Page 118 of Run Little Omega

The forestabove is different from the tunnels—wilder, less predictable, but somehow more familiar to what I've become. Seven centuries of court protocol feel like a distant memory as I track a deer through the underbrush, my senses sharper than they've ever been. The transformation that began with my first rut continues to reshape me from the inside out.

The deer pauses, ears twitching. I remain perfectly still, not even breathing. It's been three hours since I left Briar and The Hound in the underground chamber. Three hours of hunting to provide for a mate who can barely look at me without remembering the atrocities I authorized. Three hours away from the four tiny heartbeats growing impossibly fast within her.

I still can't fully comprehend it. Quadruplets. In all my centuries overseeing the Hunt, I've never witnessed an omega survive carrying even twins with fae blood. Yet something in our combined Wild Magic has made the impossible not just possible but inevitable.

The deer moves on, and I follow, silent as shadow. We need meat—protein and iron for Briar's rapidly changing body. The accelerated pregnancy will drain her strength quickly, and I refuse to lose her to the biological demands of carrying my children. Not after everything she's survived. Not after I've only just begun to understand what it means to care for someone beyond duty or possession.

I'm so focused on the hunt that I nearly miss the subtle shift in the air—a faint trace of Winter Court magic, precise and clinical. I freeze, letting the deer bound away, all thoughts of food forgotten as I catalog the intrusion.

Not just any Winter Court magic. A signature I know intimately.

Dr. Cassius Frost, Master Physician of the Winter Court. My physician for seven centuries. The man who warned me endlessly that entering rut would diminish my power, shorten my life, reduce me to a slave of biological imperatives.

How spectacularly wrong he was.

I circle back, using the wind to mask my scent. Wild Magic has changed my hunting tactics—no longer the methodical, disciplined approach of a Winter Prince, but something more primal and effective. I move with the forest rather than against it, blending with shadow and dappled light until I have a clear view of the small clearing where Cassius has established his position.

He isn't alone. Six elite Winter Court guards form a perimeter around him, their armor the pale blue-white of glacier ice, their expressions blank with magical compliance. I recognize the spell—one that suppresses individual thought in service to the collective mission. I authorized its use myself, centuries ago, for "specialized extractions."

"The prince's scent trail ends here," one guard reports, kneeling before Cassius. "But these tunnels make tracking him nearly impossible."

Cassius nods, his platinum hair arranged in the precise style that hasn't changed in the three centuries I've known him. "Doesn't matter. The omega's magic grows stronger by the hour. Her womb quickens the wild power in her blood."

My hands clench involuntarily, cold power gathering at my fingertips. How does he know about the pregnancy already?

"What do we do with the prince when we find him?" another guard asks, voice flat with enchantment.

Cassius adjusts his immaculate sleeve with delicate fingers. "Bring him back alive. The Council thinks they can still salvage him once we get rid of the omega and her influence."

"And the omega?" The guard's tone doesn't change, but something in me shifts dangerously at the question.

"Kill her and the abominations she carries," Cassius says with casual disdain. "My readings show multiple babes growing in her womb—a grave threat to everything we've built if they're born."

My vision narrows, the edges tinting blue-white with killing cold. Yet I force myself to remain hidden, to learn more before I act.

"How do we dispose of her?" The guard asks with the detachment of someone discussing waste removal.

"Take what magic we can use first," Cassius replies, opening a leather case of surgical instruments that gleam with enchantment. "Then dump what's left at the usual place in the vale."

The vale. The Vale of Culling, where generations of "unsuitable" omegas and their unborn children were dumped to slowly die, their magical essence seeping into the groundwater that eventually reached Thornwick. The source of the wasting sickness that killed Briar's mother. That nearly killed Willow.

That I authorized with my signature for centuries without once witnessing the consequences.

"What if she's already birthed the babes?" Another guard, this one slightly less affected by the compliance spell, judging by the faint question in his tone.

Cassius looks up sharply. "Impossible. Even growing this fast, she'd need at least another week. But if it happens..." He pauses, considering. "Bring the whelps to the High Council. They'll want to take them apart and see what makes them tick."

Take them apart. The casual cruelty of it, the complete disregard for life—life that I helped create—ignites something primal within me.

I've heard enough.

The first guard dies before he registers my presence, his throat opened by claws I didn't possess a month ago. I move through their formation like winter wind, precise and merciless. Two more fall in the space between heartbeats, their wounds sealing with ice before they can cry out.

The fourth manages to draw his sword, enchanted steel that should cut through any magical defense. It shatters against my skin like thin ice, the fragments turning to powder as Wild Magic surges through me.

"Cadeyrn!" Cassius doesn't flee, but stands his ground, hands raised in what looks like surrender but is actually preparation for defensive spellcasting. "You've betrayed all four courts!"

"No," I say, my voice carrying the sound of breaking ice. "I've finally seen what they truly are."

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