Page 173 of Run Little Omega

The throne pulses beneath me in response to their movement, ancient magic recognizing what I carry. But without Cadeyrn's blood to activate the protection ritual, we remain vulnerable despite all our preparations. The throne room is our final sanctuary, but without the ritual, it's just another chamber in a palace under assault.

"We hold," I repeat, as much to convince myself as anyone else. "We hold until he comes."

But as the walls around us shudder with another magical assault, the painful truth settles into my bones: Cadeyrn may not reach us in time. And if he doesn't, everything we've built together, everything we've sacrificed for, everything we've become, may end before it truly has a chance to begin.

The Wild Magic strengthens around us in defiant response to my fear, cillae brightening across loyal omega skin, the floor pulsing with ancient power. The throne itself seems to embrace me, the transformed ice molding to support my pregnant form with perfect comfort.

We hold. For as long as necessary, we hold.

CHAPTER56

POV: Briar

I don't seethem coming.

One moment I'm on the throne issuing orders, Flora at my right hand organizing our defenses, Mira at my left despite her swollen belly creating ice flowers that strengthen our protective barriers. The next, something punches through the ceiling—a wave of spring-green magic that tears through our protections like a blacksmith's hammer shattering brittle iron.

The throne room erupts into chaos. Our carefully constructed frost barriers melt into useless puddles, releasing the scent of winter magic dying. Loyal omegas scatter, their defensive formation shattering as quickly as our plans. Flora screams something I can't hear over the shriek of winter ice giving way beneath foreign magic.

They drop from the ceiling in perfect formation—six masked figures draped in Spring Court colors, moving with the synchronized precision of hunters who've stalked these halls for centuries. Not the chaotic assault we just escaped, but something calculated and focused. A second attempt, deliberately planned after the first failure.

For me.

I raise my hands, Wild Magic surging beneath my skin like a winter river breaking free of ice. But before frost can form at my fingertips, one of them hurls something that catches light as it spins through the air—a web of gleaming metal that expands in mid-flight, malevolence woven into every strand. The net falls over me, iron fibers burning where they touch my skin like brands pressed into exposed flesh. My magic dies instantly, severed like a vein cut clean through. The cillae across my skin dim to nearly invisible, their power extinguished beneath the iron's cruel bite.

"What the—" My words choke off as the net tightens, iron fibers digging into frost-marked flesh, carving channels of fire along pathways meant for ice.

"Iron weave," Flora shouts across the chamber, horror in her voice. "It suppresses fae magic—don't let it touch your skin!"

Too late. Two hunters converge on me while I'm entangled, their movements swift and practiced as wolves taking down winter-starved prey. One grabs my arms, twisting them behind my back with cold efficiency. The second produces a collar of woven iron and silver that radiates wrongness like the stench of death. My stomach heaves just looking at it—the kind of magic designed to silence what we've awakened, to bind what we've fought to free.

"The breeder is secured," the first hunter announces, voice dead as winter-starved soil. "Take her to the sacred chamber."

The word 'breeder' lands like a slap. After everything—all the fighting, all the awakening, all the transformation—they still see me as nothing but a vessel. Not a person. Not even an omega. Just a container for power they want to control.

"No!" Mira lunges toward us, frost magic swirling around her hands, her pregnant belly not slowing her desperate charge. "Leave her alone!"

The hunter barely glances at her before a flick of his wrist sends her flying across the throne room. The sound of her body hitting the wall turns my blood to ice—the dull thud of another pregnant omega, another of my charges, broken against stone.

"Mira!" I thrash against the burning iron, my skin blistering wherever the fibers dig deeper. The four little ones respond to my rage with violent movement, their distinct magical signatures pulsing desperately beneath my skin. I feel their panic, their confusion as the iron smothers my own power while they burn brighter within.

The collar closes around my throat with a sound like a grave being sealed. The moment it locks, wrongness floods my system—not just pain, but violation so deep it reaches past flesh into spirit. My body suddenly feels alien, ill-fitting, like wearing a stranger's skin sewn poorly onto my bones.

"She's bound," the hunter reports, fingers digging into my arms as he hauls me upright. "Taking her to the chamber now."

The sacred chamber. Words that drip with sick irony. They've prepared a place to carve my babies from me before they're ready to be born. To butcher what should be birth.

I stare into the shadowed face behind the mask, seeing nothing but calculated indifference. "You'll regret this," I tell him, my voice steady despite the iron burning into my throat. "What's awakened won't be silenced again."

The hunter securing my arms twists them higher, sending white-hot pain through my shoulders. "Wild Magic is precisely why we're taking you, omega. That power has no place in our ordered world."

"The Courts require you alive," the other adds, his tone almost gentle despite his cruelty. "Your vessels too. Submit, and the extraction will hurt less."

Vessels. Not children, not babes. Not even offspring. Vessels—as if the four lives growing inside me are nothing but containers for power to be harvested.

Around us, the throne room has become a battlefield. The loyal omegas fight with the ferocity of the long-oppressed finally tasting freedom. Frost explodes from untrained hands, ice spikes erupting from floors and walls in jagged, deadly beauty. One omega—a kitchen maid whose name I don't even know—impales a hunter on a jagged spear of ice before another cuts her down, her throat opened with casual precision.

It's not enough. For every blow our side lands, the hunters return three. Their movements flow with the deadly precision of centuries spent honing their craft while ours stumble with the awkward newness of freshly awakened power.

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