Masuk• CALEB •“Your Grace.”I repeated the words quietly to myself after the maid left, almost expecting them to sound ridiculous the second time around.They didn’t. They somehow sounded even stranger. I leaned back against the sofa and rubbed both hands over my face.“Your Grace… really?”Neither Jason nor Nelson interrupted me. They knew I was thinking. Or more accurately… Overthinking.“I’m the omega everyone wanted dead,” I muttered. “The same omega your entire kingdom would’ve happily buried without asking a single question.”Neither of them argued. Because it was true.“The moment they find out I’m mated to both of you…” I continued, “…they will even more reasons to want me dead.”The room fell silent. Stormy shifted lazily inside my head but didn’t interrupt. For once. I stared at the floor.“This doesn’t make sense.”“No,” Jason admitted.“It doesn’t,” Nelson agreed.I let out a long breath.“Not only can they suddenly see me again…”I looked between both Kings.“They’re calling
• JASON •Stormy had gone quiet.That alone bothered me more than anything else that had happened today.A wolf who never stopped talking had suddenly decided silence was the better option. I didn’t know him nearly as well as Caleb did, but I’d spent enough time around the chaotic creature to know something was wrong.Very wrong.Caleb seemed to notice it too.He unconsciously rubbed the side of his head as we climbed the palace stairs, almost like he was waiting for another sarcastic comment that never came.Even Weather felt the difference.He’s hiding something.“I know.”Nelson pushed open the doors leading into our private sitting room before immediately locking them behind us.“No guards,” he ordered.“They’re already gone,” I replied.He nodded before turning toward Caleb.“Sit.”Caleb didn’t argue.He dropped onto one of the sofas with an exhausted sigh that made him look far older than twenty-seven.His shoulders had completely slumped. His eyes looked distant. Like today had
• JASON •The journey back to the palace was the quietest I could remember. Not because there was nothing to say. Because there was too much.The forest, which had always felt like home, suddenly felt unfamiliar. Every rustle of leaves made Weather lift his head. Every broken branch made my hand instinctively reach for the sword hanging at my side.Beside me, Caleb walked silently.Nelson stayed on his other side, never allowing more than a few inches of space between them.It wasn’t planned.Neither of us had discussed it.We simply did it.Our omega had just encountered the Vampire King alone.That alone was enough reason to become paranoid. For nearly twenty minutes, nobody spoke.The only sounds were our footsteps crushing dried leaves beneath our boots and the distant calls of birds settling for the evening.Eventually, I couldn’t take the silence anymore.“How are you feeling?”Caleb looked at me.“I’m okay.”“Liar,” Weather muttered inside my head.“I know.”Caleb rubbed the ba
• JASON • The moment I saw him, I didn’t think. I just moved. Caleb was standing there in the clearing, still wrapped in Nelson’s jacket, looking like he had been dropped straight out of a nightmare and told to make sense of it on his own. That alone was enough to snap something inside my chest clean in half. My wolf surged forward before I could even slow myself down. We both felt it at the same time. Wrongness. The air still carried it, thick and lingering like something had been burned into the forest and refused to fade properly. Vampire scent. Fresh enough to make Weather snarl the moment we stepped closer. And Caleb… Caleb looked confused. Not injured. Not panicked in the way you expect after a fight. Just… lost in a way that didn’t belong on him. That was worse. Because Caleb was never just gone mentally like that unless something had touched something deeper. “Tell me you are okay,” I said immediately as I reached him, my voice coming out sharper than I intended. I did
• CALEB • I don’t understand what is wrong with me. That thought kept repeating itself in my head like a broken loop I couldn’t shut off. Every time I tried to open my mouth and explain what happened, it was like my words refused to form properly, like something inside me kept hitting a wall and bouncing back into silence. “I don’t know,” I finally said again, even though I hated how weak it sounded. “Everything just vanished.” And it wasn’t even a lie. That was the worst part. It really did feel like everything had just slipped through my fingers. One moment I was standing there, aware, speaking, reacting, and the next moment it was like someone had cut a piece of time out of my head and thrown it away where I couldn’t reach it anymore. Stormy shifted inside me immediately, restless and uneasy. This is not okay, Caleb. “I know,” I muttered under my breath, more to myself than anyone else. “This shit is not okay at all.” My chest felt tight in a way I couldn’t explain
•NELSON• The moment I reached the clearing, I already knew something was wrong. It wasn’t just the silence. Silence in a forest was normal if you trained long enough to understand it. Silence could mean peace. It could mean waiting. It could mean a predator holding its breath just beyond sight. But this silence felt wrong in a way that crawled under my skin and refused to settle. Rain felt it before I did. His presence inside me shifted instantly, no longer playful or curious like he had been earlier when we were tracking Stormy’s chaotic trail through the woods. Now he was alert, rigid, fully awake in a way that made my senses sharpen painfully. Danger. Not distant. Close. I slowed my steps as I approached the edge of the clearing, every instinct screaming at me to move carefully. The trees opened gradually, and the moonlight spilled down into the space ahead like something revealing a secret it had been hiding. And then I saw my omega. Caleb. He was standing alone in the m
•CALEB• I didn’t think I had ever truly seen myself in wolf form, not once in all the time I could remember, but the massive wolf staring back at me from the water’s surface was unmistakably Stormy. He was enormous, all silver-grey fur and pale eyes that held far too much amusement for the situa
• NELSON •The archive room always felt like a place the kingdom forgot how to breathe inside.Stone walls lined with ancient carvings. Shelves stretching too high to look comfortable. Books that had survived more wars than most warriors ever would. The air itself carried weight here, like every se
• CALEB •I woke up feeling like absolute garbage. Not physically. At least not entirely.My body had recovered from things that should have killed me several times already, which was honestly becoming a little disturbing if I thought about it too hard. No, this exhaustion sat deeper than that. It
• CALEB •I woke up feeling like absolute garbage. Not physically. At least not entirely.My body had recovered from things that should have killed me several times already, which was honestly becoming a little disturbing if I thought about it too hard. No, this exhaustion sat deeper than that. It







