven centuries of perfect control, and a village blacksmith's apprentice cracked him open in three months.

I trace a finger along one frost pattern trailing down his arm, feeling magic pulse beneath my touch like a second heartbeat. He stirs but doesn't wake, his body instinctively curving toward mine like iron drawn to a lodestone.

The irony cuts deep. The alpha who hunted me through the forest, who claimed me against a blackthorn tree while crimson sap rained down like sacrificial blood, now responds to my gentlest touch with complete surrender. The predator tamed—or perhaps, like me, simply reforged into something neither of us could have imagined.

My new fangs press against my lip as I smile. Still strange to have them, stranger still how right they feel—like I've spent my life using dulled tools only to finally hold properly honed steel. My tongue explores their sharp edges while my hand moves to my swollen belly, feeling the little ones shift with renewed energy after last night's magical storm.

The babes respond to my touch, four distinct movements like signatures. One always moves sharp and quick—Ember, I've named him in my mind. Another rolls slowly but with undeniable power—Alder. The third flutters like leaves in wind—Lyra. And the fourth, the gentlest, who always seems to calm the others—Willow. Names I haven't spoken aloud, not even to Cadeyrn. Names that feel more like recognitions than choices.

Less than two days until birthing, if Lysandra's estimate holds true. Four lives who shouldn't exist, carried in a body transforming beyond human, protected by a prince shattering seven centuries of court tradition. The impossible made flesh through Wild Magic that predates the courts themselves.

A sharp rap at the chamber door jolts me from my thoughts.

"Lady Briar." Lysandra's voice carries an edge that immediately sets me on alert. "Your presence is requested in the reception hall. Immediately."

Cadeyrn wakes at the sound, body tensing from sleep to alertness in a single breath—a predator's instinct never truly dormant. "What is it?" he calls, already reaching for his clothes.

"Unexpected arrivals," Lysandra replies, her voice carefully neutral in that way that tells me she's not alone in the corridor. "From the Hunt."

We exchange a look. My heart skips at the possibility—omegas I met during those brutal weeks in the forest, perhaps some I helped reach the havens. Perhaps confirmation that our transformation is spreading, affecting others who carry the potential for Wild Magic.

"We'll be there shortly," Cadeyrn says, his voice slipping into the formal register of the Winter Prince even as his eyes hold mine with unspoken questions.

I nod once, sharply. Whatever—whoever—waits downstairs, I need to see them.

Within minutes, we're dressed in the simpler court garments I've insisted on—functional rather than ornamental, allowing freedom of movement should we need to fight or flee. My hand finds his as we leave our chambers, the brief contact sending cillae cascading between us where our skin meets. No longer merely a claiming bond but something deeper, something that flows both ways.

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